people seem to believe that they will
get the virus and they will survive hav-
ing it. The vibe is pretty much one of
acceptance, even a little bit of excite-
ment. I hate to say this, but it's be-
come a distraction from the election.
Also, a lot of my friends are cooking.
Like ambitious stockpot recipes-
soups and stews-and a lot ofbaking,
too. Pies and cookies. I myself am cur-
rently deep-cleaning my apartment,
knowing that I'll be stuck in it. "Mean-
while, she said, "my family is from
New York, and my father has been
fearlessly going to the gym. I think
there's a bit of YOLO fear to it-he
wants to make the most of his life.
But I have pleaded with him to stop."
T
hat same Saturday, Maggie Mc-
Glinchy, a bartend.er, worked all
evening at Bernie's Restaurant, on the
border of Greenpoint and Williams-
burg. "It was full," she said on Sun-
day. "But it doesn't take much to fill
the restaurant. The actual volume was
low, and it seemed as though no one
wanted to be seen to be fully enjoy-
ing themselves. I sold a lat of Marti-
nis that night-mostly Martinis, or
Old-Fashioneds or Manhattans. No
wine or artisanal ale. Everyone was
trending the spirits.
"At Bernie's, I'm on a first-name
basis with possibly a third of the cus-
tomers-it's definitely a home base.
In the past two nights, a lot of my cus-
tomers are people who wanred to come
in and support us. Most of my tips
were over twenty per cent. That's the
other thing about social distancing--
so much of what it means to be com-
forted is to be ..• not distant. Stay
positive, I'd say-we're feeling well
right now and let's hope it stays pos-
itive and do you want another drink?"
But by Sunday night all the bars and
restaurants in the city had been or-
dered to stop table service in the next
few days, an unimaginable act a week
earlier, as strange as if the island of
Manhattan had :8.oated out to sea.
McGlinchy said that she is look-
ing for a new job, but there are no
new jobs for bartenders, because there
are no bars."What do I have going
forward? I have a month's rent and a
warm e-mail from my former em-
ployer," she said dryly on Tuesday
morning. "I've had some regulars send
me twenty bucks O\ICr Venmo. Last tips."
The full weight of the shutdown
will fall most heavily on the Maggies
of the world, who have little or no
financial cushion. (Later, Bernie's set
up a GoFundMe campaign for the
staff.) Hundreds of thousands of peo-
ple in the service and entertainment
industries-from bartenders to the
"swing" theatre acton who pride them-
selves on leaping into whatever role
has been left open by an unwell lead.-
are out of work, for a time that has no
known limit.
There are, as well, the small, crush-
ing disappointments that, though
reasonably lost in the larger life-and-
death dam.or, are very real to the peo-
ple they have happened to. The ac-
tress Ilana Levine had just opened in
a new play, "The Perplexed, "by Rich-
ard Greenberg-a comeback of sorts
for her--when all theatres, concert
venues, and night clubs were closed.
"You know, I had been on Broadway
a lot when I was younger," she said.
"But then came L.A and children ...•
And out of the blue I got this call to
do this play ofRichard's, with the idea
that, after all this time, I'd be back on
the mge in New York, which I missed
desperately. So all of these things I'd
been dreaming of happened, and with
it came so much fear and anxiety:
'Can I make it work?'" She laughed
at the idea of what fear and anxiety
meant a few days earlier--having too
much to memorize.
"The play is about family and strug-
gle and old hurts and people having
to be, in this sort of Sartre way, per-
petually closed o:ff in the space of one
room with each other," she continued.
"So now the play and the reality are
one, in ways I could never have imag-
ined. Except I don't get to do it in this
world, with an audience."The evoca-
tive set, designed by Santo Loquasto,
of a New York town house, has not
yet been struck from the Manhattan
Theatre Club stage, she said. "So all
of us keep thinking of that set, and
how we want to get to it, be on it-
the company, even without an audi-
ence, just to work together on it. Ac-
tors are not people who know how to
isolate. We are suddenly physically
frozen at this moment."The young musical-theatre actress
Ahem. Mensah-Bonsu, cast in a signifi-
cant role in a new show, "Nollywood
Dreams,"had been commuting in from
New Jersey, feeling all the ancient ex-
citement of a big break. Now she sits
at home and is eager to get back to
the theatre. "Acting is the opposite of
social distancing," she said, echoing
Levine ... Even if you're introverted, as
I am. So, when we sit in place, we long
to be engaged with someone." On
Broadway, the theatres are empty, but
the lights have still been on, as though
the theatres were willing the shows
to continue:.0
ne irony of this pandemic is that,
while it exposes the gaps in our
social and medical safety nets, it also
punishes people for behaving well.
Communities with the healthiest in-
tergenerational relationships seem to
be at greater risk than those that se-
quester older people in nursing homes.
Italy, one study shows, has been so
hard hit by the coronavirus because
there the young and the old have the
beautiful habit of mingling together.
Grandparents are accustomed to being
with their grandchildren.
In the days before the shutdown,
the Lubavitcher community in Crown
Heights became a virus hot spot, per-
haps because the Hasidic sects, too,
have kept at bay the alienation of gen-
erations that is so much part of Amer-
ican life. "Do you want to know how
things appear, or how they are?" Mica
Soffer, the editor of a Jewish news
Web site, said that Sunday. "It's been
extremely hectic. As far as the com-
munity itself, I guess we weren't so
much prepared. It's in China, it's in
Europe-e didn't rcall2e how quickly
it would get here. Our community is
so connected. We live in an urban
area-you're always around people.
It's Brooklyn, after all! Late last week,
I had a shiva call, a wedding, and an
engagement party. Everyone has a
million things they need to go to--
families are large. n
She went on, "'Most families here
have elderly parents and grandpar-
ents-it's a big part oflife. Purim was
last weekend-you're talking about
people being exposed. We didn't re-
alize at first We didn't know. There