THE THIRTEENTH PAGE

A few years after my arrival, the BC collapsed in a heap of history. I was living in my fourth New York apartment when I opened the paper and read the news. That night I went down to Broadway to survey the blocked-off rubble. A sentimental shudder ran through me and I recalled my next move after departing the BC.

If you are coming to the city, you are coming to live in Manhattan. You can abandon it from time to time, but you always come back. No other borough will do, though sometimes any old apartment will suffice.

The antique formula for the apartment budget in the sixties was a week’s salary for a month’s rent. That allowed a hundred bucks for housing with my hundred buck a week salary from Doubleday. I found an apartment near Riverside Drive on the Upper West Side not far from Columbia University. The architect who had hacked the BC into pieces had no doubt hacked this brownstone into pieces, too. My room was in the shape of a coffin and not a great deal larger.

The original $400 was halved by bed and board. The month’s advance payment and another month’s security payment ate up the balance, leaving me with a few fifteen cent tokens for the subway, which would hold me until I was paid by Doubleday.