Worn-looking, Jack radiated despondency rather his normal gleam. My favorite salesman, Jack, represented a major paperback publisher. Then, publishers sent sales representatives into the paperback bookstore on Times Square. His colorful, sharp clothes, perfect mustache, well-spoken intelligence, warmth felt in each uttered syllable: he had it all. His command of "slicks," or mass market paperbacks, ranged farther than other salesmen.

One early July day, instead of his usual bearing, he slouched as he stood near the cash register. Sport shirt sweaty, tie crooked and pulled low, jacket rumpled, grayish hair wild all over, hangover eyes bloodshot, faitigue in every pore: one messed-up Jack.

"Louie died last night,"he said. "My wife and I stayed up all night." Louis L'Amour: too shallow. Louis Ferdinand Celine: died in '61. Louis Auchincloss: Edith Wharton bio just released.

"Which Louis?" I asked. Nothing clicked for me, a callow twenty five year old.

"Louis Armstrong. He died in his sleep in Corona, Queens, near where we live."

I never liked "Hellow Dolly," that duet with Carol Channing, but said,

"He came a long way from Storyville." I'd read that in a book blurb.

"I grew up with his music, the whole shebang," Jack said. His voice hoarse from chain-smoking, he crushed a butt with his sole. I never saw him smoke before.

"Why all the singing? The trumpet brought him fame," I said.

"He split his lip in the '30s," he said. "And his manager booked too many European tours."

"I'd be shook if Dylan died tomorrow." I bought his first album in 1964. Jack's face reddened, contorted, an expression not in his repertoire. He hadn't appreciated the Dylan comment.

"The recordings with King Oliver, the Hot Five and Stompers," he said, " those great ones from the '30s."

I'd been standing on a raised platform, built so employees could watch the floor. I stepped off, matching Jack's height. Who was I, Jesus on Calvary, passing judgment upon the world?

"The turnover's huge now. No one stays on the scene for fifty years," I said.

"An innovator, Louie, once-in-a-lifetime."

"The future isn't what it used to be," I said. He tried laughing. I wasn't sure how to handle death: Armstrong's, mine, Jack's, anyone's.

"There's no future in the future," he shot back. WNEW-FM played a Rod Stewart hit. The irony too obvious to mention.

"I was nine when I heard 'West End Blues', " he said. "We lived on Eldridge Street."

"The old syagogue's there. Looks Gothic, really beautiful."

"We lived two blocks away. Romanesque and Moorish, too."

"I lived on Rivington Street for a while,"I said."Upper West Side now."

"The great American pastime, moving." he said. A customer purchased three books, including The Grapes of Wrath. Jack noticed.

"I hate moving." Six times in five years screwed my life up.

"We always take more than furniture wherever we go," he said.

I lived alone on Rivington, moving after getting this job, living now with a woman whose husband was a MIA in Vietnam. I never had a girlfriend until we moved to the Upper West Side. Giving it up to another, that made all the difference.

"Letting go of Rivington changed everything,"I said.

"Louie hitting scads of high C's, then a high E-flat." I'd no musical knowledge, only bought what I liked.

"Did he entertain troops in the war?" Foolish question: hell, no.

"He never could've been a Glenn Miller or Benny Goodman back then," he said, crushing another one on his shoe. "He made many European tours afterwards."

"Public relations." A nice rebound from my stupid question.

"Not to the Soviet Union like the governemnt wanted in '57," he said. I rang up a customer, he pulled out a new arrivals list. "He protested the racist shit in Little Rock." I saw TV news: the bayonets, black high school students protected by heavily armed troops. The vileness of white people, but couldn't put words to the intuition.

"He was very angry about racism. Not the 'What a Wonderful World' image the media will roll out for the funeral." I liked that song, hearing it played so much it boosted morale.

Jack had an order form, which I signed. More customers trickled in.

"Are you attending services?" I asked.

"I've seen too many corpses during the war." Jack stopped speaking, and headed toward the door. His silence provoked me to say,

"Maybe some scotch whisky." He looked back at me.

"I'll listen to the scratchiest records," he said. "His fingernails pressing the trumpet valves are beter than what's on that." He pointed to the radio, then walked onto Broadway.