What is the setting in the prologue of the novel, Acqua Calda?

The novel's prologue is set in New York City, where Gerald makes his home and where he spent several years as a successful actor and as a sexually successful gay man. At the time of the prologue, however, Gerald has become a hermit in the city that was once his personal and sexual playground. It is no longer a place of joy: given that so many of his friends and colleagues have died, it has, for him, become a place of death.