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nearly finished when the sounds of people getting ready to go home broke into his concentration again.
Marion was so close to being finished with theOne-Year Time Frame that he considered staying and finishing it, but finally decided against that. He knew himself well enough to know that if he finished theOne-Year he would be tempted to just keep going.
The priority, of course, was to get the things on the list not yet acquired. The list was just about complete. All he needed now was the chain and two more AWOL bags. He would get the chain today, and the remaining two AWOL bags tomorrow. It would not be wise to return to the Super Drugstore at all, and certainly not so soon.
First the chain and then the AWOL bags. Perhaps, when he went shopping for the chain, he would see another store that had AWOL bags on sale. Perhaps even bags that met the metal zipper and other criteria, but which at least would not haveSouvenir of Someplace painted on them, and with a little bit of luck would be of a different design.
Marion waited, of course, until the office herd had thundered out and ridden the cattle cars down to the lobby before putting theA Projection of Anthracite Production Economic Considerations material back into its folders and then into his desk file.
When he came out onto Broad Street, he had an interesting thought. Instead of looking for a hardware store in the streets down toward the river, he would get on a bus and ride up North Broad Street.
He vaguely remembered seeing a decent-looking hardware store in a row of shops on the west side of North Broad Street, five or six blocks north of the North Philadelphia Station of the Pennsylvania Railroad.
He started to walk up South Broad Street toward City Hall. As he approached it, he decided he would let the Lord decide, by His timing of the traffic lights that controlled the counterclockwise movement of vehicular traffic around City Hall, whether He wanted him to go to North Broad Street by walking through the City Hall passageways, or if He preferred that Marion turn right at Market Street and walk the long way around, on the sidewalk past John Wanamaker's, et cetera.
The Lord apparently wanted him to get to North Broad Street quickly, for just as he approached Market Street, the vehicular light turned to red, the pedestrian light turned to green, and without breaking stride he was able to cross the street and enter the archway of City Hall.
The same thing happened as he emerged from the north archway. The vehicular light turned to red and the pedestrian to green just as he reached the street, and he was again able to keep walking without stopping at all.
And then as he reached the bus stop at the next corner, a bus was just swallowing the last of the line of people who had been waiting for it. Marion climbed aboard without having to break pace.
He thought for a moment that the Lord had wanted him to board this particular bus, but then decided that wasn't true. There was only one empty seat, and that was on the right side of the bus. If the Lord had wanted him to get on this bus, He would have saved him a seat on the left side, from which he could look for the hardware store he remembered seeing somewhere past the North Philadelphia Station.
Perhaps, Marion thought, by the time we get to the North Philadelphia Station, someone now sitting on the left side will have gotten off the bus and I can move over.
Sometime later, Marion wasn't sure how much later, because he had been thinking that he had forgotten to factor intoA Projection of Anthracite Production Economic Considerations the cost of new federal government mine safety regulations, he became aware that the bus was not moving.
He looked out the window. They were stopped at Ridge Avenue. The bus was now filled with mutterings. His fellow passengers were growing angry that the bus wasn't moving. Marion raised himself in his seat and tried to look out the windshield. There was a long line of cars in front of the bus, but he could see nothing that explained why they weren't moving.
Marion glanced out the side window again, and saw that they were stopped in front of the hotel that belonged to that rather amusing, viewed in one light, and rather pathetic, viewed in another, religious sect founded by a Philadelphia black man who called himself Father Divine.
Father Divine had convinced an amazing number of colored people, and even some white people, that he had been anointed by the Lord to bring them out of their misery, spiritual and temporal, primarily by turning over all of their assets to him.
His wife, Marion recalled, had been a white woman, and she had lived rather well as the mate of Father Divine. They were supposed to own property and businesses all over Philadelphia. And New York too. And Washington, D.C.
He wondered if Mrs. Father Divine was still living well, now that Father Divine had been called to Heaven.
I wonder what Father Divine said to Saint Peter?
There really had been a lot of money. The hotel, before they bought it, with cash, closed the bar, and renamed it, after Mrs. Divine, of course, the Divine Lorraine Hotel, had been a rather decent hotel.
The Divine Lorraine Hotel!
The bus began to move.
Marion broke out in a sweat.
****
When the bus stopped in front of the old Reading Railroad Terminal at Lehigh Avenue, not far at all from the Pennsylvania Railroad's North Philadelphia Station, the four people sitting in the two seats to the left of Marion all got up at once and exited the bus.
Marion quickly moved across the aisle. The sweating had stopped, but it left him feeling clammy and uncomfortable.
There is no question that the Lord wants me to do something in connection with, the Divine Lorraine Hotel. But what?
****
Three blocks past the North Philadelphia Station, Marion saw the hardware store he thought he remembered. And it was even larger, and thus more likely to carry what he needed to complete the list, than he had remembered.
