Free The Girl at the End of the Line by Charles Mathes

booth.
    â€œDate?” said the clerk.
    He didn’t look the type to be asking her out. If there was such a type.
    â€œI’d like some information about a play that was here about fifty years ago,” she said.
    â€œI’d say you’re about fifty years too late.”
    â€œYou don’t have information about your productions?”
    â€œSister, the only information I got is that we’re sold out weekends until December and most of what’s left during the week is mezzanine and side seats.”
    Molly was neither surprised nor overly disappointed. She had figured the theater for a long shot but had had to try.
    â€œIs there a good library near here that you would recommend that has information about Broadway shows?” said Molly, switching to the next stop on her list of research options. “We’re from out of town.”
    Before the man in the booth could answer, half the people in line seemed to be talking to her at once.
    â€œFifty-third street, across from MOMA.”
    â€œDon’t fool with branches, lady. Go to the main library at Forty-second and Fifth, the one with the two lions and all the tourists out in front.”
    â€œYou’re all nuts. She should try Lincoln Center.”
    â€œShe wants opera?”
    â€œNo, she wants the Library of Performing Arts. And that’s at Lincoln Center!”

    A murmur of agreement rippled through the crowd. Molly wasn’t expecting New Yorkers to be so helpful, especially after a long wait in line. But they were. The man behind bars couldn’t sell another ticket until Molly had been thoroughly briefed on how to get to Lincoln Center and had passed a quiz.
    Molly and Nell walked up Broadway as instructed—the one Samaritan who had recommended the Eighth Avenue bus had been shouted down. It was a beautiful day in spite of the heat, and walking in New York wasn’t like walking anywhere else.
    An endless sea of pedestrians flowed up and down Broadway dressed in every fashion and color imaginable, from white-belted tourists to half-naked beggars. A babel of languages joined the car horns and sirens in the strange symphony that was the city.
    In a second-floor window dancers were rehearsing in front of a wall of full-length mirrors. The streets were pocked with marquees advertising legendary musicals and popular television shows among storefronts filled with cameras and calzones, salamis and sofa beds. The air crackled with excitement.
    At Fifty-ninth Street Molly and Nell had their first New York City lunch—hot pretzels and frankfurters from street vendors—and stopped to pet a weary-looking horse, one of many attached to hansom cabs at the curb in front of the park.
    On the other side of Columbus Circle, Broadway widened into two lanes and ran diagonally into a neighborhood that felt completely different than the area from which they had come. Here, the buildings were newer, more residential, and not as tall as the ones in Times Square.
    Abruptly the street opened again into another plaza, and the white marble and glass buildings of Lincoln Center spread out to the left. According to a sign they were at Sixty-fourth Street. They had covered twenty blocks in what had seemed like no time at all. Molly suddenly understood why the people at the theater had insisted
that she and Nell walk. Walking in New York was so entertaining it was a wonder that the city hadn’t figured out a way to tax it.
    The Library of the Performing Arts was a comparatively small structure at the rear of the Lincoln Center complex, wedged between Julliard and the Metropolitan Opera. A million-dollar Henry Moore sculpture lazily sunned itself in a reflecting pool out in front. Inside, however, the library had the same atmosphere of purposeful doing, the same kind of people, and the same smell as probably every library in the country.
    Molly suddenly felt more at home—libraries were an antique dealer’s best friend and