To Be Young in Old Manhattan

This New York morning comes clearer and cooler and more beautiful. People will arrive today for the weekend. I must go home.

Last night, I ate dinner with my newly married friends. She talks of having children, leaving the city. Many of their friends have already. Unless you are rich or poor, you do not stay in the city forever. The streets are filled with the newly arrived, young, excited, hopeful.

I stopped at a bar on 2nd street between 51st and 50th for a last drink. On the wall a giant publicity photo of Van Johnson beamed out. The bar was filled with women and men older than I, some cadaverous images of what is to come if we live long enough. I wondered what I had wandered into. The conversations around me seemed pretentious, delivered in overly-cultured voices, I thought, the sentences too formally formed. All the conversations were about music. These were people who played at the Met and Carnegie and taught at Juliard. Or once had, though some still had upcoming bookings. I sipped my drink, the bartender watching me, wondering, I guess, what I was up to, for I was the youngest person in the room which was telling. I figured he had me pegged for either a thief or a gigolo.

In a little while, a man walked to the piano and a woman came up from the crowd. They all knew one another and talked openly. She must have been eighty--thin, pale skin tinted blue, white hair showing the pink of her scalp, not ancient but aged, not feeble but old. When she took the microphone, she panned the room like a movie star taking everyone in. The piano hit the opening notes and the woman next to me told her companion, "Ah, she is going to do 'Bewitched.'" And she was right.

The woman sang it spectacularly.

When she finished her song, I applauded her soundly and paid for my drink. Had I more time, I would have stayed awhile longer.

Back on the street, everyone was young. The bars were full and spilling out onto the sidewalks. Everyone was someone. They were young. They had New York.

Here are a few snapshots from the sidewalks of Manhattan.