Broadway enters Travis’s story as both part of the city’s working streets and, more decisively, the location of a campaign office he makes a point of returning to. At 58th Street and Broadway, the Palantine presidential campaign committee’s headquarters becomes a place where he watches Betsy through a window, imagines a connection that has not yet begun, and later keeps himself visible outside even as his intentions darken.

Work and the campaign headquarters

Travis first describes driving in the cinema district, where he quickly tires of the customers and their demands. Broadway becomes a more particular destination when, between fares, he spends time near the corner of 58th Street and Broadway, outside the Palantine presidential campaign committee’s headquarters. Its window displays the committee’s support for Charles Palantine’s presidential candidacy; the primaries are still months away, but the people around the campaign already seem excited.

The office gives Travis a reason to stop between taxi rides. He says he does not linger there because he has decided to vote for Charles Palantine; he is drawn by Betsy, a staff member whose name he initially does not know. The political address thus acquires a private meaning for him that sits alongside its public purpose.

Watching Betsy

From the street, Travis observes Betsy working inside: talking with colleagues, using the telephone, and typing. Their eyes sometimes meet through the glass, but she looks away or gives him a hostile look. The window makes the relationship’s distance concrete: Travis can see her, yet their brief exchanges do not amount to an acquaintance.

He parks across the street and watches her at her desk. His cab, fitted with a portable fan and a small transistor radio, serves as his waiting place; he compares the experience to being shut inside a can with holes through which he can look out. When Betsy points him out to a male colleague and the man comes toward the cab, Travis reverses and quickly drives away. Broadway is therefore not simply where he sees her, but also where his observation is interrupted by the possibility of being noticed in return.

Travis’s imagined intimacy grows despite their lack of conversation. He idealizes Betsy as exceptional and pictures her in a long yellow dress or campaign clothes, moving through the street seemingly untouched by the surrounding crowd. The campaign window frames these observations, but gives him no evidence that she shares his interest.

A meeting and a change in the address

On April 27, Travis finally telephones Betsy at the office. She agrees to go to the movies with him after work the following evening, his day off. For a moment, the headquarters is no longer only a place viewed from across the street: a call made there produces a real arrangement between them. The prospect of a date marks a change in Travis’s relation to the place, from distant watching toward direct contact.

On that same day, while driving in the northern part of the city, he picks up Charles Palantine himself, the candidate for whom Betsy works and whom Travis regards as her hero. The encounter happens in the taxi, not at the Broadway office, but it sharpens the overlap between Travis’s private fixation and the public campaign represented at the address.

Return and surveillance

Later, Travis begins parking near the headquarters in the evenings to watch for Betsy. He explains that he wants her to know he is still around, while insisting to himself that he does not mean to hurt her. The office remains active after hours, but Betsy is not there; Travis speculates that she may be out with someone. A changing window notice counts down the days until Charles Palantine arrives in New York, making the campaign’s approaching public event visible from the same place where Travis waits for Betsy.

The repeated return changes Broadway from a convenient stopping point into a fixed station in Travis’s private routine. The glass, the office workers, and the countdown sign remain outwardly ordinary; what changes is the meaning Travis assigns to being there. His attention to Betsy persists even when she is absent, while the campaign’s public activity continues on its own schedule. The location’s significance lies in that uneasy overlap: a political headquarters open to the street becomes the setting for an increasingly one-sided claim to presence.