The year is closing on a sour note, with some brokers calling the fourth quarter the most tepid and dismal market they have seen in recent memory. So it’s easy to imagine, and even easier to excuse, real estate professionals looking ahead to January and grasping for any silver lining they can find in the start of a new year; something, anything, that might herald a break from the dreary conditions of the past several months and a return to the halcyon days of 2006 and 2007, when the market was stronger than ever.

But January of 2009 will not be the typical month of wintry warmth in residential real estate, thanks to perceptions forming in the current quarter’s lethal frigidity. Both the rental and sales markets are likely to sputter well into the new year.

“The fourth quarter has had the lowest transactions of the year, lower than I have ever seen,” Jonathan Miller, CEO of appraisal firm Miller Samuel and author of quarterly market reports for Prudential Douglas Elliman, said of apartment sales.

In each of the past four years, the median sales price for a Manhattan apartment has increased from the fourth quarter to the following year’s first quarter, including a $65,000 jump in the median price from the fourth quarter of 2005 to the first quarter of 2006, according to Miller Samuel statistics. Sales also increased from the fourth to first quarters in three of the past four years, and spiked by more than 1,000 from the fourth quarter of 2006 to the first of 2007. (The lone exception the last few years was from 2007 into 2008, when sales volume dropped.)

Unfortunately, this January is likely to deviate from the standard seasonal vicissitudes of the real estate market. “We are coming off really tough third and fourth quarters, and I think it will definitely carry over; there aren’t going to be any miracles,” said Luigi Rosabianca, managing member at real estate law firm Rosabianca & Associates.

The major issue, of course, is the struggling economy. Layoffs were abundant in 2008, an unfortunate trend that is likely to continue into 2009. Equally troubling is the fact that the city is not expected to grow many jobs, thus robbing the rental market of the usual influx of relocated employees and the plentiful bounty of young, post-college job-hunters looking for work in New York.

“I can’t see a large amount of demand coming in January that will create a surge in the first quarter,” Daniel Baum, COO of the Real Estate Group New York, said of the rental market.

Other rental brokers are just as sanguine on the prospects of a recovery for Manhattan’s rental market, which can be euphemistically characterized as a strong tenant’s market after years in the favor of landlords. Owners and brokers are offering incentives and concessions to prospective tenants, giving away everything they can to lure renters into their units. “The concessions will continue, and I don’t see why it could change to a landlord’s market,” said Brian Stern, the head of Bond New York’s Columbus Circle and Upper East Side office.

Sure, the calendar is flipping to a new year, but that doesn’t change the same crummy market conditions.

“Almost all buyers need mortgages, and if you lower the interest rate on them, that will affect all buyers,” Michael Signet, director of sales at Bond New York, said. Mr. Signet is less concerned with year-end bonuses, which he claims only serve to benefit one segment of the market, Wall Street employees, and believes that lower mortgage rates will help a broader base of buyers afford new homes.

The rate on 30-year fixed-rate mortgages was down to 5.47 percent in the second week of December, according to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

“If these things happen and credit markets loosen a little bit, it could bode well for Manhattan,” Jorden Tepper, executive director of sales for Century 21 NY Metro, said.

That is a big if.

“The direction of the market depends on the perceptions of the buyers; we are at the mercy of buyers,” Mr. Tepper said. According to Mr. Tepper, potential buyers are in a holding pattern, waiting to see the results of the year-end market reports, which will be released in January. In that case, a large price drop might be just around the corner, because many, including Mr. Miller, the author of the closely watched Douglas Elliman reports, are expecting low sales numbers from the current quarter.

“If those realities come to fruition, sellers are going to have to come to terms with reality, which might mean different pricing than the past year, when we were closer to the top of the market,” Mr. Tepper said.

If that is the case, it’s difficult to imagine anything would be able to change the course of the market.

“The real estate market is driven by positive energy,” Mr. Rosabianca, the real estate lawyer, said. And what could bring more positive energy than a new president who speaks so optimistically of hope and change? “In January, we are going to have a swearing-in ceremony, and statistics show that they always create positive energy,” Mr Rosabianca said.

So President-elect Obama, how much positive energy you got (and secondly, can you do anything about these credit markets)?

ohaydock@observer.com

- Max Abelson

That's a more sensical name choice than Century 21 NY Metro, the moniker created last month when Dwelling Quest and Century 21 Kevin B. Brown & Associates joined forces.

FKG will have 200 sales brokers, centered in the Flatiron District--the finest district in town.

- Max Abelson

The County of Kings has been my home for seven years. When my husband and I were ready to settle down and have children, we knew we didn’t want to do it on the youthful yet oh-so-pricey Lower East Side, where our love had first blossomed. Brooklyn, everyone informed us, was the place to go.

Despite the general wisdom that Park Slope was the ideal breeding ground, we fell hard for the traditionally Italian enclave of Carroll Gardens, and nested into a full floor in a wide brownstone on a tree-lined street. They must be putting Clomid in the water on this side of the Hudson, because it wasn’t long before our vocabulary expanded to include words like Zutano and Whoozit. We became, like everyone else in the neighborhood, the stroller-pushing parents of two.

As our family expanded, so did our ambitions. We loved our apartment, but longed for the stability of home ownership. We grew fed up with hauling our laundry to the ignobly named Bleach House, and worn down by a building whose plumbing system was more volatile than our 2-year-olds.

“Someday, we’ll live somewhere we can have a dishwasher,” I told my mate, “and when we do, we’re going to redirect all the time and energy we spend sudsing cutlery into screwing.”

We also dreamed of something with a more sensible layout than the open-floor plan we inhabited—something that might give our clan some measure of privacy. I was tired of hiding in the bathroom when I needed to get away, weary of cranking up the white-noise machine to hurriedly grope my spouse in the dark while my children slept close by. Basically, I was willing to spend our combined life savings for a goddamn door.

We knew we couldn’t afford a house in our neighborhood, though it didn’t stop us from looking at a few. But our budget capped around the $400,000 mark, roughly a million less than the going rate for South Brooklyn brownstones. We looked at houses further out, spending weekends pushing ourselves to the furthest limits of the borough. We saw dumpy little shotgun shacks located on the expressway, places with termites and noisy neighbors who eyed us suspiciously as we filed optimistically into open houses. We lowered our sights to condos and co-ops, our eyes glazing over at an astonishing array of identical cabinets and countertops contained within outrageously priced, dismal buildings in corners of the borough where the orange line doesn’t run.

And yet, every week it seemed some magazine article was still trumpeting the discovery of Brooklyn. Be not afraid, Manhattanites! they reassured. There are wine stores, and places to buy ironic T-shirts! If it’s good enough for Steve Buscemi, you can handle it, too! But when Heath Ledger is buying a $3 million brownstone in your hood and housing prices go up 35 percent in one year, maybe it’s time to rethink the whole poor-relation shtick. There was a time when living in Brooklyn seemed like a radical step. But like independent films and Ikea, the alternative was rapidly morphing into the big-budget mainstream.

“Call me when you’re ready to look in Montclair,” a friend had said. “All the Broadway people live in Maplewood now,” my husband’s co-worker had crowed. But we didn’t want to go. We’re the kind of people whose quality of life directly correlates with our ability to run out and buy individually wrapped fig bars at 2 a.m. We were Brooklynites, true and true, as my 718-bred daughters say it. We clung to our self-image as borough-dwelling renegades, even as a condo with single units going for a million plus slowly rose a block away.

We knew we couldn’t handle the suburbs, but when the local papers began trumpeting shiny new developments in Coney Island and Brighton Beach, we realized our days here were numbered. We had combed from Prospect Heights to Greenwood Heights and never felt the slightest tug of connection. We had pondered the hype of Bushwick as the next big thing, but reconsidered when we saw the public-school test scores. We had gone to Sunset Park and Midwood, only to find ourselves staring at sad patches on the highway that were all our money could buy. All we wanted was to throw all our money into someplace not completely hovel-like, in a neighborhood we could venture out with relative assurance we wouldn’t get shot. Or worse, be bored. And now that the last scraps of land on the borough were on the block, we’d come to the end of the line. Nowhere to go but the Atlantic.

So instead, we did the only thing you can when you reach the edge: We turned in the other direction. One Saturday, we dragged ourselves to the furthest end of Manhattan and got out of the train at the very last stop. We found a dismal strip of Broadway dotted with dollar stores and Dunkin’ Donuts. But we also found, to our great surprise, dramatically sloping streets, blocks and blocks of lovely old apartment buildings, and a heart-stoppingly beautiful park, full of caves and woods and marshes. Inwood lacks the pristine grandeur and Zagat Guide destinations of our current habitat. Instead, it has a ragged charm that seduced us instantly. I used to think the city stopped somewhere around Columbia Presbyterian. I was thrilled to be wrong.

It was not a smooth search. Our budget still couldn’t carry us into “sprawling” or “sun-drenched” territory, even there. Noise was a factor. Fixer-uppers were not uncommon. And the standard-issue second bedrooms in most units were roughly the dimensions of something out of Prison Break. One realtor, with a 900-square-foot apartment to sell, informed me, “Your children would grow to hate you if you put them here.” Yet of all the reasons I’ve ever heard for hating your parents, being raised in New York isn’t one of them. We kept looking. And then we stopped.

The apartment is smaller. I’ll lose my middle-room office and have to get rid of a ton of our possessions. My daughters will no longer have sunlight streaming in through their bedroom windows. We still have to pass the co-op board. There’s no Starbucks, no Barnes & Noble, no theater, no gourmet shop where Dutch cheese is called “how-dah.” I have broken out in rashes trying to figure out the schools. And the A train ride to Century 21 is sufficiently long enough to merit meal service and a movie. It is, in many ways, a highly impractical choice. But then, falling in love usually is.

A few yards away from the spot I hope to call home in a few months, there’s a rock. On it is a plaque commemorating the alleged spot where, in 1626, Peter Minuit purchased the island of Manhattan. The location, it seems, is an auspicious one for real-estate transactions. For less than the cost of a handyman special in Flatbush, I’m going to live in a two-bedroom prewar apartment on a park in Manhattan, and that’s not too shabby. It’s like getting turned down by the community college and finding out you can go to Oxford.

If we’d left and gone to West Orange, we’d be home now. But that wasn’t going to happen; we’re city people through and through. I’ll have to redefine my self-image as a trailblazing Brooklynite, but that’s O.K. My husband says we can think of Inwood as “Manhattan with an asterisk.” And while I love that the forest will be at my doorstep, I love that there’s a deli around the corner (right near the secondhand shop selling leopard-print coats) even more. Because, for me, the only thing harder than finding a home in New York City was the thought of ever living anywhere else.

The company's real-estate division, NRT, bought the Corcoran Group in 2001 for $70 million. It recently combined it with the Sunshine Group, which had been purchased 15 years earlier. The real estate powerhouse also owns Century 21, Coldwell Banker, and ERA.

-Michael Calderone

MediaMob: Before we begin with this week's session, we need to revisit our last edition. I have been rebuked for calling Renee Zellweger a "sow."
TheTransom: Well, your rebuker does have a point... She's not really a sow.
TheTransom: Who rebuked you thusly?
MediaMob: I was rebuked, OK? Let's leave it at that.
TheTransom: Heh. Wife got pissy, eh?
MediaMob: No.
TheTransom: Phew. Do you wish to apologize/
MediaMob: I wish to set the record straight.
MediaMob: When I referred to Renee Zellweger as a "sow," I was talking about the cases where she moonlights as a fashion model.
TheTransom: Ah. You're talking about a context, in which she compares sowly.
MediaMob: It was in the same spirit in which I used to refer to Philadelphia Eagles defensive lineman Mike Mamula, listed at 252 pounds, as a puny little shrimp.
TheTransom: Right, except in the inverse, in this case. Err, obverse?
MediaMob: Right.
TheTransom: Concave, convex. I am high. Stalagmite. Stalactite.
MediaMob: A fashion model is basically an ambulatory clothes hanger--an unnatural human body type--and Ms. Zellweger, being of more natural proportions, is unsuited for the role.
TheTransom: Right.
MediaMob: Women and girls should not desire nor try to be thinner than Renee Zellweger; it is unhealthy.
TheTransom: Wow, some chick really beat you with a copy of "Our Bodies, Our Selves."
MediaMob: There is nothing about Renee Zellweger's figure that disqualifies her from her regular chosen job of being the lead actress in romantic comedy movies, the object of healthy male desire.
MediaMob: No, in that context, the problem is all about her piggy little eyes.
TheTransom: Ugh, I KNOW. She looks like a character from Charlotte's Web.
MediaMob: Not cute.
MediaMob: Anyway, now that we have steered our impressionable female readers away from gender-based body-image disorders--what is Thursday Styles trying to do to men?
MediaMob: Laser beard-line treatment?
TheTransom: My three favorite sentences in the whole section are in Peter Jaret's laser surgery beard story.
MediaMob: "The truth is, most men who sport sexy, two-day growths end up spending more, not less, time in front of the mirror."
MediaMob: Admittedly, the word "sexy" makes the whole subject group sort of hard to define.
TheTransom: Right. Speaking as someone who hasn't shaved in three weeks? Yes.
MediaMob: All too often, I can be seen sporting a two-day growth, which in my case is achieved by not shaving for four to 10 days.
TheTransom: I noticed that in the editorial meeting today. I thought perhaps someone had rubbed a lint trap over your chin. Then I realized you'd hit blonde puberty finally.
TheTransom: But let me say this about this article: "But my beard hair was growing into my chest hair, and I'm really not into that," says one of their posterboy subjects.
TheTransom: The question: how can he manage to articulate all that with a cock in his mouth?
TheTransom: Because this is the *single faggiest thing* I have ever read. And I'm reading a book called "Tearoom Trade" right now.
MediaMob: Ditto, and I've read RuPaul's autobiography.
TheTransom: My other fave sentence: "And believe me, the last thing you want to do is get blood all over a $250 Ermenegildo Zegna shirt."
TheTransom: God, how many times a day do you and I say THAT?
MediaMob: Burn off your beard with a laser . . . or SHAVE BEFORE PUTTING ON YOUR SHIRT?
TheTransom: Hmmm... the modern problems are so tricky!!
MediaMob: I actually would very much like to get blood all over a $250 Ermeneglido Zegna shirt.
TheTransom: Preferably in the store.
MediaMob: It's doesn't specify whose blood or whose shirt.
TheTransom: Quite so.
MediaMob: I also liked the part about how "because the laser is imprecise, the result can be patchy."
MediaMob: The laser is imprecise?
MediaMob: Or does ol' Doc Beard-Burner have the shakes again?
MediaMob: I mean, can I try that in traffic court?
TheTransom: Right, and a patchy result would seem to obviate the whole theory of getting laser surgery to undo patchiness, no?
MediaMob: According to the New York Times, the laser is imprecise, your honor!
MediaMob: And the two guys in the pictures . . .
TheTransom: It's too mean. I can't even talk about them.
TheTransom: I actually sort of admire their bravery.
MediaMob: Let's just say that they give the impression that ALL their manly attributes have been delicately trimmed down with advanced laser technology.
MediaMob: And speaking of people uncomfortable with their natural developmental status . . . spelling bees for Billyburg?
TheTransom: I won't read that story and you can NOT, CAN NOT, MAKE ME.
MediaMob: What's next, FINGER-PAINTING?
TheTransom: Well, the end of adolescence in New York City for the average man is, as we well know, 34.
MediaMob: Or 50, in Brooklyn.
TheTransom: I was in a spelling bee a few years ago. With Jonathan Ames, in fact.
TheTransom: I was illegally disqualified, because my variant spelling was in the OED, and the judge wouldn't admit it.
TheTransom: I'm still mad.
TheTransom: I don't really have a point to this story, except that I'm really out of it today and also I'm not 34 yet.
MediaMob: This is why I live in Queens.
TheTransom: I thought you lived in Queens because you are poor.
MediaMob: Funny how those things all go together.
TheTransom: Choices: Some of them are.
MediaMob: Like the choice for a man to wear $750 pointy-toed shoes.
TheTransom: Is that a choice? I suppose it depends on what kind of gigolo you are.
MediaMob: "Sensible? No. Supercool? Yes."
MediaMob: The New York Times: All the News That's Supercool.
TheTransom: You know, the pointy shoe is "not a shoe that people find by happenstance," which is an excellent point.
TheTransom: It's a shoe you find because you're an absolute retard.
MediaMob: "[T]heir appeal is both tasteless and timeless--and now timely."
TheTransom: Except for all the people that they called who wouldn't sign on to the pro-pointy shoe agenda.
MediaMob: Again, feeble and gutless.
MediaMob: Thank goodness for Alex Kuczynski.
MediaMob: She knows what she is.
MediaMob: And what she is this week is ANGRY AT THE HELP.
TheTransom: Oh, I thoroughly enjoyed Alex K. this week. I'm mad at the help too at Century 21! They're BITCHES down there.
TheTransom: You'd think they worked, I dunno, across the street from a giant temple of death.
MediaMob: Well, now they're gonna be FLOGGED for it.
TheTransom: I'm so on her side this week.
MediaMob: "I have spent the both the best and worst shopping days of the last year at Century 21, the celebrated discount department store at the lip of the basin where the World Trade Center once stood."
TheTransom: Such a tricky, tricky sentence...
MediaMob: You know what was a REALLY bad shopping day at Century 21? FOUR YEARS AGO.
MediaMob: It's a milder terror down there these days, now that Alex has bitched out the operations director at Century 21.
MediaMob: "The store, he said, has instituted a training program to ensure that employees react to customers in a friendly manner. He said that if they can't treat customers with care and courtesy, he would resign from his job..."
MediaMob: It's like Call for Action.
TheTransom: I can't believe she's getting people to offer to QUIT THEIR JOBS. 9/11 didn't do it -- but Alex K. can?
MediaMob: I like the word "basin."
MediaMob: So tasteful and decorative.
TheTransom: It's a sweet word. Reminiscent of birdbaths, and jacuzzi tubs.
MediaMob: And those designer sinks with no place to put the toothbrush.
TheTransom: How I adore those. I wish Thursday Styles would write about that.
MediaMob: Rick Marin might steal it for House & Home.
TheTransom: I started to read that section and realized that I couldn't stretch myself today. Thursdays take emotional self-care.
MediaMob: Reading the beard-burning article pretty much was like reading Rick Marin.
TheTransom: Limp? Limpid?
MediaMob: "Your wife begins to question your sexuality--again."
MediaMob: Whoops. Looks like we've wandered clear out of Thursday Styles.
TheTransom: It has a porous and surprising boundary.
TheTransom: Like many areas in Iraq.
MediaMob: Are we done?
TheTransom: What else can I say? I liked Guy Trebay, actually, though I preferred Rebecca Traister's take in Salon on Kate Moss. And I'd also like to say this:
MediaMob: (It needs a good laser treatment around the edges.) Yes?
TheTransom: If Marc Jacobs wants to go touting his membership in a 12-step program, well, that's really going to be fun for us twats in the press the next time he's found with a needle on his arm and a monkey on his back. Fool.
MediaMob: Also, isn't it Narcotics ANONYMOUS?
TheTransom: Well... yes. But it's hard when, you know, you're drug-addled to keep track of concepts. Easy to round up a marching band for your fashion show though!
MediaMob: "'Do I smell Chanel?' is backstage code for 'Got coke?'"
TheTransom: I have to admit, I've never head of that. But? Everyone knows I'm a huge wet blanket backstage.
MediaMob: I thought it was code for "Who farted?"
TheTransom: Do model farts smell like No. 9?
MediaMob: I think they smell like Popsicles and Ex-Lax.
TheTransom: By the way, we got hate mail last time we did this!
TheTransom: Something like, "You're right, I don't know WHY you put this shit on the internet either!"
TheTransom: As if the internet were 1. Finite, and 2. Not already clogged with shit.

But when the 44-year-old eccentric bounded into City Bakery on West 18th Street on a recent Thursday morning, wearing a fire-truck-red Scottish kilt and a navy-blue wool sweater, his broad, leonine cheekbones streaked with charcoal-hued face paint, he looked more Braveheart than businessman.

That's the way it is when you're defending the family name.

Throughout its 139 years-the firm recently celebrated its anniversary with a party at Fizz, the private members-only club on Madison Avenue recently opened by La Goulue owner John Denoyer-the William B. May name had been paired with the limestone mansions of such families as the Vanderbilts, Carnegies and Fricks. Earlier even, its ancient lineage could be traced back to 17th-century England and the management of the crown's royal property. In more recent times, William B. May assembled land deals for I.B.M.'s Manhattan headquarters.

But on March 30, Mr. May's attorneys filed a copyright-infringement lawsuit in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York in lower Manhattan against Sherman Advertising Associates, a Manhattan-based real-estate advertising agency. The suit is the most recent kink in a bizarre tangle of internecine battles and corporate infighting: No fewer than 10 lawsuits have been filed in both state and federal courts by the dueling parties in the last year. Now those battles threaten to push the 139-year-old company from its perch among Manhattan's most exclusive brokerages.

"William B. May has a wonderful reputation. The firm has always had an impeccable reputation; they're one of the last family-run ones left," said Laurance Kaiser, the president of Key-Ventures Realty, an Upper East Side brokerage focusing on luxury properties and, like the Mays' company, one of the last remaining independents left in Manhattan.

Mr. May had donned the Scottish regalia that morning for a photo shoot at the Ken Browar studio on West 17th Street, a boutique shop known for such fashion clients as Roberto Cavalli and Prada, after shooting spots for a marketing campaign he said will revive his flailing company.

As some customers craned their heads to steal a look at Mr. May's getup, he plunked down at an upstairs table to describe his fight to win back the family company he says was snatched out of the hands of his elderly parents. He spoke in a husky bellow deepened by a two-pack-a-day Marlboro habit. Between sips from a double espresso, he nervously monitored e-mails on his Treo cell phone and raked his hands through his brown mane, already spotted with silver flecks.

"I don't mind a good fight," Mr. May said the next day, recalling a barroom brawl he once got into in his early 20's at an Irish pub on Third Avenue.

"My birthday is on St. Patrick's Day, and one St. Patrick's Day I got all tarted up in my kilts and the whole highland dress. I went into an Irish saloon. I was sober as a judge, and started singing "God Save the Queen" and fought my way out. There were eight guys. I left five of them bloody."

It all started in April of 2004, after Mr. May's brother-in-law, Peter Marra, left the family shop for rival brokerage Brown Harris Stevens, selling his own 12 percent stake in William B. May to Brown Harris' owners, the Zeckendorfs.

After some heavy legal wrangling between Mr. May, his sister's husband and the powerful Zeckendorf clan, all sides laid down arms in June in a deal that had the Zeckendorfs acquiring the Mays' two Brooklyn branches.

But since then, relations with the Zeckendorfs-if not with his brother-in-law-have been repaired.

"I think Billy is a very straight shooter and is an upfront business man," said William Lie Zeckendorf, co-chairman of Terra Holdings. Mr. Zeckendorf said he is considering real-estate deals with Mr. May.

Mr. May said he also patched relations with his brother-in-law and his sister Leslie, which had been left smoldering since June.

"I'm embarrassed about some of the things I said [about Peter and Leslie]," Mr. May said.

Mr. Marra, though, sees things differently.

"I'm happy at Brown Harris," Mr. Marra said by phone when reached for comment. "I really want to put this whole thing behind me, I want nothing to do with Bill May. I have nothing to say about Bill May or the May family."

About two months after the Marra defection, the firm sold its Madison Avenue branch for $375,000 to William B. May C.E.O. Christian Deutsch and his partner Kevin Brown, a Century 21 franchisee. The duo, now Mr. May's rivals, kept both names: A recent spate of real-estate ads in The New York Times, which are part of Mr. May's most recent lawsuit, carried the slogan "Century 21 William B. May." On Nov. 7, Century 21 William B. May ran an ad in The Times with a letter from Century 21 president and C.E.O. Thomas Kunz welcoming the company into its fold.

"It's my great-grandfather's name. It belongs to us," Mr. May said over lunch of lobster and kir in the cavernous dining hall of the Union League Club on April 1. "It's not a question of getting [the name] back, it's a matter of stopping other people from infringing on it. We still have all rights and title to it … and that license doesn't allow anyone to call themselves 'Century 21 William B. May' all in one breath. It says what we intended: You can be 'William B. May Company,' and with our express permission, you can make variations."

On April 8, the feud over the May family name steered toward détente when the May family's attorney, Mark Lebow of Sokolow, Carreras and Associates, distributed settlement documents to all parties involved. Settlement terms were not disclosed, and by press time not all parties had signed the accord. A signed settlement would cease all litigation.

In an e-mail, Paul Aloe, Mr. Brown's attorney, said: "As these matters are currently in litigation, our response to all of the allegations are in papers that are on file with the court. It is neither appropriate nor productive at this time for the parties to adjudicate these matters in the press. We are extremely confident in the correctness and merit of our position and in a favorable outcome."

Mr. May faces an uphill fight. High-grossing brokers such as Roger Erickson have decamped for rival agencies since the legal machinations began last July, and without their Madison Avenue flagship and the lucrative Brooklyn business that Brown Harris Stevens snapped up, the firm's major revenue streams have been choked off. Or, as David Burris, the co-chairman of Terra Holdings, the parent company of Brown Harris Stevens, said: "What's left of William B. May? William B. May will be whatever Bill May makes it. They managed to break up the firm. It basically needs to be built up from ground zero."

"I don't really want their money. I just want them to get the fuck off my island. It's my island," Mr. May said on a recent Friday evening. Such boasting could be brushed aside as brazen posturing, but for Mr. May, tact and nuance rarely inflect his oratory. He was gathered with several brokers from his firm's Beekman office at the Brazilian restaurant Circus on East 61st Street, where he dines several times a week. Mr. May, who goes by "Billy," wore a black leather jacket, trousers held up by suspenders and worn loafers. Perched at the bar, Mr. May clutched a glass of Portuguese red wine in one hand and a deep mug of espresso in the other. He took vigorous sips off both drinks in quick succession.

Mr. May eschews the management tactics championed by the corporate sages at Harvard Business School and instead mines the annals of military history for his business strategy.

"I feel like J.E.B. Stewart at the high-water mark of the confederacy, when J.E.B. Stewart took his cavalry and circled all the way around the Union Army," Mr. May said.

In business negotiations, he has been known to blast off fiery e-mails known as "Billygrams."

He lives in an East Side apartment just north of the U.N. headquarters with views overlooking the East River. In 1992, Mr. May said he reset his body clock to Greenwich Mean Time, which allows him to be more productive.

"I need four hours of sleep a night," he said. On a recent night, he recalled that he slept from 7 p.m. until 4 a.m., and then met brokers from his firm who were out dancing at Crobar. He stayed at the Chelsea club until 8 in the morning.

"Everyone was drunk, it was hilarious. I just had two Red Bulls and danced," he said.

Five days a week, Mr. May rises at dawn to lift weights with his personal trainer Ahmed, who he said once served in the Egyptian Special Forces.

"I do endurance stuff, mainly. I'm trying to get rid of the fuel tank to my love machine," he said, tapping the bulbous paunch that peeked just over his waistline.

When he's not at Circus, he prefers to dine at La Goulue or Russian Samovar with his fiancée, Inna Galerkina, a 29-year-old Russian-born hedge-fund manager with sharp blond hair, who on a recent evening wore a Chanel blazer and Bulgari pearls. The two met last year when Mr. May gave her real-estate advice at the request of a friend.

"It's time," he said. "I've been wolfing around this city for a long time. I proposed a while ago, and I gave her a token ring that she doesn't like. So I'm getting her a bling. It's a diamond sapphire ruby. The Russian colors. I thought it was kind of appropriate. It's a little East-bloc rock, but it's bling."

He said the ring cost "a mortgage."

Mr. May grew up in Ardsley-on-Hudson, 20 miles north of Manhattan. The family also spent time at a beach house on Fishers Island. He attended the prestigious St. George's School in Newport, R.I., and worked for his family's real-estate business.

"I worked in the company's property-management department out of 3 West 57th Street. It was funny because then, Donald Trump had just gotten started. And we were at 3 West 57th Street on the third floor, and he was across the street in the Crown Building on the third floor, and I used to watch him pacing in his office like a manic crazy person in those goddamn red suits he used to wear in the 1970's. It was ridiculous."

He also found time for carousing around the city.

"In 1976, I was dating a selling agent in the Liberty Tower building," Mr. May said. "She was great, she was hot. She was six or eight years older than I was. It was like a match made in heaven. She knew all the doormen at all the stupid clubs that were going on. But we always ended up at Studio [54]. I loved Studio," he said.

After high school, Mr. May studied economics at Duke University, where he dropped out after two and half years for what he said was his refusal to take a course he believed was "too politically correct." According to university records, Mr. May voluntarily withdrew in October 1982.

At Duke, Mr. May was a member of the Beta Theta Pi fraternity, played rugby and co-founded the school's polo club with 40 ponies he said his cousin won in a craps game in South America. Mr. May said he made his first foray into real estate at 17 when he bought a house in Durham, N.C., for $23,000 with "grass-cutting money and a loan from the bank." He sold it three years later for $160,000, he said.

"I had to get a note from home," he said. "I rented it to frat brothers, and they trashed it. That was fine; I kept repairing it. They paid a huge rent. My mortgage was $236 a month, and each bedroom was rented for $200 a month to fraternity brothers with their parents guaranteeing the rent, so who cares? It paid for my Duke education, by the way."

After Mr. May left Duke, he returned to New York in the early 1980's and worked in William B. May's brokerage business while managing some of his own buildings. To hear him tell it, his earthiness has been a boon to him at work. Mr. May said a disgruntled tenant in Washington Heights stabbed him in the abdomen when he showed up to collect rent one morning.

"Most of the tenants uptown were sleepy in the morning, so you kind of had the drop on them. This one opened the door, saw who I was, and went, ' Shhheet,'" he said, pointing to the spot where the knife punctured his stomach. Mr. May said he stitched up the wound himself.

Another time, Mr. May said, he walked into a drug deal gone bad during a building inspection in Harlem and took a bullet ricochet to the chest.

"The bullet went in sideways into the breast plate," he said thumping his chest. "I went to my doctor's house in Westchester. I jumped in a cab and went there."

In 1987, Mr. May abruptly quit the family business after a disagreement erupted over a deal to buy 10 townhouses on the West Side.

Mr. May landed in New Orleans and managed property for Brignac-Derbes, a Louisiana real-estate firm. While he was there, Mr. May said he worked as a volunteer cop, patrolling housing projects at night. A few years later, Mr. May returned to New York and said he developed some eight buildings in Brooklyn over the course of 18 months. Throughout the 1990's, he bounced around, wheeling and dealing. In East Texas, he said he bailed out the Indo-American Refining company; back in New York, he advised a bankrupt bicycle company that he declined to name. More recently, he said he has been developing loft buildings in the Wilmington, Del., area.

Mr. May said Sept. 11 changed his life. As he tells it, he took off from Delaware in his private plane en route to Newport, R.I. When the first airliner struck the north tower, Mr. May said he was some 10,000 feet above New York Harbor and witnessed the entire disaster unfold.

"I was on the radio to McGuire Air Force base in 20 seconds saying there had been a terrorist attack," Mr. May recalled on a recent afternoon walking across Lexington Avenue. "And I tried to get vectors to run chicken on the second airliner, because I figured, two buildings, two airliners-like that!"

Mr. May said he kept his plane aloft following the attack, rather than heed the grounding order issued by the F.A.A. In the ensuing months, he said he wrote a scathing 400-page report critical of airport security, and became the target of the F.B.I. He said at the time he suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder.

"I relive that day most nights each week in my dreams. I still wake up sweating," he wrote in an e-mail message.

In a bizarre twist of events, he turned himself in to authorities in Delaware in December 2001. According to reports in the Associated Press and the Philadelphia Inquirer, the F.B.I. and police arrested Mr. May for allegedly leaving six fake bombs at the New Castle County Airport. According to a report in the News Journal, Mr. May planted phony explosives at the airport that included an empty can with a clock and a note left under an aircraft, a pocket watch taped to a shotgun shell stashed under a staircase, and an ornament placed on a closet light switch.

Mr. May said the ground crew had fueled his plane with the wrong fuel, which severely damaged his aircraft. In response, he became angry and planted the faux bombs to prove how lax airport security was. He described his actions at the time as "strange."

"I was trying to make a point and did it the wrong way," he said.

Between trial and sentencing, he served 31 days in solitary confinement and said he read Moby-Dick seven times.

Mr. May received a felony conviction and four years probation for the incident. He is barred from flying during his probation and banned from airports without approval from his probation officer. Mr. May's attorney at the time, Penelope Marshall, said in reports that Mr. May was not medicated for his bipolar disorder. In federal affidavits, Mr. May's sister, Leslie May Marra, said her brother was treated for bipolar disorder in 1984 and suffered from manic depression, and in the months before the incident Mr. May had tried to commit suicide.

He's "not a kook," Jeanne May, his mother, told reporters at the time. Today Mr. May denies his sister's account.

"When you're in jail, you have no voice," he said.

Over dinner at Circus, Mr. May ordered a salad tropical and spoke about his two principal adversaries, Mr. Deutsch and Mr. Brown of Century 21, the real-estate franchise network controlled by the $21 billion Cendant holding company that has gobbled up real-estate brands including the Corcoran Group, Sotheby's International Realty and Coldwell Banker, with more than 280,000 brokers worldwide.

Just how Mr. May's relations with Mr. Deutsch, William B. May's former C.E.O., and his partner Mr. Brown devolved remains a mystery spiked with bitter acrimony and personal attacks. Both sides, in dueling lawsuits and court documents, offer vastly differing accounts of the financial transaction that had Messrs. Deutsch and Brown purchasing the assets of the May family's office at 575 Madison Avenue to operate it under the Century 21 moniker. Mr. May alleges that Mr. Deutsch-who joined the family's firm in 1993-misrepresented his stake in the new Century 21 venture; that he altered financial statements to misstate the family's financial health by seven figures to pressure the Mays into selling and exact a more favorable deal for himself; and extracted funds from the company without approval. Mr. May's father, Bruce May, said in one instance he was pressured to sign a deal on the hood of his car outside a restaurant in Maryland at night. Mr. May is also suing Mr. Deutsch, his wife Alexandra and William B. May's former comptroller Linda Bower, seeking $15 million in damages and $25 million in punitive damages.

In October, Brown Harris Stevens Brooklyn, the brokerage controlled by the powerful Zeckendorf family, filed a lawsuit in New York Supreme Court alleging that Mr. Deutsch refused to release commission checks totaling some $650,000 from the Park Slope and Brooklyn Heights offices of William B. May that the Zeckendorfs had purchased following Mr. Marra's decampment, along with another $177,000 that disappeared from company coffers. Mr. May said he has spent some $40,000 on a private investigator to prove his case, as well as $40,000 more on forensic accounting to verify his firm's finances.

In response, Mr. Deutsch said in court documents that the May family was clearly aware the entire time of the deal's structure and his and Mr. Brown's plan to operate the 575 Madison Avenue office as a Century 21 franchise with the name William B. May attached. In no way were they in violation of the license, Mr. Deutsch said.

Mr. Brown summed up his view of the Mays' actions in a court statement: "They are in effect asking the court to unscramble an egg that they themselves scrambled."

Mr. Brown declined to comment on the record about the case.

In another court statement, Mr. Brown said that on July 26, Mr. May and his father, accompanied by several people, entered the 575 Madison Avenue office proclaiming it their own, and refused to leave. The police were summoned to the premises and the Mays eventually left. Mr. Brown also said that Mr. May had boasted to him that he had "planted" a previously reported article in The Observer last June.

Mr. May denied having boasted about his statements to The Observer, and said he wanted to sit for an interview after he saw an article in the New York Post that first broke Mr. Marra's jump to Brown Harris Stevens.

"I will just litigate forever, and keep them so mired in muck for doing what they did, they won't be able to do any business, they'll be so busy dealing with me," Mr. May said.

As he seeks to unwind the web of legal entanglements that has ensnared his company over the past year, Mr. May continues to operate three New York offices with branches in Beekman, Tribeca and Greenwich Village, and a fourth branch in Westchester in Irvington, N.Y. He said he's pursuing expansions into New Jersey and London. As a privately held company, financial records are not available, but Mr. May said business is reviving-and the company profitable. In the next 12 months, he expects to turn $15 million in commissions. He is renovating a new headquarters on the fifth floor at 135 East 55th Street, and plans to open the space in May.

Whether that's enough to get his family business back on its feet remains to be seen. Mr. May, who says he has already spent $1 million of his own money to stanch the attacks on his family's business, said he will not surrender until his family wins its name back.

"I'm like a one-man pack of wild dogs when I get angry," he said.

The next day found her son, William May, a director and fourth-generation member of the 138-year-old family brokerage, sitting with William Lie Zeckendorf, co-chairman of Terra Holdings, at the Chestertown Yacht Club on the Chesapeake Bay. They were there to broker a settlement deal to put his family's company back together after Mr. May's brother-in-law, Mr. Marra, left the firm in April to join rival Brown Harris Stevens, owned by the Zeckendorfs. His exit brought the two companies close to dueling lawsuits.

Now, the May and Zeckendorf families say they reached a preliminary settlement on June 21. But the family battle continues. The past seven weeks have laid bare a raw and often vicious struggle for the future of the Upper East Side's real-estate éminence grise . Mr. Marra and the May family, whose longstanding independent company has sold some of Manhattan's finest homes along the limestone corridors on the Upper East Side to pedigreed families including the Carnegies, Fricks and Vanderbilts, stood recently on the brink of an extinction of sorts. A single, if significant, defection might have pulled the company up even from its ancient roots, dating back to 17th-century England, when the family sold prized London properties to the Crown estate.

Mr. Marra, the former president of William B. May who is married to Mr. May's sister, Leslie May Marra, ignited the feud between the two family-run real-estate empires when he sold his 12 percent stake in the May's company to Terra Holdings and brought 22 agents with him to his new employer. Under the terms of the deal, Mr. Marra was named an executive vice president at Brown Harris Stevens and now runs the firm's new office at 1121 Madison Avenue.

According to the May family and Mr. Marra, all communication between the two parties has been severed. The Mays say they have cut Mr. Marra and his wife out of their inheritance from the family business, with skipping trusts set up for their two children.

It has been a cautionary tale in the high-stakes, and ultra-competitive, game of the Manhattan real-estate market, which in the past three years has been reshaped by a furious spate of corporate consolidations. The few remaining independent brokerages, without the deep balance sheets of the vast holding companies that now finance Manhattan's largest brokerages, including the Corcoran Group and Douglas Elliman, have been nervously watching while larger firms circle the sharky waters of the real-estate market looking to expand their ever-growing empires. Industry experts say it was this competitive climate that has pushed independent firms into the arms of flush investors and caused the May family business to spin out of control.

But the parties in the May family feud paint vastly different pictures of just how the company unraveled.

It was on April 29, when an article first appeared in the New York Post , that Mr. May, 43, said he first learned the news that his brother-in-law had sold his shares, totaling approximately 12 percent of the company, to Terra Holdings, New York's largest real-estate concern, which owns both Brown Harris Stevens and Halstead Property L.L.C., with more than $3.1 billion in closed sales posted in 2002.

"He should have called my father first, rather than let my father learn about this in the bloody newspapers. There was not a peep. That's the biggest surprise of all," said Mr. May, a real-estate developer based in Wilmington, Del., who is building the state's tallest tower, speaking to The Observer . "No one bothered to call-they just went ahead and did this."

The rift in the family launched a battle for control in the privately held company that has been selling New York real-estate since 1866, and which Mr. May says is profitable, debt-free and posted, in 2003, $25 million in commissions. On April 29, when news of Mr. Marra's decampment broke, the May family was within hours of finalizing an 18-month-long restructuring deal with the Century 21 division of Cendant-the world's largest real-estate brokerage franchiser, with more than 13,000 offices and 265,000 sales associates nationwide-that would have expanded the company's reach into new markets on the East Coast and secured its position in New York. Mr. May said the family had offered Mr. Marra a premium for his shares in the proposed deal, which were valued at approximately $2.5 million, according to sources familiar with the proceedings, and he would have been duly compensated under any investment from Century 21. Mr. May also said Mr. Marra's decamping to Brown Harris Stevens violated two shareholder agreements he'd signed back in 1985.

"Peter breached his fiduciary duties to our company. He doesn't understand corporate law: By going there as an officer of Brown Harris Stevens, he is acting against the interest of the [William B. May] corporation," Mr. May said. "We're trying to work this out without destroying Peter Marra. If we destroy him, he won't be able to support my sister."

Mr. May said that following his brother-in-law's departure, Mr. Marra attempted to recruit additional William B. May brokers to join him at rival Brown Harris Stevens.

Mr. Marra offers a very different portrait of what drove him to abandon the family business for a rival. He said he made no efforts to bring William B. May brokers with him.

"I learned the May family was selling their shares to Century 21, and I couldn't go along with what they proposed," said Mr. Marra, who first joined William B. May in 1983. "I felt like I was in a precarious position, being a minority shareholder. My family had sold the company without telling me, and I was in a no-win position. My shares were devalued; my future in this business seemed bleak at Century 21. So I decided to look at my other options, and I spoke to Terra Holdings, and they were extraordinarily receptive, professional and welcoming. I saw my future at Brown Harris Stevens was bright, and I had to look out for my own family."

The two parties also disagree over the timing of the deal. Mr. May said he has evidence that Mr. Marra had been in talks with the Zeckendorf family at Terra Holdings months before the announcement in April of his departure, while Mr. Marra said he initiated the deal in four days in April after he learned the Mays had agreed to partner with Century 21. The May family has enlisted the legal council of attorney David Scharf of Morrison, Cohen, Singer & Weinstein to block any further attempt by Terra Holdings to acquire William B. May's operations, which encompass more than 200 brokers spread across seven New York offices. Roberta Benzilio, an executive at the company, has been appointed interim president.

"We have made an equity investment in the William B. May company, and we have a good working relationship with the May family. We have come to an agreement to separate our interests into stand-alone investments," Terra Holdings' co-chairman David Burris said in a statement.

"It took seven weeks of sorting through this flesh, metal and glass of the car wreck Peter created," said Mr. May. "But we don't hold particular animosity to the Zeckendorfs. They've done something that wasn't elegant, and they're trying to make amends. We'll try and work this out."

Still, while the two companies have brokered a rapprochement , the steely truce between William B. May and Terra Holdings shows the increasing pressure that independent brokerage firms now feel in Manhattan's luxury real-estate market, once the domain of society brokers who traded listings over wine at Madison Avenue boîtes, which has now been pried open to the harsh competitiveness and efficiency promoted by national brands.

"I just think the middle market is a tough place to be. We get approached all the time. It's very hard when you're a mid-sized firm to attract talent. You've got to grow internally. I can speak from experience-it's a really hard thing to do," said Jed Garfield, of the boutique townhouse specialist Leslie J. Garfield.

"Part of what happened at William B. May can be seen as freeing someone from a family business," said Paul Purcell, the former president of Douglas Elliman who is now the chief executive of Braddock and Purcell, a New York real-estate consulting firm. "The opportunity is selling these firms and doing something bigger. Can you do something in a market and get traction in a firm their size?"

Other members of the industry saw the upheaval at William B. May resulting from the internal struggle among members of the May family.

"This is a consolidation that didn't work out. When we bought Douglas Elliman, we didn't lose anyone. The partners in William B. May weren't necessarily on the same page. When you buy a company, it's very important to look at the culture and the relations among the partners," said Dottie Herman, the chief executive of Douglas Elliman.

"My opinion is, basically, Terra had the opportunity to take advantage of an internal conflict between Peter [Marra] and the owners of William B. May," said Frederick Peters, the president of Warburg Realty Partnership, a mid-sized company with 85 brokers.

For the remaining family-run real-estate firms, including old-line boutiques such as Alice F. Mason and Edward L. Cave, the consolidation pressures that perhaps led to the conflagration within the May company show no signs of abating.

In businesses such as real estate, where a family's hopes and dreams rise on the trade of opulent mansions, battles over money, power and control strike a deep chord.

"My family is important to me; what is unfortunate is that it didn't have to end up this way. Communication was very lacking," Mr. Marra said. "I went to [Terra] after I felt there was no future for me at William B. May. It was a very sad day in my life."

And as Mr. May moves the family business forward following the rupture with his sister and brother-in-law, preparing to open two new offices this year, he sees a future where his family's nearly two-decades-old company can operate in a successful niche during an era when corporate largesse continues to transform the New York real-estate market.

"You can be independent, debt-free and smaller, and watch the big companies beat the hell out of each other. And that's what we're going to do," he said. "This unfortunate event was only a punch in the nose and not a shot to the forehead. It was a bruise, but it wasn't mortal. For a firm that's been in business for 140 years, this will be a footnote to a footnote."

call from his old roommate, Chris Weitz, co-director of American Pie . A decade ago, the two men, then in their early 20's,

had lived in the Police Building on

Centre Street.

"I'm working on a pilot for DreamWorks," Mr. Weitz said, "kind of

loosely based on our time together."

"What's the character called?" Mr. Rellie asked.

"Umm …. " Mr. Weitz said. " Euan ?"

"Really?" Mr. Rellie said.

"What does he do?"

Replied Mr. Weitz: "He's a

British banker."

And now, Sundays at 9 p.m. on Channel 11, you can see the

adventures of Euan and Chris (renamed "Mike" in the show) in Off Centre , a WB network sitcom

co–executive produced by Mr. Weitz and his brother, Paul. The premise: randy, good-looking Brit and uptight American pal

share posh pad in a celebrity-filled Manhattan building called the Hadley on

Centre. The show has a distinctly late-90's feel-wild parties, wild women,

wildly bad sex jokes. For example:

EUAN:

You're being very G.O.P. about this, Mike. In European cultures, love triangles

are an accepted part of life.

MIKE:

So is gonorrhea. [Laughter.]

Mr. Rellie-despite having his TV self described by TV Guide as "the season's most obnoxious

new character," and in one episode as having "the sexual morals of a ferret in

heat"-is thrilled about his

pop-culture immortalization. "When the show was first commissioned, he e-mailed

everyone in his Palm Pilot," said the author Toby Young, who lived with Mr.

Rellie in the West Village in the late 1990's. Mr. Rellie's fiancée, Lucy

Sykes, the style director of Marie Claire ,

said: "He'll tell anyone who'll listen, 'Well, have you heard that Chris-Chris Weitz -has written a TV program all about

me ?' I'm bored as hell . At least

you'll listen. I can't anymore. You've made his year. His century. His life."

Why Euan? Friends of Mr. Rellie-a founding partner of Business

Development Asia, a mergers-and-acquisitions boutique -alternately describe the

blue-eyed, spiky-haired Eton and Cambridge grad as having "an insatiable

appetite for life," being  "charmingly

opportunistic" and "a complete cad." In other words: perfect for TV. "He's

pathologically gregarious and totally fearless in any social situation," said

Mr. Young, who further exposes Mr. Rellie in his book, How to Lose Friends and Alienate People . "However famous an actress

or beautiful a supermodel, he'll ask them out to dinner. He's incredibly flirtatious. My cousin sat

next to him at a dinner once, and she said it was like sitting next to an

octopus on crack."

"The guy who plays him [in Off

Centre ] is not as subtle in his charm," said Susan Welsh, a senior editor

at W magazine and longtime friend.

But, Ms. Welsh acknowledged, TV Euan's "tactics are pretty much by the

book-like Euan finds himself having dates with three women at the same time,

but he convinces them to sleep with each other and it all works out.

"The classic sad part," Ms. Welsh said, laughing, "is the reviews

say he's an obnoxious character, but I think he's actually very similar in real

life."

Over lunch at the Great American Health Bar, a health-food diner

near his West 57th Street office, Mr. Rellie tried to play down his recent

Kramerization.

"So as not to sound

self-indulgent, I only watched the first episode," Mr. Rellie said. "It's not

very British to stay in every Sunday to watch a show loosely based on you." ("I

helped him to be more self-deprecating with you," Ms. Sykes said the following

morning. "It doesn't last long. He goes right back to it the next day," she

said, sighing.)

What did he think of Off Centre ? "I found the pilot funny," he said, alternating between sips of a

strawberry smoothie and carrot juice. But "I'm not surprised the reviews have

been patchy-I mean lousy. And the actor is much

better-looking than me."

Still, Mr. Rellie admitted that he could recognize himself in

some of the show, but found TV Euan's exploits (getting crabs, dating

prostitutes, juggling women) to be " wild ly

exaggerated."

"I may have affected the air of a rakish playboy, but it's only

an air," he said. "I'm a nice, well-mannered young man."

-Christine Muhlke

THE LOST CLOTHES OF SEPT. 11

Marden's Surplus & Salvage is an unassuming discount

establishment nestled in a strip mall between an Ames department store and the

Great Wall Chinese Restaurant on the outskirts of Portland, Me. On the Saturday

after Thanksgiving, the store was busy and dressed for the holidays, with

99-cent tinsel displays and a crowd of baseball-capped lobstermen checking out

long-sleeved, tie-dyed N.H.L. shirts. 

Elsewhere, a noisy group of shoppers buzzed around a recently

arrived shipment of fine suits and assorted men's wear. Spread over a dozen

racks, these clothes had impressive (and authentic) labels: Armani, Gucci,

Hickey-Freeman, Brioni, Zegna, Donna Karan, Hugo Boss. Most of them had

originally been priced at well over $1,000 and reduced by half at another

discount store. By the time they'd hit Marden's, they were selling for around

$300-a steal, even in Maine.

But there was, one might say, a slight catch. As a friend reached

for a blue three-button Kenneth Cole suit, he noticed that the suit and the

smooth plastic hanger on which it hung were covered with a fine white dust.

Strange, we thought. A few minutes later, he noticed the same thing when he

grabbed a suede Ruffo jacket. Curious, he inspected the tag-and under a slash

of iridescent permanent ink, we spied a barely visible logo, printed in that

trademark swirly script every good New York City shopper knows by heart:

Century 21.

Century 21, of course, is the glorious Manhattan

discount-clothing chain whose flagship store is located just across Church

Street from the World Trade Center site. Though it's still standing and plans

to reopen soon, the store suffered damage during the Sept. 11 terrorist attack

and has been shuttered in the interim.

To this Century 21 loyalist's eye, the merchandise at Marden's

looked to be from Century 21's main floor and balcony, where many high-end

men's suits were located. Though the suits appeared in fine shape-nothing a

good dry cleaning couldn't solve-the dust and inked-out tags gave them a rather

haunted, mournful look. These clothes, needless to say, had been through a lot .

Of course, this feeling was pretty much lost on Marden's

customers that day, since there was no indication whence the dressy mother lode

had come. An ad in The Portland Press

Herald on Nov. 16 had touted the suits as a "Portland Exclusive!" "Just

arrived!" read the copy. "Over $1,500,000.00 worth of men's famous name

designer suits, dress shirts, ties & coats." Then, in big red letters:

"From one of the biggest salvage

deals ever!"

It certainly was some sale. Careful inspection showed that a

Brioni three-piece lightweight tweed originally priced at $2,800 had been

marked down at Century 21 to $1,499. Marden's was selling it for $750. That

blue three-button Kenneth Cole wool suit, originally priced at $1,100, was

selling for $200. And the Ruffo suede jacket, originally $1,700, was $250.

Still, employees of Marden's were tight-lipped about the source

of the price-slashed suit deluge. Portland, of course, was a pre–Sept. 11 pit

stop for some of the terrorists. (The local Wal-Mart was Mohammed Atta's

notorious last stop, and he dined at a Pizzeria Uno not far away.) Given the

heightened sensitivities locally, it was understandable that the store might

not want to give precise details about the origin of the designer threads.

"We're really not supposed to say anything about that," a blond

salesclerk told me when I asked her where the clothes came from.

Why not? I asked.

"Because it might hurt people's feelings."

Later, on the telephone, a woman named Claudia-the manager of

Marden's clothing division, who declined to give her last name -wasn't much

help, either. "I can't give out any information," she said. Instead, she

directed the call to the Marden brothers themselves.

John Marden, who owns and runs Marden's with his siblings Harold

Jr. (Ham), David and Nancy, and their father Harold (Mickey), could not confirm

where the suit collection had originated.

"Contractually, we can't say either way," he said, adding that

companies like his could get blacklisted by retailers and insurance companies

for revealing the source of their merchandise.

Still, Mr. Marden did say that when a store goes out of business

or has its inventory damaged, a third party-called a "salvor"-takes over and

brings the merchandise to stores like Marden's. Calling his company "one of the

top two or three salvage houses in the country," Mr. Marden added: "We're

almost like buzzards."

A telephone recording at the Century 21 corporate office in

Secaucus, N.J., informed callers that the store's Manhattan location was

temporarily closed, but that the Brooklyn and Long Island stores were still

operational (the company also has an outlet store in Secaucus). A spokesperson

for the company said that Century 21 had not redistributed from the Cortlandt

Street location to its other stores.

"We're not reselling the merchandise," the spokesperson said.

"It's not in the Brooklyn or Long Island or Secaucus locations."

Raymond Gindi, Century 21's chief operating officer, said that

the department store's insurance company, which he declined to name, assumed

responsibility for the clothing in the Cortlandt Street store. He said he

didn't know where it all wound up.

"I don't want people to think I'm selling the clothes in Maine,"

Mr. Gindi said. "Century 21 has nothing to do with it anymore. It's all gone."

-Rebecca Traister

Shoppers at the Century 21 on Cortlandt Street have always faced a grave problem: too many customers and too few dressing rooms. For women, the wait for one of the store's 22 quasi-private changing stalls can last up to 10 minutes. For men, the situation is even worse–there are no dressing rooms at all.

But Century 21 shoppers are nothing if not ingenious, and some have found an alternative place to try on their potential purchases–the two restrooms at Starbucks Coffee across the street. Unlike the Century 21 dressing stalls, the restrooms at Starbucks are spacious, clean and have doors.

"People just walk through, go straight to the bathroom, change and go home," said Duckee Adule, a Starbucks cashier. "And they leave a mess." Mr. Adule said he has found pins, wrapping paper and even shoe boxes in the restroom.

Cristina Medellin, Mr. Adule's co-worker, said she frequently sees price tags strewn around the bathroom floor. "Some people will just order a water so they can use the facilities," Ms. Medellin said.

Sure enough, during a visit to the lady's bathroom recently, The Observer found a Vivienne Tam tag on the floor and a Century 21 shopping bag stuffed into the wastebasket.

Twenty-eight-year-old Lisa Degliantoni had no time for the lines at Century 21 recently. She snatched a $16 knitted GoGo Wear number off the rack and walked across the street to Starbucks, went into the bathroom and tried it on. Ms. Degliantoni thought it cheaply made, so she returned it–Century 21 has a 30-day return policy–and she still had time to make her movie date. "There's even this black cubey thing in there that holds a shopping bag just right," Ms. Degliantoni said.

Krissy Loftus, a stylist in her 30's, said she uses the Starbucks changing room to get a quick hit of shopping without paying for it.

"When I feel the pressure of spending too much money, I'll go straight into Starbucks, try something on and then return it," Ms. Loftus said.

Then there's Lydia, an 18-year-old student, who was standing at the Starbucks milk and sugar stand. She was wearing a black cardigan, green jeans, a studded belt and flip-flops. Lydia had just tried on some Century 21 underwear in the Starbucks ladies room. She's been to other Starbucks locations to try on clothes from other stores, but this was her first time at this Starbucks.

"I was in the underwear department, and they said there was a 30-day policy on returns, and I said, 'No way am I schlepping back here,'" Lydia said. The lines for the dressing rooms were too long, so Lydia went to Starbucks. "They don't mind if you come in, as long as you buy something," she said.

–Maccabee Montandon

Back to Soup

Hale and Hearty, you've got the best of me again. Just call me Weak and Submissive.

You were the only sensible lunch place in the neighborhood. I remember when I first discovered your white bean and spinach soup, seven-grain (or sourdough) bread on the side for $3.50 plus tax. Every day I would stand on line with the rest of my fellow professionals, patiently enduring the brushed-steel appliances and boppy Ella Fitzgerald soundtrack so that I might bring my cheap, nourishing lunch back to the office in a little sack.

After a time, my loyal patronage was rewarded with the frequent-soup-buyer rewards program, or as you so cleverly put it, the "Bean Counter." It was more exciting than the buy-10-get-one-free MetroCard! Every time I paid, I'd get a punch-hole in the shape of a tureen (or was it a kidney bean?), a satisfying progression of holes leading toward that happy day when I would get a free soup. It felt good. Like getting a star from the teacher. I loyally ignored all those stories in The New York Times about how soup was, like, so over.

Then one day, a piece of spinach stuck in my teeth, and I realized that I hated you. It occurred to me that there was something … well, sweaty about soup. I began to think of all the cute outfits I could buy with my $75.80 monthly lunch allotment. I started tucking a peanut butter and jelly sandwich into my purse every morning. When people said, "Hey, wanna go to Hale and Hearty?" I'd say "No, thanks."

You diversified into salad, but I stood firm. How I sneered at others' $8 mesclun concoctions (rewarded by the Green Card); their wax-paper refuse; the pathetic scraping sound their plastic spoons made on the bottom of their cups as they chased down that last piece of pastini.

Recently, however, the temperature sank below 60 and a chill wind arrived from the north. Suddenly, soup–like bobbed hair and Gore Vidal–seemed new again. The door swung open, and Hale and Hearty's brawny arms urged me in. I let them.

–Alexandra Jacobs

We Need a War

These days, everyone's so well-fed and content it makes you wonder if the county isn't getting a tad soft. Like what we need is some toughening up. No, kids, not boxing classes at Equinox. I'm talking about the sort of toughness that only a conventional-weapons conflict, fought on the ground by opposing nations, can instill. You know, a war!

Everyone sure seemed satisfied in Bryant Park, lounging on white fold-up chairs in the sunlight one recent afternoon during Fashion Week. Joe Roby, a preppy-looking 24-year-old advertising salesman, was eating a sandwich and girl-watching.

"Every other generation has had its war, their conflict of some sort. Where's ours?" Mr. Roby said. "I want it!"

Pieter Van Hattem, a 26-year-old photographer, was lying down in the sun. "War is fucked," he said. "But there would be positive things. The economy gets going on and nationalism, patriotism, blah, blah, blah. I'm against war, but there are positive things that happen."

Do you ever think about combat?

"Oh yeah! I would be so fucked. I was watching Saving Private Ryan and I almost had to leave. There is no way, no way I could get out of that. I would be freaking out. I'm a pretty big pacifist."

Doug Clark, a 27-year-old banker, was smoking a fat cigar. His hair was shinny with hair goop. "I wouldn't doubt it if, within this country, there was a race war," Mr. Clark said. "One spark that comes to my mind is, say we have an African-American who's running for President. Very popular and somehow doesn't make it into the White House. Could spark a lot of unrest. Or he makes it and gets assassinated by some psycho white guy."

Mr. Clark, who is white but has friends of varying ethnicities, said that a race war would be especially tough on him. "I don't know if I would have to stay with the white side or the black side," he said. "It would suck all the way around."

Two reporters from Technology Investor Magazine , Michael Stevenson, 28, and Lenny Grant, 26, were eating food from McDonald's. Mr. Grant wore blue sunglasses and a tongue ring.

"Nobody needs to die so we can say that we, the people that were born in the 70's, actually did something with our lives," Mr. Grant said. "But we have no patriotism. If there were a war tomorrow and the draft was enacted, I would be the first person in Kuala Lumpur. I would be gone. I was actually in the Air Force Academy and I resigned. Wound up hitchhiking away from the place. It just scared me, the entire mentality. You're sitting in a lecture hall watching the commandant of the academy flip through slides and showing, like, 'This is a loser,' and it's a guy behind a Harley, like the double-bicep thing with like a Bud can, 'and this is a winner,' and it's a cadet in a uniform on the field, saluting."

One big problem, both guys agreed, is the lack of a worthy enemy.

"It would have to be that every other country in the world gangs up against us," Mr. Stevenson said.

"Or if there's things in space, if they all decide to get together and invade, that might do it," Mr. Grant said.

Carolina Herrera Jr., a filmmaker and daughter of the fashion designer, was sitting by a big white tent in the middle of the park.

"I'm not a big believer in war," she said. "I'm not very politically conscious; I'm not very conscious in that way. I'm conscious that I'm not conscious. I did think about war a lot yesterday because I saw, for the first time, Braveheart . I was thinking, 'That's a war!'"

–George Gurley