TWO YEARS IN NEW YORK (Michael Mohr's Fictional NYC Covid Memoir)

Chapter 9 (PAID)

Photo by Kaysha on Unsplash

Chapter 9

Two things happened between the final week of August and early September which rattled me. I’d been living in the new apartment for about a month. I’d been busy working on a book editing project, which was good because I needed the extra cash. Everything was going fine with the tenants in El Cerrito. Sophia and I had not seen each other again yet since our coffee date, but we’d been texting on and off. The messages waffled between flirting, pretending not to flirt, complaints about Chad, AA stuff, my shock at the horror and beauty that was New York, Art, literature, aesthetics, the meaning of life, chaos and randomness, politics, etc. She was becoming a friend. Yet more than a friend.

I had started to get a feel for the land, my East Harlem neighborhood. I often walked south along 5^th Avenue,…