I DROP GABBY at home, a building located on Franklin Street off Broadway. It’s a one-room studio with a private bath on the top floor of a seven-level that she can hardly afford because, technically, it’s now Tribeca. (Thank you, Bobby De Niro!)
My place is in Brooklyn across the East River from Manhattan. It’s a modest third-level, one bedroom in a decent neighborhood of Park Slope. On my Detective First-Grade salary, the apartment is as convenient and affordable a commute into work as I’m likely to find this side of the river. The people in my building don’t shout at or kill each other, or host late-night wild parties, for which I am grateful. My needs are simple: the Mets, the Jets, the Rangers, and craft beer.
A bag of pot is hidden in the freezer, and a bottle of Jameson Irish Whiskey tucked away for special occasions and guests, mostly Gabby on evenings-off when we binge-watch streaming episodes of the Walking Dead, Stranger Things, or Orange Is The New Black on my fifty-inch screen.
At home I pop two Zantac, two painkillers, wash it down with beer, and settle in front of the TV to doze-off. By two thirty a.m. my eyes droop. I know I’m ready for sleep. Six o’clock comes early in New York, or any city for that matter.