The Healer [antikvár]

Park Avenue, as every New Yorker knows, is as treeless as the Sahara—and nearly as barren to the casual view. Save for the dust-caked rectangles that mask the railway tracks beneath the pavement, the only visible greenery for blocks on end is the spill of an occasional branch from a penthouse terrace, so far above the pavement that the flash of colour seems masquerade. Strolling its solemn length at mid-morning, the visitor might assume that Park Avenue is lifeless as well. At that hour the street seems a monument to its own splendour, a wide, sun-shot canyon bisecting Manhattan's teeming chaos, desolate as some valley of the moon. And yet, at mid-morning, there is good reason for the emptiness. The last bus has roared north long ago to the sleek private schools along the East River. The last limousine has snored south to Wall Street. The last nursemaid has tnmdled her pram westward to the zoo. Even the last copywriter has downed his benzedrine and hustled to his Madison Avenue den to dream up new assaults upon the pocket-books of the hinterland. It is too late for the doormen and the dogs. It is far too early for the first relentlessly groomed lady to descend for a luncheon date at the Colony or "21". Here and there, a delivery truck stands parked at a service entrance. A few taxis cruise in a fruitless search for fares. At the grilled entrance to an Iron Curtain outpost, a major-domo (in a morning coat stiif as armour) stares at the weather with a baleful eye. Save for these dormant stirrings. Park Avenue seems to