“Hey, man,” a sanitation worker called out to Michael Cohen on Sunday, as Donald Trump’s former personal lawyer and his wife walked north on the Upper East Side, passing by the annual Greek Independence Day Parade. “Hang in there, man. We’re with you.”

The remark came nearly two weeks after a dozen federal agents knocked on Cohen’s hotel-room door at the Regency, on Park Avenue, where he and his family have been living after a water leak last year in their apartment. The damage is, in some ways, a metaphor for Cohen’s life, which has since become a flood of paparazzi, cable-news scrawl, and court hearings. A search warrant, executed by the U.S. Attorney’s Office but referred to the Southern District of New York by Robert Mueller’s probe, allowed the F.B.I. to seize his business records, documents, and data from two cell phones, a tablet, a laptop, and a safe deposit box. The haul is reported to include materials related to payoffs made to women alleging sexual relationships with Trump during his presidential campaign, including the $130,000 Cohen says he paid to adult-film actress Stormy Daniels. (Trump has denied the affairs.)

In the days immediately afterward, Cohen made a conspicuous effort to go about life as usual. Paparazzi trailed him from the Regency to dinner at La Goulue and back again, and waited outside as he had lunch at Fred’s. While his lawyers argued that the government should not be allowed to comb through his documents without his ability to denote privileged information, Cohen chomped on a cigar outside the Regency with a group of friends in plain view of the cameras. The spectacle continued last Monday, as hundreds of cameras waited to catch a glimpse of him and Daniels outside a hearing at the federal courthouse downtown.

That first week caught him by surprise and felt like a blur, according to people close to him. Much of it was fueled by adrenaline. By the time the sanitation worker stopped Cohen this weekend, however, a new reality was setting in. The paparazzi had largely moved on. Cohen enjoyed lunch at Fred’s and dinner at Le Bilboquet last Friday, unmolested by flashbulbs. People in restaurants still come up to him to ask how he is doing and give him pats on the back, according to three people who have spent time with him in recent days. But, they say, Cohen is defiant and beaten down by the breathless speculation that he might flip on Trump and bring down the presidency.

His days undoubtedly look different than they did several weeks ago. He no longer wakes up and goes into the office early, since the law firm where he had an office terminated their arrangement. He sometimes sits with an espresso at his usual table in Sant Ambroeus, with his phone buzzing and beeping. Sometimes they’re messages of support from old friends, telling him they’re behind him and that he is going to be some sort of phoenix rising from the ashes—that there will be book deals, movie deals, all sorts of offers down the road. More often, however, it’s reporters seeking comments he can’t give. For someone who relishes defending himself, staying quiet is not easy, the people familiar with Cohen’s thinking said.

Not being in communication with Trump also weighs on Cohen. The president did call him several days after the F.B.I. raid, and publicly said that what happened to Cohen was a “disgraceful situation.” But their relationship had shifted since Trump took office. Cohen, who sees the Trumps as family, has only visited the White House a handful of times, including the White House Hanukkah party in December and a stop-by when his daughter finished a summer internship in First Lady Melania Trump’s office. “At times I wish I were there in D.C. more, sitting with him in the Oval Office, like we used to at Trump Tower, to protect him,” he told me at the end of the summer. “I feel guilty that he’s in there right now almost alone . . . There are guys who are very loyal to him that would have gone in, but there was a concerted effort by high-ranking individuals to keep out loyalists.”