I awoke to a shrill pulsing, and didn’t recognize my surroundings. I rubbed the sleep out of my eyes and slowly recognized this place as the latest airbnb I had rented. It had been almost two whole years of hopping from place to place, living like a nomad, but I still wasn’t used to waking up in unfamiliar rooms. This Airbnb was a tiny studio apartment in upper West-side Manhattan, just a stone’s throw from the 1 train, which was perfect. My priority is mobility. I’m a drug dealer. I stifled a yawn and distractedly glanced at my Nokia flip phone, noticing I had 7 missed calls from Andy. Andy was a longtime friend and customer. We had grown up together, never far from each other while we navigated Brooklyn’s public schools. Although my clientele had exploded in recent months, I still made sure I could get Andy what he needed, which was usually pills. I dialed his number into my cell phone and gave him a call.
“Hey listen man, I was wondering if you could help me out a little. I’m at the deli. Hoping you could slide through.”
Andy sometimes worked part-time at a small neighborhood deli in Little Italy when he wasn’t relapsing or going through withdrawals. I had my qualms about selling to Andy. He was my childhood friend.
“Sorry Andy, I’ve got a lot on my plate today. Not sure I can make it down there in time.”
Andy laughed heartily.
“What, now that my boy’s big time he can’t even come visit his best friend?” He guffawed in his thick Brooklyn accent.
I sighed and took a deep breath.
“Alright listen man, I’ll be down there in an hour. This is the last I’ve got though, so don’t ask me for any more. You know there’s a drought in this city.”
I hadn’t heard Andy call me his best friend in years. I wondered if he really meant it or if it was his impending withdrawals talking. Either way, it would be nice to see Andy and also to make a couple bucks. I stumbled to my feet, threw on my black carhartt hoodie and black jeans, and grabbed my backpack. I knew it would be an easy week. The city’s police department were hard at work on the disappearances. It was the elephant in the room of the sprawling city. For the third time this month, a teenager had walked into a subway station and seemingly never walked out. It was all over the news. Probably because the teenagers were from wealthy, white families on the Upper West Side. The press seems to shrug when teenagers shoot each other in the Bronx every day, but are declaring a national emergency when a few children from rich families go missing.
I grabbed a green nature valley bar and hustled out the door, jogging down the stairs. I made a beeline for the 86th street station and descended down its dark stairway. The subway system had really gone to shit. In recent years, the city had hired third party contractors to expand the subway’s tunnels. The expansion meant a plethora of business and housing opportunities under the city. The newly dug tunnels were supposed to widen the horizons of lower-income housing, and become home to cafes, restaurants, and even parks. They had become drug dens, hideouts, and speakeasies. The labyrinthine tunnels were a perfect place to earn my keep. Even in the affluent neighborhoods of the Upper West Side, the underground did not reflect what was up above.
A half-naked man sat next to a shopping cart, fanning himself with an empty McDonald’s bag. A strange looking woman with a splotchy red face stuck her nose deep into a brown paper bag and inhaled. Rats chittered across the tracks, ducking and weaving in and out of shadowy crevices. I waited for the familiar crackling and booming of the train across the tracks, and I cursed silently as I realized it was not running on time. “Missing Child” posters lined the walls. I found myself staring into the hopeful eyes of a small blonde girl who looked about 11, her face plastered on flyers across the walls of the station. Finally, the tracks boomed to life and the train careened towards the platform like a charging bull, before screeching to a halt in front of me. I got off near Little Italy to a bizarre scene on the platform. Yellow police tape snaked across the platform and men in blue uniforms and black suits huddled and pushed each other out of the way. To me, they looked no different than the rats scurrying across the tracks. On the wall of the station was something disturbing. A strange symbol, a circle with a line through it, was painted on the wall in a crimson red substance that I could only recognize as blood.
It was a pretty strange sight, but nowhere near the strangest thing I had seen in the New York Subway so I shrugged and trekked onward, as police clamored and reporters took pictures.
Leave the station
I made my way up the stairs and towards the deli where Andy worked.
Find a public bathroom.
I ducked into a porta-potty near a construction site and rifled through my backpack, coming up with a small baggie of white capsules. Suboxone. It was incredibly hard to find these days, as fentanyl and foreign contaminants had flooded the market. But my stuff was pure. I stuffed the baggie in my pocket and walked up to the deli to see Andy getting off his shift. He saw me and his eyes lit up.
Make the exchange
I extended my arm to Andy, the small plastic baggie tucked between my knuckles. He looked me in my eyes and shook my hand.
Count the money
In my hand were seven cold, torn dollar bills.
“I’ll get you the rest by Sunday.”
Leave
Andy is a longtime friend, but business is business. I didn’t have time to shoot the shit. I planned to spend the next several hours underground. I descended into Little Italy’s sprawling undercity.