They were coming up Broadway, the advance scouts of the undefeated New York army. There were three of them, each a woman in her 50s, each wearing that wonderful native face that says: Don't mess with me, buster.

Such women had not come to lower Broadway for a long, mournful wait to pick up tickets for a view of the World Trade Center site. They seemed to know that eventually, all mourning must end. Life, as the cliché goes, must go on. And there they were under a gray sky, undefeated and unbowed, the morning's mission already accomplished. Each was carrying one of those shopping bags we hadn't seen since the first 10 days of last September.

The red and white plastic shopping bags of Century 21.

"Just go straight ahead," one of them said. "Past the viewing stand and that big mob there. Go in the side door on Dey St. It's easier."

On we moved past the bright, newly refurbished Staples store and the spontaneous sculpture of knapsacks, posters, flowers, dolls and messages that still composes that fence of St. Paul's Chapel; past the viewing stand and into Dey St. Once, in another century, we waited in this street as the triumphant New York Yankees moved up to City Hall to be acclaimed as heroes. In that innocent October, we didn't know yet that true heroes would surrender their lives in this precinct.

Then, to the right, we saw the signs for Century 21. White and red: the company's colors. With people moving through the doors, and the metal detectors, and the joyful signs that said "Now Hiring."

I was looking for a hat. Not a baseball cap or a watch cap. A real hat. With a brim. Or one of those Pat Moynihan Irish numbers that can be folded into luggage or squashed into an overhead rack. For months, I had trudged the city's streets in search of a hat. I had spoken with my hat consultant, Clyde Haberman of The New York Times. But I couldn't find a hat. My last hat, lost somewhere, was bought at Century 21. Even in this summery winter, I wanted a hat.

'They're on the Way'

On the first floor, I moved through dense crowds, to the place where they used to sell hats. All blazers now. Beside a cash register, I found a small section of baseball caps and stiff, white Panama-style hats. But no hats with brims, made for grownups. No Pat Moynihan hats. I asked a clerk, a friendly older salesman who had worked in the Bay Ridge store of Century 21 during the months of cleaning and restocking.

"Let me find out," he said.

He went away for a while, and I saw men examining neckties and sleeveless shirts, and blazers, too. He came back.

"They should have them here Monday," he said. "Hats and gloves. They're on the way."

I thanked him and wandered through the store. This was not easy. For one thing, I hate shopping, except in bookstores and record shops. Shopping always fills me with some obscure anxiety that I'm sure comes from childhood.

But when I found Century 21 about six years ago, I relaxed. In some marvelous way, it was like wandering through the old S. Klein store on Union Square. A store that felt familiar, rushed, devoid of snobbery, transcending the idiocies of class and race. Back in Century 21 over the weekend, that feeling returned. Not just to me.

"I've been waiting for this day," said Sonia Alvarado, 21, of East Harlem, flashing a splendid smile. "Makes me feel like everything's normal, know what I mean?"

I did. The customers jammed the aisles and lined up at the cash registers, their numbers so dense that it was like shopping on the D train. A mother pushed a young child in a stroller, snapping: "Arnold, don't touch that thing!" Normal. "You look stupid in that," a young black woman told a young black man as he showed off a droopy-shouldered jacket whose sleeves hid his hands. "Get one that fits, man!"

Normal.

I wandered into the children's section on the second floor to buy clothes for my grandson, who is 4 going on 18. He seems to be adding an inch a week to his frame, and his expanding shoe size portends a Shaquille O'Neal future. I picked up two polo shirts, including a bright green job for St. Patrick's Day, a sweatshirt adorned with hammers and screwdrivers (the boy's favorite toys), a dress blue shirt. With my wife's help, I added a blazer and gray trousers combo to the pile, and a tan zippered jacket, and hoped he wouldn't outgrow them by June.

Trophies of Consumerism

I waited on line with these items while 19 women and two men rang up the sales (mine totaled $120.79). A quick-handed young woman removed those knobby plastic attachments, swiped the stuff across an electronic pad and then bagged it. All the women wore light lavender jackets over their street clothes, and each seemed delighted to be there.

"Thank you very much," the young cashier said, and smiled, and then uttered that classic New York sentence: "Next in line, please."

Holding my precious Century 21 bag, I wandered around, while my wife retreated across the street to Starbucks. The glittering trophies of consumerism were everywhere: a section of Easter things, from stuffed ducks to assortments of jellybeans; an enclave of cell phones and digital cameras and CD players; a long department of men's shoes, sneakers, moccasins, clumpy workmen's boots, all smelling of fresh leather; displays of socks and neckties and underwear; suits and dresses and slacks. Everything but hats.

"Why am I here?" said a woman named Loretta Brown, from Brooklyn. "You can't beat the prices, that's why."

Standing still in an area of women's slacks, I heard five languages being spoken: Spanish, Italian, German, French and several versions of English. Tourists mixed with old New Yorkers. Blacks, Latinos, Caucasians, Asians; poor women with squealing kids; young career women; grandmothers and grandfathers: All moved together through the metropolitan bazaar. I didn't hear a sentence about Abner Louima or Charles Schwarz. These were people too busy being normal.

After a while, I went out through the front door into Church St. and saw a cluster of people around a mounted downtown map and a grimy old promotional poster. The copy on the poster said, in part: "The Trade Center welcomes visitors from around the world to its splendid observatory, the Top of the World on the 107th floor ..."

Traffic was moving uptown again on Church St. A dozen tombstones in St. Paul's cemetery were covered with plastic. Just inside the fence, green shoots of spring flowers were bursting from the soil beside an uprooted tree stump. The E train was open again and New Yorkers were rising into the streets, or moving down into the subway, carrying their red and white bags from Century 21. Don't mess with me, buster, their faces seemed to say. Next in line, please.