My half-trade is dog walker to the twenty-five-block radius that stretches from 96th and Broadway to 121st and Broadway and, horizontally, from Riverside Drive to Morningside Drive. That rectangle delineates the Uptown Updogs official zone of service. It’s all I can manage with my senior year schedule. Last year, even with the SATs, I could easily clear between twenty to thirty hours per week—give or take a mug of Dad’s sludge coffee. (Haitian beans, ground by hand in his old-timey coffee machine that echoes around the entire apartment when he gets up at four a.m. It’s a concoction that could send a horse out of cardiac arrest.)

Senior year, however, comes with too many balls to juggle.

Between attending FATE Academy, staying on top of the ridiculous amount of homework typical of FATE, the mandatory extracurriculars, and helping Dad with his superintendent duties around the building, I’ve had to narrow my clients to our neighborhood and go the extra mile to make sure they get nothing short of the best service possible. I really can’t afford to lose on the income. No with college around the corner.

That’s where the second hustle comes in: a brand. In our case, a branded website and matching T-shirts. See, I’m not just another dog walker: I am a dog walker of UptownUpdogs.world.com. The walkers of Uptown Updogs can easily be spotted around the Upper West Side by their lime-green T-shirts with deep blue cursive writing on the front and back.

I step outside and turn left onto West End Avenue, tightening my scarf. New York City is still hungover from the holidays and slowly getting the legs of its new calendar year under itself. On every other street, you’ll find stacked in front of brownstones Christmas trees still green with bits of silver tinsel glimmering between their branches. They’re right at home next to the poorly folded boxes from brand-new electronics and the recycling bins swelled with boxes from toys and colorful wrapping paper that has served its purpose of being torn apart by happy hands. All the joys from the holidays are now a set of household chores to get through as quickly as you can or put off as long as possible. It was a snowless New Year, preceded by a snowless Christmas, and a mostly snowless December. The big snowstorm little kids were waiting for this year so they could swarm Central Park and make fashionable snowmen never came. This whole winter might end up being a matter of bare trees with occasional trash bags at their branches, cloudy afternoons, and the chilled breaths of those of us who wake up early enough.

“No dogs for you today, H?”