62 Days

It was cold, it was rainy, it was too damn early. I had to wake up anyway, though, since I had so much to do. I hadn’t gotten to sleep much before 5:00, and had originally planned on getting up at 10:00, but just couldn’t do it, so I gave myself an additional 15 minutes. When the alarm went off, though, I thought it was 10:30, so I was granted a few minutes. After a few moments of checking my phone to see if there were any important emails (there never are), what the weather was, and what stupid shit Trump pulled overnight, I dragged myself out of bed and started the getting-ready process. Fortunately, I didn’t have to shave, so that was going to save me some time. I took my final shower in the fun-house bathtub, and plunged in. After a quick breakfast, I pulled one of my suitcases out from under the bed and started loading stuff into it. I had six drawers full of clothes, so I started at the top right and worked my way down and over to the left. The case filled pretty quickly,

Was a bust in some ways. Way back early in this whole process, when I started mentioning restaurants, Pidge’s niece’s husband (an FBI agent!) recommended a place in Little Italy—Parisi’s Bakery—that he used to go to when they lived in the city. I’d neglected to go (mainly because I’d forgotten about it), even though a sandwich place that bakes its own bread—and has been doing so since 1903—sounds right up my alley. I’d gotten to sleep really late on Sunday, so I slept late, with plans to go over and up and down and up and down the island. I was going to start in Little Italy, then head up to 45 th , then go back to TriBeCa, then back up to 51 st , then back home. The first step involved walking over to Mott Street. My map wanted me to head to Houston, then west, but I find Houston an incredibly boring street and wanted to avoid it, which meant just cutting east and south through various streets and alleys to get where I wanted to go, which I found much more interesting rout