“Discount Furniture”

It was 2010 and my wife and I were new to living in New York City. We were looking to buy a couch, but everything was so expensive.

When we stepped off the train that Saturday afternoon and walked through the neighborhood of Brownsville, consistently named the murder capital of New York City–and where Mike Tyson grew up–we had the feeling that we weren’t in Kansas anymore.

Gangbangers hung out on stoops, police sirens blared in the distance, two cops stood on a nearby street corner outside of their cruiser, pedestrians jaywalked hurriedly, there was ubiquitous poverty, and the smell of “something really bad is going to go down” hung in the air.

I had never been so scared in my life. And just our luck, the furniture store was a half-mile walk from the train station.

As we strolled through the hood, I mumbled to my wife, who was whiter than a bar of Dove soap, to play it cool. “Let’s just start talking to each other like we don’t have a care in the world. Try not to stick out,” I said.

At that point, I think her soul left her body because she didn’t say anything.

I briefly thought of turning around and running full speed back to the train station, sans my wife. I figured she’d find a way out of there on her own somehow.

Can’t do that, I thought. You stupid fool. Just keep walking. Be brave. You’re supposed to be a man.

We both picked up the pace and started walking extremely fast. I thought of asking the nearby cop if he could drive us back to our apartment in Manhattan. No, that wouldn’t work.

We finally made it to the store. They had one couch on display. After walking around for a few minutes and collecting our thoughts, I finally said, “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

Somehow, we made it back to the train station unscathed. And back to our apartment we went, where I immediately Googled the neighborhood and discovered that it was, in fact, the most murderous area in all of New York City.

So much for random furniture stores.