There are pigeons in Times Square. Not just strutting like usual—owning it. Middle of the road, puffed up like landlords. I watched one fly up and drop a chicken bone on a Citi Bike, like it was declaring bankruptcy on behalf of the whole species. The city’s dead and I’m the coroner.
I’m not essential, not officially. But in a lockdown, nothing’s more essential than your poison. Benzos for the sleepless. Oxy for the anxious. Blow for the bored rich who don’t know how to stare at a wall without vibrating. And weed, of course. Comfort food for the soul.
Nobody’s working, nobody’s leaving. Except me. I’m a goddamn pilgrim in a plague city. You’d think a pandemic would bring some kind of honesty, but nope—every cokehead still swears he’s just got “allergies.”
First client’s in the West Village. Tiny walk-up, used to be a model, now just sells overpriced skincare on Instagram. Her name is Kyra. She buzzes me in before I even knock. I hear her unlock six different latches. She’s wearing a mask. Designer. Black velvet. “Hey,” she says, like we’re both pretending this is normal. Like she didn’t pay $300 for two grams. Her kitchen smells like bleach and rosé. “You’re still out?” she asks. “I thought the city was shut down.”
I shrug. “Addiction’s not subject to executive orders.”
She laughs. It sounds like someone wringing out a wet towel. She hands me the money in a Ziploc bag. Sanitized, probably. I give her the drugs in a tiny jewelry pouch. We never touch. We haven’t since early March. Before the masks, before the fridge trucks and the clapping and the Zoom funerals. “You okay?” I ask.
She looks at me like that’s the most offensive thing I could’ve said.
Next stop: Midtown. That cursed nowhere between rich and poor. All Chase banks and closed Pret a Mangers. I pass a homeless guy coughing blood into a Dunkin’ cup. I leave a five and don’t make eye contact. Every gesture feels like a risk now. Compassion included.
My client’s a hedge fund guy. Works remotely now, still wears a tie for Zoom calls. Likes to talk while he buys. Makes him feel normal, I guess. “We’re in a simulation,” he says, peeling off twenties like he’s printing them himself. “That’s the only explanation. This is a stress test. To see how fast we eat each other.”
I ask him if he wants the usual.
“Make it double.”
He pays in cash, leaves it on his doormat like a ransom note.
Up the hallway, someone is sobbing through a wall. Downstairs, I hear the clink of pans. The city is full of ghosts that don’t know they’re dead.
More stops. Uptown. Tribeca. A warehouse party in Bushwick, where everyone says the rules don’t apply to them because they’re artists. One girl’s wearing a hazmat suit with fishnets underneath. People don’t stop doing drugs during the apocalypse. They just get more creative about their reasons. They say it’s medicinal. They say it helps them sleep. They say if they’re going to die, they’d rather feel good doing it. I say nothing. I take their money and keep walking.
*
I drive a 2003 Ford Crown Victoria. Retired cop car. Still has the spotlight on the driver’s side, but it doesn’t work. I bought it in Newark for $800 cash and never looked back. The A/C’s busted, the trunk smells like mildew and fear, but it moves. And right now, I’m the only car on the FDR.
You drive through Manhattan in April 2020 and it’s like God hit the pause button. Traffic lights change for no one. Pigeons stroll across Canal like pedestrians. There’s no honking. No engines idling. Just the sound of your own tires over pavement that was never supposed to be this quiet.
I light a cigarette, crack the window, and let the city breathe me in. You start to notice things without the noise. The churches with signs that say “God is bigger than COVID!” and the bodegas that still sell blunts behind bulletproof glass. I pass a billboard for Hamilton and wonder if it’ll ever play again. I wonder if the actors moved back in with their parents. I wonder if Broadway died like everything else.
I keep the car running and the windows half-down at each stop. No one wants you inside anymore. We make the exchange like inmates passing contraband through a cell gate.
Next client’s in SoHo. Big loft. Family money. A guy named Renner who pretends he’s writing a novel but spends most of his time doing key bumps and posting photos of his bookshelves on Instagram. You know the type. He calls me “brother” and asks if I want tea.
“No,” I say. “I’m still working.”
“Right,” he says, embarrassed, like I reminded him I’m not one of his friends. He Venmos me because he thinks it’s cleaner. Like digital money doesn’t carry a viral load. Like ethics can be contactless. Renner buys two grams of coke and three Xanax bars, “just in case.”
“In case of what?”
He shrugs. “Whatever this becomes.”
He’s not the worst, but he tries to connect. That’s the part I hate. The little gestures. The eye contact. As if we’re both stranded in some storm and his yacht just happens to be docked next to my life raft.
Next client’s a nurse. Lives in Queens, in a two-bedroom that smells like Lysol and ramen. Her name’s Janet. She always pays in cash and never lets me see her face. She opens the door wearing full PPE—mask, shield, gloves, even the booties.
“You sure you need this?” I ask.
She laughs, and it sounds like heartbreak in a tin can. “I just finished a double. I’ve had nine people die in the last two days. You want to tell me what I need?”
I shut up. I hand her the baggie and take the envelope. She doesn’t even count it.
Janet’s got tired eyes. Real tired. The kind that carry stories nobody wants to hear at brunch. She never says much. Just that she doesn’t sleep. That she’s scared she’s already infected and doesn’t know it yet. That every time she exhales in the locker room, she wonders if it’s someone else’s breath coming out.
I tell her to stay safe, but it’s hollow. Nothing we do is safe. Not out here. Not in a city where the virus rides the air like radio static.
Back in the car, I park under the BQE and crush a caffeine pill. It’s a ritual now. One to keep me sharp. One to flatten the dread. I roll down all the windows, let the wind wash through the car like it might carry something away. Not the guilt, though. That sticks.
*
I don’t speed. Not even close. I go five under, hands at ten and two, seatbelt buckled like I’m driving my grandmother to Sunday Mass. I’ve passed maybe eight NYPD cruisers in the last two days. Not one of them had stopped me. They’re just parked. Empty or idling. Like props. Like someone scattered them across the city as reminders. This was a place of authority once. These were men who told you where to go. Now they just sit there with their lights off, engines humming like bored animals.
Sometimes I catch eyes with one of the pigs inside. We do that little nod. The “I see you, you see me” nod. And then nothing. No chase. No flashers. No questions. I’m a man in a car in a city full of ghosts. I’m invisible. Not because I’m stealthy. Because nobody gives a shit anymore.
I pass one parked on Houston, windows tinted dark, two uniforms inside eating Popeyes. One’s scrolling his phone. The other’s licking grease off his thumb. I wonder how many dealers are still out. How many of us are left. I wonder if these guys even bother with the paperwork now. Maybe the system is on lockdown too. That’s the thing nobody tells you about the end of the world. The rules don’t break. They just float away.
It’s not that I’m not suspicious. Black hoodie. Jersey plates. Cash in the glovebox, pills in the air vent, a sandwich bag full of weed under the driver’s seat. I should be a magnet for sirens. But I’m not.
Maybe the cops are scared. Maybe they’re under orders to stay out of contact unless someone’s bleeding. Maybe I just look like a guy trying to get home. Everyone’s trying to get home these days. Or maybe I’m just white.
You live long enough in this business, you start to get institutionalized. Like prison, but without the bars. You start expecting the knock. The sirens. The search. You rehearse what you’ll say when they haul you out. But now? Now the silence is worse. It feels like I’m driving through a dream. Like I stole God’s car keys and nobody noticed. I keep waiting for something to happen. A checkpoint. A trap. A clipboard with my name on it. But the city just yawns open in front of me, empty and waiting.
*
It’s past 1 a.m. and I’m cruising through the West Village with the windows down and no music playing.
Normally, this is where the grid dies and the whimsy begins. The Village is all crooked angles and one-way streets, brownstones with fairy lights, doormen who pretend they’re security. On any other night, I’d be crawling through herds of NYU kids vomiting espresso martinis into the gutter. Drag queens out front of The Duplex. Drunk girls crying into their phones.
Now? It’s empty. It’s not just quiet—it’s biblical. The sidewalks are abandoned, lit only by the stale glow of traffic signals blinking red to no one.
I roll past the White Horse Tavern. Chairs stacked inside like a funeral for chairs. Corner bodegas are locked behind steel shutters, and every time I hit another stop sign, it feels less like traffic law and more like the city asking, “You sure you want to keep going?”
I drive these streets on instinct. I used to hate this part of town. Too many influencers taking selfies with brick walls. Too many couples pretending their relationship isn’t rotting from the inside out. Too many guys who call weed “flower” and ask if I take Venmo.
And now I swear to God, I would kill for a couple of trust fund idiots stumbling out of a speakeasy, reeking of gin and entitlement. I never thought I’d miss the crowds. The claustrophobia. The guy with the bongo drum on 6th who thinks he’s the second coming of Santana. But here I am, driving twenty miles an hour past closed cupcake shops and shuttered jazz bars, promising myself:
I’ll never complain again.
I won’t groan next time I’m stuck behind a stroller in a bike lane. I won’t fantasize about arson when the brunch line spills onto the sidewalk. I won’t curse the man with the accordion who plays Despacito on loop in Washington Square Park. Just give them back. All of them. The humanity. The mess. The noise.
This silence feels like a mistake. Like someone unplugged the city but forgot to plug it back in.
At a red light, I rest both hands on the wheel and breathe in the absence. You can smell it. Not just disinfectant and garbage and spring air, but something deeper. Something hollow. The way an attic smells after the people are gone. There’s no one around. No sirens. No chatter. Just the occasional wind rolling a paper bag across the pavement like a cartoon tumbleweed.
I think about Kyra. About Janet. About Renner and his tea. All of them tucked away in their apartments like relics in a museum, clutching their vices like security blankets.
Me? I just keep driving. Because what else do you do when the city that never sleeps finally closes its eyes?
*
The last drop of the night is in Harlem. Edge of the map for me. Technically I shouldn’t even be out this far—it’s not that it’s dangerous, it’s just inconvenient. Not on my loop. Not on any usual route. But this guy, Gerald, he pays in full and always tips. He orders about once a month, always the same thing: two eighths of weed, one edible, and a bottle of red weed juice if I have it. Tonight I do.
He buzzes me up to the fifth floor. Walk-up. No elevator. My thighs are screaming by the time I reach his door. He opens it slow. Gerald is maybe 65. Looks like a retired professor or a former sax player. Wears sweaters even when it’s warm out. Always polite. Never asks personal questions. He steps back to let me in, but I don’t move.
“Nah,” I say. “Let’s keep this curbside.”
He chuckles. “You’re the boss.” He takes the paper bag from me and holds it like it might bite. Then he leans in a little, and says, “Can I ask you something?”
Here we go. This is usually when someone asks if I can get shrooms, or DMT, or baby’s first ketamine. But Gerald surprises me.
“You see a lot of people?”
“Yeah,” I say. “Too many.”
He nods slowly. “And are they okay?”
I don’t say anything.
“I mean it,” he says. “I’ve been in this apartment twenty-three days. I’ve talked to the lady downstairs and the guy on NPR. That’s it. You’re the first person I’ve seen in over a week. And I guess I just wondered—if anyone out there still seems… real.”
Real. The word hits me harder than I want it to.
“They’re not okay,” I say, finally. “But they’re not dead either. Not most of them.”
Gerald smiles like that’s the best he could’ve hoped for. Like not dead is good news now.
He thanks me. Offers me a bottle of water I don’t take. Tells me to be safe like I’m a firefighter and not just a guy driving around the city with a car full of Schedule I substances.
As I head back down the stairs, I can feel his eyes on me through the cracked door. Not in a weird way. Just… watching. Like I’m proof the world hasn’t completely disappeared.
I get in the Crown Vic. Start the engine. Flip the headlights on and sit there for a second, hand on the wheel, listening to the tick of the hazard lights I forgot to turn off. Then I turn them off. And I drive.
By the time I get back on the West Side Highway, it’s close to 2 a.m. The city’s never felt bigger. Not because of traffic, but because of space. Every empty lane is a mouth yawning wider. Every green light is a whisper: Go. Go. Go. I roll down the windows. The Hudson looks black and folded shut. Past the piers, the lights of New Jersey blink like a bad connection.
This is when it hits me hardest. After the clients. After the hustle. When there’s no one to perform for. No doors to knock on. Just me and the wheel and the heavy quiet pressing down on everything. Sometimes I drive longer than I need to. Just loops. Chelsea to Tribeca to the Battery and back up again. No destination. Just movement. As long as I’m moving, I don’t have to feel stuck. As long as I’m rolling, I don’t have to hear the echo.
And it is an echo. A real one. Every street I turn down, it follows. That whisper of what used to be. Music from a bar that isn’t there. Conversations you think you hear from an open window until you realize it’s just a TV someone left on for company.
I hit a red light on 14th and watch a rat sprint across the intersection like it’s got somewhere important to be. Good for him.
I think about Gerald. About what he said. Are they okay?
It’s such a strange question. The kind you don’t ask unless you’ve been alone for too long. Unless you’ve been sitting in the same room, breathing the same air, thinking the same thoughts, waiting for something to knock. The truth is I don’t know if they’re okay. I don’t know if I’m okay. I sell the things that make people pretend they’re okay. That’s my job. That’s my value. But tonight something feels different. Not big. Not dramatic. Just… a small sliver of something soft.
Maybe it was the way Gerald looked at me like I was still a person. Not a courier. Not a risk. Not a walking transaction. Maybe it was the city itself. How it used to suffocate me with bodies, and now it’s suffocating me with air. Maybe I just miss it all. The chaos. The noise. The mess of it. Even the subway mariachi bands and the Wall Street guys screaming into their phones on speaker. Even the line at Joe’s Pizza at 2 a.m. Even the strangers. God, I miss the strangers.
I used to think New York was too much. Too full. Too loud. Too much everyone, all the time. But now? Now I get it. This city wasn’t ever about the buildings or the history or the skyline. It was about the people. The living mess of them. The way they tripped over each other and cursed and flirted and laughed too loud. That’s what made it real. And maybe, someday, it’ll come back.
I don’t believe in hope. I believe in momentum. You keep moving. You do your job. You don’t let the stillness win. But tonight, as I pull off the highway and head toward wherever I sleep, I roll down all four windows, even though it’s cold. I let the wind rip through the car like it’s carrying something I need.
And for the first time in weeks, I don’t feel like a ghost. I feel like someone driving through the end of the world, looking for signs of life.