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

Chapter 16 (PAID)

Photo by Ivan Karpov on Unsplash

Chapter 16

Two weeks later—mid-May—Sophia and I finally did our planned “urban hike” which we’d discussed doing for the past month. There was no specific goal other than walking around the city together for the day and seeing what happened. We’d heard stories, of course, about the ghost town that had become Times Square, about desolate Battery Park and Wall Street, about all the closed restaurants and cafes in the west Village, etc. We’d seen the images on TV. But we hadn’t seen it ourselves. Mostly we’d each kept to our own neighborhoods, like most people, avoiding the subways and Uber, trying to stay isolated, safe and sane as best we could.

            By this time I’d at last made a decision about Harlem: I was going to break my lease. Fuck it, I thought. After everything. After being viciousl…