36 THENEWYORKER,M AY4, 2020
“Tell the messenger I’m almost done with my sext.”• •
lane and the camera will detect your
temperature.” Previously, masked em-
ployees wielding thermometer guns had
taken co-workers’ temperatures as they
entered the four-story building; now
an automated system was in place. Since
the outbreak of the pandemic, Palmer
and a small group of his fellow-workers
had organized demonstrations for haz-
ard pay, paid sick leave, and more thor-
ough cleaning of the center. In the same
period, Palmer, who has worked at Am-
azon for four and a half years almost
without incident, received a disciplinary
warning, ostensibly for violating social-
distancing measures; another warning
and he could be fired. In the lobby, a
“Voice of Associates Board” displayed
comments from workers. One named
Elijah had written, “In all honesty we
need to close this warehouse.... Some
of us have big families to return to when
we clock out of work.”
Palmer put his coat in a locker and
stepped into the roar of spinning con-
veyor belts on the fulfillment center’s
floor. The work of an Amazon associ-
ate is organized by task. That morning,
Palmer was assigned to be a “counter,”
auditing the inventory in storage units
known as “pods.” Walking past work-
ers standing at intervals of twelve feet
alongside a fenced-in area where shelv-
ing units borne by robots pivoted and
zoomed, he noticed that a co-worker
who had tested positive for the corona-
virus and a manager who had been quar-
antined for possible exposure were back
on the job, apparently cleared for re-
turn. He picked up a scanning gun and
began counting products that would
soon be shipped: Brickell Purifying
Charcoal Face Wash for Men, Gogo
Squeeze applesauce pouches, Cascade
dishwasher pods with OxyClean ...
Shortly after 9 a.m., he was visited at
his station by a manager, who was con-
ducting a survey of employees about
their ability to maintain social distance
while on the job. Worried that what he
said might be used against him, he de-
clined to participate.- In Times Square at 8:30 a.m., the dig-
ital billboard ads blared, beaming their
enticements down on nobody. John
King, the deputy general manager of
the Hudson Theatre, walked into the
Millennium Hotel, with which the the-
atre shares a rear entrance, said hello
to a familiar security guard, and took
a series of hallways to the management
office, where, on a normal day, he would
have already been at work. He grabbed
his keys and a flashlight, and went into
the theatre.
He took an elevator from the base-
ment to the dress circle, then walked
up several flights to the highest bal-
cony. A drained wash of yellowish light
came from a single bulb on the lip of
the stage. Each Broadway theatre has
one: a ghost light, which goes on as
soon as the house clears out after a per-
formance. Every theatre, it’s said, is in-
habited by a ghost. The light keeps the
ghost company, or acts as an offering
to keep away curses, or illuminates the
stage as the spectral performer plays all
night. The upshot of the superstition is
that, real bodies be damned, some im-
plicit spiritual theatrical event is always
under way, wherever there’s a stage. The
ghost lights on Broadway have been
shining uninterrupted since March.
Using his flashlight, King inspected
the emergency exits on the balcony,
making sure they hadn’t been blocked
or jimmied open, and then he did the
same on the dress-circle level. In the
Ambassador Lounge, used for recep-
tions and toasts, King peered through
the windows, which face the street, at
the unlit marquee outside. The last
show to finish its run at the Hudson
was David Byrne’s “American Utopia.”
In the show, Byrne sings a song whose
lyrics now seemed a fantasia:Imagine driving in a car
Imagine rolling down the window
Imagine opening the door
Everybody’s coming to my house
Everybody’s coming to my house- At 9:15 a.m., Soraya Ribeiro—who
was born in Goiânia, a planned city in
central Brazil, but who has long been a
resident of Astoria—arrived at a town
house on the Upper East Side. Waiting
on the second floor were two wheaten
terriers, Gio Ponti and Pippa, that she
takes on walks. Unlike the rest of Ri-
beiro’s clients, the dogs’ owners, mem-
bers of the Zabar grocery dynasty, had
not left the city. Gio Ponti and Pippa