Love You to Pieces

Why I'll always love parts of New York, never the whole

In Brooklyn, my mother and I lived with a man named Menachem who taught me two sentences in Hebrew: “I love you” and “I need $500.”

Manny’s body was covered in hair as thick as wool, but his skin was slick, smoothed with baby oil. He never left the house without Afrin nasal spray and toothpicks. He drove a station wagon with buckets of paint, turpentine…