Manhattan gives Tully Hart the dazzling urban world she has imagined, but its crowds and spectacle do not erase her solitude. Across her years in the city, it becomes the landscape of her television career and a backdrop against which she begins to recognize what that career has not given her.

Arrival and Ambition

In her first week in Manhattan, Tully walks the busy streets with her new NBC business cards in hand, looking upward at the skyscrapers as though she has entered a wonderland. Restaurants that never close, horse-drawn carriages along the park, and crowds of people dressed in black turn the city into a daily spectacle. She spends two weeks exploring, choosing a neighborhood, finding an apartment, and learning the subway system. Although sightseeing alone could have made the adjustment lonely, the excitement of her new job outweighs that feeling; Manhattan’s streets, lively even in the darkest hours, make her feel that she is never entirely alone.

The city’s promise quickly takes professional form. Tully is hooked from the moment she enters the NBC building as a reporter. She wakes at two-thirty in the morning to reach the studio by four, earlier than necessary, because she wants to help and observe. Studying Jane Pauley’s movements and mannerisms, she treats the newsroom as a place to learn as well as work. Manhattan is not merely the address of her new career: it is where ambition becomes an everyday routine.

A Glittering City and a Private Life

More than a year later, Manhattan’s holiday brilliance brings a different kind of turning point. Tully watches crowds shop, photograph Rockefeller Center’s enormous Christmas tree, and skate at the seasonal rink. Near the Rainbow Room sign, she realizes that she has spent her time in the city making acquaintances but not dating. After being laughed at by her boss when she asked for the holidays off, she decides not to return to her quiet apartment; work can wait. She chooses a window table at the Rainbow Room and orders a margarita, looking out over Manhattan’s multicolored night as if from a futuristic mothership.

The scene places the city’s abundance beside Tully’s unfilled personal life. Manhattan offers crowds, lights, and movement, but she has been living without much intimacy beyond work. Her choice to go out alone does not resolve that loneliness; it marks a moment when she turns away, briefly, from the routine that has organized her life.

The Cost of Success

By the time Tully is established in her career, Manhattan’s early enchantment has become a demanding rhythm. On dark streets, her uniformed driver, Hans, hands her a double-shot latte as she settles into the car. She has been waking around three-thirty in the morning for years. Since CBS recruited her, afternoon meetings have been added to the morning broadcasts, and success has lengthened rather than softened her working days. Fame, money, and celebrity do not persuade her to slow down. Instead, each new achievement sharpens her desire for more and her fear of losing what she has gained.

The city’s near-sleeping hour exposes the human labor beneath its glamour: garbage collectors, bakers, and newspaper deliverymen are among the few people out on the streets. Tully’s own working life places her among the city’s early risers, but her position is markedly different. She travels with a driver and has built a public life of fame, while privately feeling that she wants something more substantial than the glittering existence she has constructed. She loves her work and cannot imagine becoming ordinary again, leaving her uncertain how to begin a different kind of life.

Memory in the Present City

On the first sunny day after a long snowy winter, Tully walks through busy Manhattan as locals weave around brightly dressed tourists. Central Park, green against the city, recalls the Quad at the University of Washington: students throwing Frisbees and playing hacky sack. The memory brings her college years close, though twenty years have passed since she last left campus. Manhattan thus becomes more than the setting of the life she has built; its streets and park can draw the earlier life she left behind into the present. Smiling at the sudden memory, she thinks she will tell Katie about her senior moment that night, joining the city’s solitary walk to the enduring intimacy of their friendship.