cook-out for two

Francine and I meet online.  She’s cute, and nice.  She works for a funeral home.  She has lots of business-related jokes, all of which are a variation on the business-is-dead idea.  I get it.  I laugh at each one.  I make my eyes twinkle.  Our interest survives our remote coffee meet-up and I suggest a less remote meet-up at my house on Saturday for an old-fashion cookout.

The second I log off, I ask myself what I’m doing.  I’m no grill master.  I don’t pretend to be.  But everyone loves a cookout, and I said did cookout.  That’s not to say I can’t bake a mean souffle or a couple of salmon steaks.  But you don’t lug your oven outside on just the second date.  That’s probably fifth or sixth date stuff.   

A little background.  A few weeks ago, a tree service took down a few gumball trees in my backyard.  I tried to save money by forgoing having the stumps ground up.  Gone are the gumballs, but now I have gumball tree-stumps in the yard, no trees above them, and the place looks like a backdrop for a B movie that might be called “Stumps.”  Not pretty.

So, on Saturday, I set up the grill in the front yard where the trees are still trees and everything is presentable. 

“Whatcha doing?” Tabby, my eight-year-old next-door neighbor asks from the driveway. 

“Setting the stage for my big date tonight.”

“Is she coming here?”  The kid is a little too excited about something that shouldn’t involve her.  “My second-grade class meets online.”

“I guess if I were meeting with twenty big dates at the same time, we would probably do it online.  But just one big date is coming today.”

“How big is she?”  Tabby is as sincere as she can be.

“I’ll take a picture and show you…after she’s gone.”

“Are you going to kiss each other’s mask.”  She giggles at the thought.

I laugh with her, but I have no clue what to expect.  A part of me wonders if the CDC’s guidelines on social distancing can kind of be ignored if I see an opportunity to score.  I just don’t know. 

Come four o’clock, Francine arrives.  The cat wakes up, and the nosy underage neighbor is still waiting around, even after I have told her parents I’m throwing a Covid party.  The moment Francine steps out of her car, Toby strides up to her and presses his nose against her bare ankles.  Before Tabby can scream ‘NO’, Francine leans over and pets the welcome wagon on his furry head.

“Nice cat,” she says.  “Yours?” 

Unbelievable.  No one bites anyone.

Francine is exactly what she looks like on my laptop, just bigger.  But—I can tell by the patent disappointment on Tabby’s face—not big enough. 

I tell her the meat patties are patted-out and seasoned.  The fix’ins are fixed and a few cold coffees are chilling.  “As soon as the fire is hot enough, I’ll put the burgers on.”

After a good twenty minutes, Francine asks me how long it takes fire to get fire-like.  “You know, hot.”

It’s a good question.  And after another fifteen minutes, I’m still working on an answer. 

“What’s wrong?” Telly calls from the sidewalk.

“What makes you think something’s wrong?”

I look at Francine, who is standing back, sort of leaning even further back, with her arms crossed.

“He can’t get it started,” Tabby calls from her yard.  I motion for the kid to go inside her house and mind her business inside with the curtains drawn.  Either the kid doesn’t know how to vanish or she simply doesn’t understand basic semaphore signaling with tongs and spatula.

“The fire doesn’t seem to be getting any hotter,” I call to Telly.  “If I poke it with a stick, I can see a little orange and then it goes out.  Does fire really need prodding?”

Telly pulls up a mask and joins me at the grill.  He asks if I have tried putting lighter fluid on it.  I get the lighter fluid out of the garage and pour some through the grill.  At once, a healthy fire roars to life.  And almost as fast, it settles down to smoking ash.

“Is it supposed to do that?” I ask him.

A young couple from up the street is passing by with their stroller.  When the man senses a man-problem, he takes a time-out from the family and asks me what seems to be the matter.  He says sprinkling a little water on the fire can actually help encourage it.  He looks like he knows what he’s talking about, from the mask up.  After a good dousing, the fire is out. 

Francine crosses her arms a little more resolutely.  She steps further back from the scene, no doubt unwilling to be too closely associated.  Tabby joins her.  She’s never been this close to a big date.

The man who lives across the street is still buttoning his shirt as he hurries barefoot across the yard.  His wife is standing in the door, holding her robe at the neck.  “I couldn’t help but notice,” he calls ahead of himself.  “Say, have you got any kerosene?”

Three neighbors into this group project, a guy carrying a bag of his own charcoal marches up my driveway.  “I heard someone was having a hard time getting something started.”

“See?” my tenacious neighbor says behind me.

The newcomer is smiling, positively charged.  He is accompanied by his young son and two other men who wondered where he was going with a bag of charcoal.

Unbelievable.  The most I can get out of my grill is a wisp of smoke, but like a Bat Signal in the sky, men from all parts of the neighborhood see the sign and respond.  I should be happy for the helping hands, but the greater the turnout, the more self-conscious I am about the grill I can’t manage and the shifting dynamics of my cookout-for-two.

Francine, Tabby and Toby sit on the front steps of my house and watch the turnout of men, like an audition for Who’s Got Fire?  Each of them says (through masks as varied as their wearers) that they know exactly what they’re doing; and then, when what they know goes up in smoke, they insist they just don’t want to tread too hard on another man’s turf. 

At this point, husbands and sons from this and the adjoining neighborhood are crowding my turf.  Some of the womenfolk have gathered to watch from the other (safe) side of the street.  This whole date thing, this cookout, this flameless grill, have become divisive, rending men from their women, keeping at least one from getting anything started with a woman. 

Finally. 

A delivery guy in a brown truck stops at the house and steps up to the proverbial plate.  He squats and peers into the problem.  He flicks some lever on the side, making ash poop right out the bottom of the grill, and then he blows and fans the air above the ashen bricks until something happens that has not happened since some nut shook gasoline on the grill.  There is a flame.  We hold our breaths while the delivery guy blows, flicking the lever on the side, thumping the belly of the grill.  And the fire holds.  The flames leap about, looking for something to cook.  

About the time I bring out the meat, Francine says she has to leave.  “Nice cat,” she says again before she closes her door on our future together and drives away. 

“Love is like that,” Telly says like the old sage who sticks around after everyone else has left so that he can provide uninterrupted commentary.

“Yeah,” Tabby says, aspiring to be her own commentary.

“That wasn’t love,” I say.  “We weren’t anywhere near love.  You saw how far back from the grill she was standing.”

Telly is unruffled.  “Let it go.  There are other women out there.  Besides, now that your grill is lit…”  He arches his crazy eyebrows.

“You mean now that I know to schedule a cook-out at the same time as I plan to receive a package?” 

“No’oh.  What I mean is…you have a plate of uncooked hamburgers, it’s dinner time, and your grill is lit.”  Again, his brows do that crazy lift with untold meaning.

“I’m hungry,” Tabby says with more direct commentary.  

I smile, the last to get it.  “It looks like my dinner-for-two has just became dinner-for-three.”

Someone meows.

“Or four.”

Build a fire, and they will come. Flounder in smoke, and they will flock.

essential kids

Anything could happen on a Monday.  And in my line of work, it already has, even before the day has dawned.  Actions or questions on Saturday were deferred to Sunday, which, of course, deferred everything it had to Monday.  So, before I could log in this Monday morning, I knew the day had been two days in the making, two days of building and deferring.

And then it was, there interposed a backhoe. 

In one fell swoop, it cut a line and severed every internet connection on my street.  The wave of imminent new work files and customers hung frozen on my screen.  I texted my supervisor.  He texted back, snow day.

So now I’m looking around at a day I didn’t expect.  I wander to the front of the house and look out the window, wondering what I want the day to be.  At other houses with broken internet connections, doors open and children run crazy like a few adults I know when the governor lifted lockdown restrictions.  A mom or two appear in front windows.  Relieved and anxious.  Just because they got a reprieve from playing home-teacher today doesn’t mean they can count on another backhoe tomorrow.

Toby pulls at my pants leg and points to the porch.  

I don’t know what I’m expecting, but it certainly isn’t the new next-door neighbors’ kids.  I open the door.

“Tabby?”

“Of course,” she says impatiently behind her baby blue mask.  She is quite the precocious eight-year-old, impatient to grow up, impatient for those already grown-up to get on the same page with her.

She is accompanied by Sir Francis, her two-year-old brother.  Cupping his chubby chin is a blue mask that goes perfectly with the blue elephants on his pull-ups.  In his other hand is a fistful of dirt. 

“Today’s the first day of second grade,” Tabby says.

Then it hits me.  “And your internet is down.”

“Yep,” she says, pleased to have me on the same page.

“Does this mean you get the rest of the day off.”

She shrugs, like she really doesn’t know.  Weeks ago, she was expecting second grade in a room with other second-graders.  That morphed into a home-school with Alice and Dan (a.k.a. Mom and Dad) and a laptop.  Now this.

“The baby-sitter didn’t show up.”

“Baby-sitter?  Where are your parents?”

“Dan and Alice?” she says.  “They’re essential workers, I guess.”

“Do they know the baby-sitter didn’t show?”

The tough-talking kid looks suddenly a little less tough.  Her eyes redden.  Sir Francis lifts his mask to lick the dirt in his hand.

“This is perfect,” I say, injecting as much enthusiasm as I can into my words without losing credibility.  “My internet is down too.  I don’t know what I’m going to do, but whatever it is, I’m going to do it with you…and the kid eating our neighborhood one handful at a time.”

Tabby laughs, pulling back from the edge of something.

“Should we call your parents and tell them?”

“I don’t have a phone,” she says.  Which means, she doesn’t know their number.  “Do you want to play volley ball?”

“Sure,” I say.  “That’s a great idea.  Except, we don’t have a net.”

“We have a fence.”  There’s that impatient tone again.

“Okay.  A fence will work.  What about a ball?”

“Francis has a ball,” she says excitedly and runs next door.  Toby and I walk the dirt aficionado outside to the fence between our yards.

The sides are inevitable.  Tabby versus me, with Toby and Sir Francis working both sides as cat and toddler. 

The ball is actually an oversize metallic balloon nearing the end of its buoyancy.  Tabby hits the balloon/ball hard.  The balloon/ball jumps high without going very far.  It kind of doubles-back, then gently drifts toward my side of the fence.  The real game, we discover, is one of patience, waiting for the balloon/ball to come back down, wondering, while we wait and watch, on which side it will drop.

Tabby decides to make things more interesting by placing thumb tacks on the squared tops of the picket fence. 

It’s a good idea, but the balloon/ball doesn’t fall with enough force to pop itself on the tacks.

The kid frowns.

I frown when I notice Toby pressing his nose into Sir Francis’ red elephants.  “Wait a minute,” I say, turning ahead to the page Tabby is no doubt already on.  “Weren’t those elephants blue?”

“Yep.  Red means he needs to be changed.”

“Oh.” 

“And I’m not going to do it,” she says. 

Work or no work, this is every bit a Monday.

“And that was the last pull-up,” she says with a grin.

I dislodge the cat from the wet elephant in the yard and invite everyone back over to the house where I set up an impromptu changing table on the porch. 

“Okay, Francis, just take off the wet pull-ups and put them in the bag.”

“Seriously?” Tabby asks without lifting a helping finger.

All kinds of words come to mind I can’t use until I’m on my own page in my own time.  I go to the kitchen and return with a roll of paper towels.  “Don’t ask and don’t talk me out of it,” I preempt the girl.  “Sometimes the unexpected asks us to get creative.” 

Creative, today, looks like a whole roll of paper towels and enough duct tape to secure Sir Frances to the side of a rocket.  I have to say, though, I’m feeling rather proud of myself.  Tabby is all grins. 

“That looks….”  She thinks about it, frowning hard to understand what she is looking at.  “It looks big.”

Big is the perfect word. 

“Maybe we can put something big over it.  Like pants.” 

Tabby runs next door again and returns with a pair of her brother’s pants, which are clearly not designed to accommodate a whole roll of Bounty. 

“Maybe,” I am forced to reconsider, “really big pants.  You dad wears really big pants, doesn’t he?”

Tabby nods.  “Really big,” she reads from my page.  She runs to fetch a pair from her house.

But Daddy-Dan’s pants swallow the toddler. 

“I got it,” Tabby says and exits our changing-table drama yet again.  She is gone long enough for Sir Francis to turn his towels from star-white to pee-yellow. 

“How?” I ask the kid.  “You just did that.  Are you holding back?” 

When Tabby returns with her next great idea, she finds me in my elbow-length kitchen gloves and a pair of scissors.  “That’s not how Alice does it,” she says.

“Oh, really.”  I’m ready to forget just how old the smart-mouth kid is.  “Well, when you piss your pants at my house, this is how we do it.”

“You said a bad word.”

“Not as bad as the word I’m thinking.  Hand me those bleach wipes and I’ll rewrap him.”

“You can’t use that.”

“A few minutes ago, you didn’t know how to help.  Now you’re an expert?”

I agree to finish up with a water-dampened paper towel and leave the bleach for another time.  When I finish, the boy’s waist-line is slightly greater than before.  “What did you bring for him?” I ask.

What Tabby brought from her house defies explanation until she puts her brother into it.  “Baby Yoda,” she says.  “Alice bought it.”

“A baby Yoda costume?  Is this for Halloween?”

“No.”

I don’t ask her to elaborate.  “Let’s get the cloak part over his shoulder before he pees again.”

“Can we dress Toby?” she asks.

There are some things you do at your own peril.  But I tell the girl she can do it herself, if she wants.  She runs next-door and returns with a mermaid costume designed for a small dog. 

“I didn’t know you had a dog.”

“We don’t.” 

Whatever.  “That’s a lot of sequins to ask a cat to wear.  Maybe we could put just the tail on him.”  And so that is what she does, fastening a Velcro skirt line around Toby’s waist and draping the green tail behind him.  The crazy thing is, he lets her do it.   

“I want to be a dinosaur,” Tabby says. 

“Sure.  Why not?”

“You too,” she says.  “We all have to be something.”  She runs next door and returns with a cute triceratops head with pink blush and eye shadow.  “Here’s yours.”

Mine is a baseball hat with a donkey’s bottom jutting prominently on the front bill.  On the back of the hat is what I take to be the front-half of the Democratic mascot.  I turn the hat backwards and undo Dan and Alice’s little joke.

“That’s funny,” says the girl who has not yet grown into her parents’ politics.

“Trust me.  You have no idea how funny.”

All this, because Sir Francis pissed his blue elephants red.

Tabby leans forward to bump her dino-head with her brother’s Yoda head.  She has all but forgotten the stress of being left-behind by her parents, when we hear a car pull into their driveway.

“Hey, Dan,” I call out and carry Baby Yoda outside.  Dan puffs up with real geniality.  He is charmed to see the triceratops who should be inside acting like a second-grader.  He sees nothing wrong with Sir Francis’s bulging waistline and the dirt smeared over his face mask.  He is smiling like a guy who has no idea he should know his children’s baby-sitter didn’t show up and have been at the mercy of the neighbor he moved next to just a few weeks ago.

“Hey there, Loch,” he says grandly as he strides to the fence.  What a beautiful day.”  He leans forward to brace himself on the fence.  What follows is a line of expletives not likely to be taught in any of his daughter’s online classes for the foreseeable future.  He raises his paws and removes a thumb tack from each one.

“It works,” Tabby shouts like any scientist who is initially scoffed at as mad.

“You did this, sweetheart?”  The tears in Dan’s eyes are almost moving.

“It was for the balloon.”

He looks at me and says, “I think I’m in a lot of pain.”

I tell him, “You look like you’re in a lot of pain.”

“I’ll help you, Dan,” Tabby announces like the essential daughter she would like to be and takes her father into the house.

“Hey,” I call after my neighbor.  “You forgot one.”  Even as I lead Baby Yoda to the back door of his house, I see a small pee spot forming on his cloak.  “How are you doing that?” I ask the kid who I have not seen take one sip of anything in the past two hours.  Dan appears at the door long enough for me to make the drop-off. 

Toby and I return to the porch.  I am exhausted.  I slouch in one of the rockers and consider the eight-year-old neighbor raising herself and one young sibling in the company of parents who treat every day like Halloween.  I don’t get it. 

Toby decides to help take my mind of things by hopping into my lap and kneading my groin with nails as distinctive as a fistful of tacks.  When his instinct-impulses are satisfied, he turns himself and his mertail around and around until they can both settle down.  And then he does what cats do that get them off the hook for even the worst of grievances.   And purrs us both to sleep.

Halloween in September.

Know Thy Elusive Self

There are some things I think I can do for myself.  This is what I say to Telly when he asks if I need a wingman next time I go to a bar.

“I went with my own date.  Actually, I met her there.”

“Dorah,” my ninety-two-year-old neighbor says, still practicing social-distancing on his side of the porch screen. 

“Right.  So I didn’t need a wingman to get the girl.  I already had a girl.”

“So, where is she now?”  His brows go out of their way to suggest I don’t know what I’m talking about.

I hold up my hand.  “Don’t go there.”   

“Go where?”  He laughs.  His brows cartwheel in place. “I don’t even know where she is.”

“Her geographical coordinates are unimportant, unless you just want to make certain you don’t run into her.”

“Was it that bad?”

“She made the border collie glare.”

“Whatever.  If you had taken a wingman, all of this could have been avoided.”

“I had a wingman.  I had Toby.”

When Telly laughs the cat puffs out his chest. 

“He finally did what my efforts to be gentlemanly were keeping me from doing.”

“Are you saying you should have bitten her?”

“I’m saying that despite the three of us being buckled, together, into a rapidly falling hand-basket, I wanted her to like me.”

Telly’s eyebrows try to turn their backs on me.

“Not because I wanted to see her again.  I just wanted to know if I was doing it right and, if I wasn’t, what I needed to change so that the next time, with the next woman, would be better.  I believe strongly that there is something to be learned in every experience.”

“So, what did you learn from your experience with Dorah?”

“I wasn’t certain.  So I called her.”

“You called Dorah?  After the date?”

“Yes, I called her.  Who better to ask?  She was there.  Besides, I don’t have to see her again.  What did I have to lose?”

“Very presidential of you.”

“So I asked her, aside from bringing the cat with me to a cat-friendly bar that she chose to meet at, what did she think of our time together and was there anything I could have done differently to make it a better experience for her.”

Head in hand, Telly mutters, “Unbelievable.  You called out your own dating survey.”                                                          

“Hey, the survey’s we send out at work have resulted in measurable increases in customer satisfaction.”

Profoundly quiet, Telly stares right through me at the cat. 

“She said everything was great. Up until Toby bit her.”

“She lied,” Telly says.

“I don’t think so.  Her shriek-in-the-moment seemed rather heart-felt.”

“She lied on her profile.  She lied when she said she likes animals.  You know that.  That’s what is behind your anthropomorphic border collie’s glare.  She probably likes the idea of being the tender-hearted kind of person who would like an animal because that’s what she figures a guy would like to find in her.  When, really, what she wants is something still and stuffed.”

“Yeah.”  I try to make my eyebrows do what the veteran expression artist is able to do with his.  But I can’t begin.  “Belle is nice,” I say, recalling a more positive survey response.  “She likes cats.  She said she really wants to get together again.”

Well? the expressive lifeforms on his upper face all but ask.

“She’s not really my type.”

“We’ve heard that before,” Telly says grandly.  “What is your type?  Do you spell that out in your profile?”

“Not in so many words.”

“Here.”  Telly reaches into his pocket and produces a legal-size clipboard with paper and pen.  He cracks open the screen door to hand it to me. “Here,” he repeats when I am slow to respond.  I still can’t get over the whole clipboard-from-the-pocket trick.  “Now, make a list.”

“Of what?”

“The things you’re looking for in a woman.  If you’re going to look for someone online, part of your profile should reflect what you’re looking for in a woman.”

“The ‘ol looking-for-in-a-woman list.”

“Yep.”

I look beyond the porch screen at the birds in the bushes, squirrels scampering in the trees, neighbors yanking their dogs after them.  The order of the universe is two-by-two. 

“You’re not writing,” Telly says.

Quickly, I make a list.  He asks me to read it to him.  He mulls it over.

“That sounds like an academic checklist for testing the veracity of a good woman.”

“Like Cinderella and her glass slipper. Pretty good, huh?”

The cat hops onto the table without warning and sticks a perfect three-foot landing on the clipboard, grooming the fourth leg/arm even as he touches down.

“Bravo,” Telly says and laughs.

“Toby, I can’t see my list.”  

“Forget that list.  Here.”  Telly hands me a small notepad the size of pack of cards.  “Make a new list.  A list of things you can’t see. Using only one- and two-syllable words.”

“Of things I can’t see?  In a woman?”

He gives me a look.  “Are you looking for another cat?”

I close my eyes and consider what I cannot see.  Once I write down the first invisible attribute, the list of classics practically writes itself.

“Okay,” Telly says.  “Read it to me.”

“Good sense of humor.  Compassionate—four-syllables, I know.  Likes movies, kittens and puppies, walks on the beach, Candy Crush.”

Toby swipes at the pad and knocks it out of my hand.

“That’s better,” my nonagenarian friend says.

“How is that better?  Now I have no list.”

“That’s not your list.  That’s some generic wish-list you’ve seen in a hundred other profiles and then adopted as your own because you think that’s what a woman expects a man to be looking for in a woman.”

Using my fingers, I try to follow the logic. The thinking I…the expecting woman…the looking man…the woman-in-which-to-be-found. Nearly a whole hand of subjects and direct-objects and other objects is staring me in the face.

My friend looks beside himself with disgust.  “Do you even know how to play Candy Crush?”   

“If that’s not me—or, I mean, if that’s not what a woman expects me to be looking for in her—I don’t know what is.” I look at the fingers deployed in my defense. I seemed to be missing one. “Maybe I should just say I’m looking for someone who likes a good mystery.”

“I like that.”

“I’m kidding.”

But Telly isn’t.  He asks for my laptop, which Toby is all too willing to provide him.  Immediately, the old guy proceeds to update my profile, suggesting that the man behind it is looking for himself and looking for a woman who is doing likewise.  Maybe, he concludes, they could compare notes and discuss their findings over coffee cups at six feet.  He hits the submit button.

“You do understand I am going to delete that the moment you leave.”

“One of my great joys while Alexi was living, was learning new things about her and sharing new things about me.”

“Telly, I like that but—”

Ding!  The laptop dings.

“I think it’s great you are still a romantic at ninety-two, but—”

Ding!

“I swear.  What was I saying?”

Ding!  The computer won’t shut up.

“What is that?” I ask and take back my laptop.  The dater’s dashboard is still pulled up and my mailbox—Ding!—is filling up.  I open it and find four—Ding!—five new queries from women who are each on a quest for the elusive self.  Their pictures look recent.  Their profiles are cute.  And they are down for sharing and comparing over sugar and cream. 

“Telly, this is even better than lying.  Look at this.”

He smiles to himself.  “You just have to know yourself.  Or, in your case, know that you don’t fully know yourself.  Once you do that, you open the door to a wonderful lifelong adventure. And if you can find a woman whose foot will fit into that, you’ll have your Cinderella.”

My wingmen, ages ten and ninety-two.

The Price of Free

The cat and I meet this woman at a bar.  It’s like this.

Scrolling online, I found myself attracted to this particular profile of a woman with a purported soft spot for pets.  Dorah was her name.  Still is.  Dorah seemed perfect.  Online.  The language she used.  Her cast of free emojis.  And she was eager to meet.  There’s nothing like one’s interest in you to encourage your interest in them.

So, Thursday night, she sent me a text saying  governor [frowny face] going to shut down bars again.  [wineglass] [martiniglass] [beerstein]  This might be last weekend to meet over drinks.  Wanna?  [teddybear] [runningman] [calendar] 

I don’t drink.  But I like drinking emojis.  So I texted her back a line of [cute paper umbrella]’s and an old-school yes.

Sitting with Toby in my car outside the bar, I look out at the wild world.  The numbers of people affected by the virus are rising.  The number of those people dying from the virus are rising.  And there is not a mask to be seen.  Against my better judgement, I tuck my mask under my shirt and step out of the car.

She saved us a table.    

“What an adorable cat,” Dorah says while I pull up a third chair for myself.  It’s a nice place.  Lots of tables, almost six-feet apart.  Patrons are encouraged to bring their pets.  Even the bartenders have secondhand fur on their black shirts. 

Two sips into her first high-priced drink, Dorah says, “I used to have a cat.”

Toby and I look at each other. 

“So, you don’t have a cat anymore?”

“I adopted Angelpoo from this free clinic.”  She rolls her eyes, looking back.  “You know it’s true, you get what you pay for.”

This border collie at the next table looks at my date and he looks at me.  I pretend not to notice. 

I listen to Dorah’s plans to procure an expensive Siamese/Egyptian cat hybrid that looks great without shedding on Dorah’s nice cloths.  She will call the expensive cat Angelpoo-Two.  I put one hand to the side of my face to block out the border collie’s glare and I slide my glass to the cat.

“How long have you had Toby?” she asks me.

“Ten years?”  I look to my left and Toby nods.  “He kind of just showed up.  When I opened the door, he invited himself in and asked where I keep the litter box.  There was no exchange of funds.  No receipt.  So forget any refund policy.”  I laugh.  The blue ox—specifically, the blue ox at the table with the burly guy in flannel—snorts.  I glance at the border collie.  He makes a happy face and pants.

“Huh.”  That is all Dorah is willing to give me.

“So…”  I look at the ox and the border collie.  I look around the bar and note one hen, two alpacas and one attendee in a fish bowl.  “So.  It sounds like you really like the name Angelpoo.” 

My date makes her head go side-to-side like a real-life thinking emoji.   “It’s not so much the name.  I just don’t believe in giving up on a relationship.  If it takes me four or five Angelpoo’s to make it work, I’m committed to it.”

Toby and I exchange looks again.  He carefully pulls my glass to him.

“Relationships take a lot of work,” I grant her.  “Good ones, at least.  I’m sure there are some budget relationships, you know, the kind that is not exactly smiley-emoji great but doesn’t cost a lot to maintain.  Like a neighbor’s koi that swims over to pay a visit when the waters rise.”

Dorah rolls her eyes.  “I need another drink.”

After three drinks, Dorah and Toby are pretty loosened up.  And that is when the evening starts to unwind like a tragic ball of yarn.  The woman with a soft place in her heart for the name Anglepoo forgets which one of us she is not on a date with and raises her hand to pet the cat. 

I tell her, “I wouldn’t do that.”

Next thing I know Dorah is shrieking like a [combustible frowny face] and folding a napkin around her finger.  I ask if there is anything I can do. 

“You and your….”  Her mind races to find and unpack the right emoji.  “FREE CAT.”  She seethes, and droplets of scorn hover over the table.  In one deft move, I pull two masks from the neck of my shirt and put one over my mouth and one over Toby’s.  “You and your little masks.  I should have known.  And what is that supposed to mean?” 

She should have known the thing she doesn’t know.  I’ll be thinking about that conundrum for a while.   

My free date’s outrage rises like the Covid charts.  She throws back her drink and stands.  “Everything was going so nice.  Call me when you meet Toby-Two.” 

Dorah [runningman]’s out of the bar.

There is slow-chugging laughter in the room.  It builds.  Snorting and panting and bleating.  Toby and I look around at the single people and their pets.   Some of them have a third glass at an empty seat.  Some of them pull out a mask. 

A woman stops at my table on the way out.  She is wearing a sizable see-through tunnel around her neck with a gerbil inside taking laps.  As she leans to write her name and number on a napkin, the gerbil slides back in its tube.  “Call me, maybe.” 

One of the cute barkeeps, followed by her three lemmings, comes by and asks if we need a refill.  She hands me a card with her name and email address.  Each of the lemmings hands me a card.

At this point, Toby-One can’t walk a straight line to save his nine lives.  I carry him to the car and he passes out on the front seat.  I know there will be a price to pay when we get home and all those drinks come out of him the same way they went in.  But that’s a relationship.  A friendship.  Free from the get-go.  Requiring more work than a forty-hour-per-week job.  And yielding more dividends that you can hold in a litter box.

Toby-One and Greenfish-Twenty-Three share a drink.

Little Dummy

The house next to me sold months ago.  Yesterday, Friday, movers delivered the new owners’ things.  I cancelled my Saturday plans to nothing and mowed my yard, trimmed back the rogue gardenia bush, washed the hood and passenger side of my car, and painted the wood trim on that side of the house facing my car and the new neighbors.  

Toward the end of the day, I am sweeping the patio when I spot the new neighbors walking from their minivan toward the back door of their house. 

I tighten my face mask and call out, “Hello, neighbors.  My name’s Loch.”

“Dan-the-man,” the man in the couple says jovially. 

“And Alice,” the and-half says.

Dan sets down a large cooler and approaches the picket fence between the properties.  When he extends his hand over the points of the pointed fence, I step back.

“I don’t want to be the unneighborly neighbor—this soon into our living arrangements—but Toby and I are still practicing social distancing.”  I indicate the cat behind me licking his feet.

Dan and Alice hold their hands in front of their mouths in a gesture of compliance.

“Is this IT?” a young voice cries with disgust.  Behind the couple, a young girl, maybe seven or eight, steps into the yard holding a toddler in her arms. 

“Yes, Sweetheart,” Dan-the-man answers.  To me he says, “That’s Tabitha and…” he hesitates.  “Francis.”

“Don’t say your son’s name like that,” his wife snaps at him.  “It’s a good name.  It’s my father’s name.  Why do you have to say it like you’re apologizing?”

Dan-the-husband looks at me sheepishly and, dare I say, apologetically. 

And and Man are off to a good start, and I tell them I’ll let them get back to the business of moving in. 

I return to my patio where the cat’s paws are sparkling pink.  I resume sweeping the pavers sure to impress the new neighbors by their very cleanliness.  This is what I’m thinking with each sweep, that Dan and Alice will actually watch out their window at night and covet the dirt-free brick on my side of the fence.  While I’m deep in that worthy fantasy, the girl in the next yard disappears into the house with her parents and returns, by herself, with a sword. 

Hmm.

I tell myself I will only let this scenario develop so far.  But I am willing to let it get started.

The dark-hair girl raises the sword above her head, pausing dramatically, and then steps as she pulls the blade forward and down.  In the sword’s wake, a sheet of bubbles glistens.  She raises her weapon of choice once again, and executes a perfect two-handed slice, pulling another sheet of bubbles out of thin air.  Her stance, the rhythm of her execution, even her purposeful scowl are that of a samurai many times her age. 

I mimic her swordplay with my broom, making dramatic sxhwings, baps, and rub-a-dub sweeps across the patio.  She sees this and takes her game up a notch, swinging in more contrived arcs, grunting from the diaphragm as she gives rise to sheet upon sheet of bubbles.

I’m not above acting someone else age, and I follow the young bubble warrior’s example—minus the bubbles—grunting heroically as I leap and sweep. 

Annoyed, Toby takes his clean feet onto the grass.

An unspoken competition has developed.  The girl and I.  The bubble sword and the dust broom.  We each try to out-swing the other, grunt louder than the other.  Until…

“Tabitha!” the girl’s mother shouts from an open window.  Bubbles drop.  The girl stops what she is doing and looks at me as though to ask Do you see what I have to live with?

“Yes Alice!” the girl calls her mother by name. 

I like this kid.  I’m just thankful she’s not mine.

Her invisible father steps to the window.  “Tabitha, please don’t let your brother eat the dirt.”

The kid looks again at me.  I’m looking past her at the toddler with a handful of dirt.  He raises his hand.  I can’t look away.

“Gee Laweeze,” the girl says and stomps to the cooler.  She removes what looks like a rather large and sophisticated sandwich for such a young girl and takes it to her even younger brother.  Francis dips the dripping sandwich in dirt and sort of presses the whole dirty business against his mouth area.  

That accomplished, the girl steps closer to the fence and tells me, “My name’s Tabby.  Like a cat.”

On cue, Toby leaps up onto the fence and deftly steps between the painted points toward the new Tabby in the neighborhood.

“My name is Loch,” I tell her.  “Like the Lochness Monster.”  She goes with it.

“That’s my brother.  Sir Francis.”

“Sir Francis?”  The kid can’t be two yet.  “He’s got blue kangaroos on his pull-ups.”

“That’s what my dad calls him.”  She shrugs. 

“Well, the little guy whose head you’re scratching is Toby.  Toby, say hello to Tabby.”

“Hey Toby.”  For the first time since arriving in the neighborhood, the little girl talks and smiles like a little girl.  “I’m not supposed to get too close to other people.  But cats are not people.”

“That’s a good rule.  Is that what Dan and Alice told you?”

It takes a moment, but she gets it and smiles.  “No.  That’s what they say on TV.  Keep your distance, wear a mask.”  She looks around, surveying the new home.  “What kind of yard is this?  The fence only covers this side and the back.  What about the other side?”

I shrug.   

“Anyone could get in,” she says with incredulity beyond her years.  “Anyone could crawl out.”

I look at the young boy sitting on the dirt, firmly rooted on the dirt by his interest in the dirt. 

“I don’t think you need to worry about Sir Francis.  Besides, this a good neighborhood.  I think you’re safe.  But just in case…”

I leap with my broom over my head and bring it down on the unsuspecting pavers.  Dust mushrooms over the patio.   

“That’s stupid,” Tabby tells me.

“Really?  It’s the same thing you were doing.”

She considers and then explains her purpose.  “I’m defending our home.”

“What are you defending it against?”

She rolls her eyes.  “The 19 viruses.”

“Oh.  I didn’t know.  I couldn’t see them.”

“Gee Laweeze.  You don’t see the viruses.  They’re invisible.”

“Then how do you know where to swing your sword?”

She puts a hand on her aspiring hip to harrumph at me.  “Anyone knows this isn’t a sword.  It’s a light saber.  Didn’t you see the movie?”

Toby meows, totally with the girl on this point.

“I’m impressed that someone your age knows about the 19 viruses and has taken it upon herself to defend her family from them.”

“Everyone knows about them,” she says. 

“But not everyone acts like it.”

“YE’AHH,” she booms.  “I know.”  Speaking in a voice of disdain that could serve to introduce the next bad actors on a stage, she turns at the sound of her parents stepping outside, their hand-masks at their sides.

“Hey,” her father cries into the open cooler.  “What happened to my sandwich?”

“You said you wanted Sir Francis to stop eating dirt.”

“But…”  Dan-the-mere-man looks at his daughter while he wrestles with hunger, disobedience, and a weak parental spine.  “I guess we weren’t very specific about what to do.”

“Nope,” their rogue daughter answers. 

He looks at me.  “It’s just a sandwich.”

I nod my head.  “Just a sandwich.”

Tabby is quite taken by Toby who is uncharacteristically receptive to her petting.  But the girl assumes too much when she tries to pick him up.

“Ow,” she cries.  “He bit me.”

“Are you okay, sweetheart?”  Alice and Dan spring into protective-parent mode, hovering around the girl to see, while keeping their own hands away from her mouth.

“Why did he bite me?” she asks me.

“He wasn’t cool with you picking him up.”  There’s no reason to tell her that the strongest words in a cat’s vocabulary are not words.  She’ll learn.  “But that doesn’t mean he doesn’t like you.” 

“I’m sorry, Toby,” the girl says to the kitty on the fence.  “I won’t do it again.”  The little guy arches his back and gives her a parting meow before leaping down on my side of the fence.

“And there he goes, back to the big dummy with the broom.”  This commentary is provided at the courtesy of one spoiled third-party narrator.

Big Dummy. 

I look to Alice and Dan, but neither bat an eye at the term of disrespect their daughter just expressed for their new right-next-door adult neighbor.  They don’t hear it.  Or they’re scared to acknowledge it, take a position and act like parents.

But Toby and I?  We don’t have to live with the attitudinous bubble master. 

“Back to me,” I say.  “Perhaps when Little Dummy learns some respect for cats and their owners, she can have a playdate with Toby.  He’s got some really cool ninja moves against invisible forces.”

Dan and Alice freeze.  Their eyes move from daughter to neighbor like onlookers at a showdown.  They step back.  

Tabby frowns as she thinks through—what is no doubt for her—a novel situation.  “I can learn some respect.”

Toby and I laugh. 

Dan and Alice look ready to move again.

“Really,” the girl says.  “If I show respect, will you teach me how to hold Toby?  And will you let him show me some ninja moves?”

I cup my hands and Toby hops up.  “We’ll see.  Tomorrow?  Same time.  Same fence.”

She picks up her sword.  “I’ll be here.”

Fighting the nineteen viruses with her bubble sword.

---

Watching the effects of the Bubble Master.

---

The Sxhwing! The Bap! And the Rub-a-Dub moves in fighting the virus back!

Truest Online

The date is set. 

Her name is Belle.  Like Southern Belle, she texted me.  Ring the bell.  Ding-dong.  

Got it.

I’ve met people online before.  We typically email, talk by phone, then schedule a time to meet in person.

But the virus has changed everything for those concerned about contracting something that should stay with another person.  SWAP!  That’s how Belle refers to it in a text.  She says there is nothing wrong with fear of getting sick or making someone else sick.  In this context, she says, it is a matter of respect. 

I figure we have at least that much in common: our mutual fear.  Maybe it’s something we can build on. 

Or SWOO, she says in another text: Stay With the Original Owner.  Maybe we can build on that too.

The point is, we will be keeping our distance.  In fact, we will be keeping our date online. 

“Remember, the first date is all about first impressions,” Telly says.

For the record, I did not ask a ninety-two-year-old man for dating advise.  However, Telly is ninety-two years of knowledge and experience.  And he’s willing to share.  In fact, he insists.

“So, you can’t wear a hat,” he tells me.

“Then I’m going to have to find the brush.” 

“You are not the only person who has gone three months without a haircut.  Just don’t wear a hat.  That’s not a good first impression.”

“What about second impressions?  Don’t they count?”

“Of course.  If you get that far.”

If I get that far.

“The first date you just talk.  Keep the conversation neutral.  No religion.  No politics.”

“But those reveal so much about a person,” I say.

“Wait until you’re four or five impressions in before you start playing with fire.”

Got it.

Some days, a cat won’t have anything to do with you.  Other days, you can’t take a shower without them scaling the curtain until the rod fails.  Today is one of those other days.  It’s also date-day.  So Toby and I compromise: he sits on the desk next to the laptop and agrees to let me do all the talking. 

I make the Skype call, and an image of what Belle in her profile photo should look like in ten years appears on the screen.  Ding-Dong. 

Right off the bat she says, “I know I should update my picture.  I’ve been using that old thing for years.”  Thoughts of a years-old profile are spinning in my head like tumblers in a lock, but before they can settle on one thing to say, Belle strikes one of Telly’s proverbial matches.  “Do you mind if we pray first?”  While Belle proceeds to banish any romantic possibility in this first impression, Toby and I peek at the screen and see two clasped hands encased in blue nitrile gloves.  The tumblers continue to spin.

“So, Belle,” I say, “have you ever dated remotely before?” 

“Oh, yeah,” she says.  “I do this all the time.”  One of her false eyelashes drops into her lap and she casually catches it and presses it back in place.  “It would be nice to see someone in person, but that’s second or third-date.  Maybe fourth.”

“What’s different about the second date?” I ask.

A question knots Belle’s brows.  The lighting in her world flickers.  “I don’t really know.”  She is candid to a fault.  “I like this site, because I get to meet a lot of nice guys I probably wouldn’t otherwise.  We talk.  I like that.”

The false lash comes unhinged again and one blue finger presses it back.

“I like talk too.”

“I know there is a lot more that can happen on a second date.”  She says this while rolling her eyes and twisting her blue gloves.  “A lot,” she says like a kid in her first bathing suit looking up at the high dive.  With just a few expressions, one prayer and a couple drops of her lashes, Belle both confirms the datedness of her profile picture and cuts her age in half.

“But talking is good,” I say, encouraging her to back away from the high dive.  “That’s how you get to know a person and decide if you want the other lot.  Of course, if all you want is the other lot, there are other websites for that.”

“Yeah,” she says with a smile.

“So, what do you do?” I ask her.  “When you’re not…dating?”

“I live with my parents.”

“That’s what you do for a living?”

“No, silly.”  She rolls her eyes and pushes the false-lash envelope.  “But they’re older and I agreed to move back home and help.  They give me my space.  I have my own room.  But’s a little weird moving back home after so many years.  Sometimes, I have a hard time feeling like myself.  Like an adult.”

“I remember feeling that way when I was a kid.”

“Yeah.  I know they love me and they try to support me.  But they want me to be their idea of a daughter.  When I was in college, they really pressured me to go into medicine.”

“Huh.  So what career path did you end up choosing?”

“I went into medicine.”

At this point, Toby chooses to remind me that there is no pressuring a cat, no training a cat, no reason to expect a cat to follow protocol or give any advanced warning of what path they will choose next.  He does this by striding across my desk.  Right in front of the laptop’s camera.

“Oh my God oh my God oh my God!” Belle says excitedly.  “You have a cat.”

I laugh and tell her, “You know, he gives me my own room and sometimes he lets me spend time in it alone.  But never for long.”

Belle’s false lashes both spring into oblivion and her face lights up like a packet of proverbial matches.  “I love it,” she says.  “This is just like work.”  This odd comment brings Toby back into the picture and he wonders, with me, what in the world my remote date is talking about.  “I’m a veterinarian,” she says. “My parents said they would help with my tuition, but only if I went into medicine.  It is probably the truest decision I have ever made for myself.”

“Truest decision.  I like that.  Well, Truest, meet Toby the cat.”

“Hey Toby.”  She waves her gloved hands at the camera.  “My name is Belle, like Southern Belle, ring the bell.  Ding-dong.”

Toby looks to me for verification.  I nod.

“Do you have a specialty?”

“Not exactly a specialty,” she says.  “But I have my favorites.”

“Do you mean your favorite areas of medicine?  Like cancer, orthopedics, kissing boo-boo’s?”

She laughs.  “I like cats.  I mean, I like all animals, but they’re my favorite.  That’s why I went into medicine.  That’s how I chose to be me.  The only problem…”  She looks around at that part of her world I can’t see.  “I sort of bring my work home with me.”  She reaches off-camera and pulls a black cat into the picture.  “This is Archimedes.  Someone dropped him off, after-hours, outside the office in a box.  I think he had been hit by a car.”  Her voice gets emotional.  “Things were pretty grim for a while.  But we pulled through.”

As Toby and I watch Belle scratch Archimedes behind his ears, another cat puts its paws on her shoulders and rubs cheeks with her.

“Oh, this is…” She turns to look.  “This is Descartes.  Once again, someone abandoned this handsome fellow at my office.  A woman actually brought him in, handed him to me and left.  There was nothing wrong with him.  I figure the person who dropped him off just wasn’t a cat person.  You know?” 

A third furry face looks in our date-arama.  And then a fourth one, wearing a rogue eyelash for a uni-brow, lifts up from Belle’s lap.  The longer we watch, the more cats edge from out of the unseen periphery, onto or beside their truest friend. 

Toby offers a simple meow in greeting.  A whole chorus of meows returns to him.  Toby puts his paw on the screen, and at once the other side is filled with furry arms and faces.  I hear Belle laughing, unseen behind the wall of pink paws. 

This is good for about thirty seconds, until someone hisses and fur starts flying.

Belle apologizes and says she needs to end the call before she has to pull out her first aid kit.  But we agree to try this again, if not for the elusive second date, as a play-date for the kids.

Love PPE-style.

All the Other Mondays

“This has been some week,” I begin.  “You know how Mondays are.  This has been a week of Mondays.  And this is the weekend.  It’s supposed to be a reprieve from the other Mondays.” 

I stare at the ceiling while I try to find a comfortable position on the sofa.  

“I feel like a groundhog who stuck his head out of the ground, or log—whatever they burrow into where shadows and viruses can’t follow—and I discovered this crazy mayhem of police and politicians and people, all colors, slinging words and rocks and rubber bullets on either side of me.  My first thought is to duck back underground because this has nothing to do with me.  But it has everything to do with me.”  I pause.  “Let me know if I need to slow down or repeat any of this.”

There is a scratching sound as someone listens.

“You don’t have to be personally sick with Covid, unemployed, and have a knee in your neck to feel what is going on.  Telly says it has seeped into the water and the air.  He’s right.  It has changed my coffee and tied my stomach in Gordian knots.  It has changed the people I speak with every day and the conversations I have with them.  I know of eight people who have started taking an antidepressant in the past three months.”

I hear a yawn, but I let it go.

“I walked a piece of mail across the street to the Waddels, whose power bill was delivered to me by mistake.  The door opened half-way, and two Waddels, foreheads and eyes, moved out from behind the door.  What do you want? they practically shrieked.  I told them, ‘I think this bill belongs to you.’  They looked at me and they looked at the envelope in my suspect hand.  It’s open, they cried in horror.  I told them I thought it was mine, until I saw the amount due.  They must run every appliance 24/7 and hot and cold air at the same time.  I was going to say something funny to that effect, when I saw a tear in one of their eyes.  They made no move to open the door.  So I told them I would just leave the bill on the front stoop.  The second I set it down, one of them started shaking this can with pennies or rocks in it.  I think that’s a negative reinforcement technique used in training dogs.

“Fine, I thought, and left. 

“And who do I run into but Ed, who, I must say, was surprising nice.  I told him about the Waddels’ pennies in the can.  Ed said he uses dried beans.  Our conversation was nice.  Maybe too nice.  Having an audience, he had a few things he wanted to express.  Things—I know now—that would be difficult to bring up casually in a conversation going that nice.  So he started talking in a loud voice with lots of hard punctuation.  He transitioned a little further from nice by using short sentences with all the constructive accommodations a four-letter word likes.  Without the four-letter words.  I thought maybe he was getting emotional about the dog he returned because it didn’t understand the beans in the can, or maybe he was trying not to choke on a chia seed.  I’ve done that.

“But Ed found Ed—the same Ed our friend Telly loves to dislike—and began bleeping a mounting monstrosity of four-letter words with words of unemployment opportunities, conspiracy viruses and tribal identity.  Very impressive and totally unnerving.     

“There was no one else around.  I worried how to walk away without the offensive babble following me back across the street.  So I held up my phone and pretended to make a call.  I said ‘Telly’ so that Ed could hear me above himself.  ‘You were right.’

I laugh at the memory of invoking a ninety-two-year old power.

“Ed clammed up like a Waddel and backed slowly up his driveway and into his luxury garage.” 

My attentive listener is still with me.  Still scratching away.

“On a more positive note, a woman reached out to me online.  She said she liked my profile.  She asked me if I own a hair brush.  We set up a Skype date.  I should be happy.  Right?

“Well, then I get this long text message from Teri Lin.  You remember, the woman who’s not my type.  At first I thought it was a butt-text.  She never sends a text that long.  Turns out she’s doing the same thing I am.  She set up a profile online, and within two hours she had messages from ten guys with intentions ranging from Skyping and Zooming to meeting at a restaurant or taking a day trip to the mountains.

“I called her and got a message that her voice mailbox is full.  Well, of course it’s full if that many men are convinced she has a hair brush.

“That’s why I had to open that bottle of wine, the one that has been sitting uncorked for six months because I don’t drink.”

Lots of scratching now.

“Because that’s what you do when the beloved country over your burrow is flooding in turmoil and the pain is seeping into everything you touch and think.  You call the woman who walks with rainbows, and when her mailbox is full, you open a bottle of the next best thing.

“Maybe if I had a dog.”

The scratching stops.

“If I had a dog, he could rest his chin on my leg and give me sad dopey dog-eyes and tell me to cheer up.  If he was a big dog.  That wouldn’t work with a little dog.  If you have to pick up the dog, it changes the dynamics.  You’re helping them to help you, when, realistically, you’re probably just freaking them out by taking away their right to choose. 

“I don’t know why I’m talking about picking up dogs.  I don’t have a dog.  I have a cat.  Now, if I pick up the cat, any consolation for me is going to come from outside that two-party relationship when someone sees my fresh wounds. 

“Other people can pick up their cats, rub them behind the ears and chuck them under the chin.  If I pick up my cat, there are consequences.  You know, I feed him, shelter him, buy him any toy he wants…I even play with the toy until he gets tired of watching me. 

“I’m sorry.  It’s just been one of those weeks, one of those days, and this sofa…!!!”

I feel myself tearing up for absolutely no good reason.  My head is right up against one arm of the sofa, my feet extend about a foot over the far end. 

“This sofa is just like any other Monday!”

That does it for my therapist.  He hits the floor, putting all his weight behind it.  He approaches with fur and fury. 

Then he hops. 

Up. 

Onto my chest, where he proceeds to knead my sternum. 

Left-paw.  Right-paw.  Switch. 

He does this over and over, ad infinitum.  Finally, satisfied, he lays down and curls into a tight ball.  And purrs.  The purring radiates into my chest, loosening things I hadn’t suspected until they loosened up.  My breathing becomes less labored.  The fourteen pounds on my chest is suddenly just right.  Just what I need. 

The turmoil is still there.  It is still about everyone, burrowed or above-ground.  But this is nice.

Toby lifts his head and looks at me to make certain I understand that this is one thing no big dog, divided neighbor, or type who walks with rainbows could do half as well.

When I leave, he suggests, I can show my appreciation by dropping a few treats in the payment bowl.

The cat will see you now.

The Questionnaire

After work, Toby and I are on the porch in our respective rocking chairs.  There is a slight breeze in the windchimes, stars climbing out of the trees, a parent screaming at the top of her lungs for her dear child to get down off the car.  And I see one old man trudging up my driveway.

“Telly?” I call.  “Hey!  I wish I had known you were coming.  I would have saved you a slice of my black bean pizza.”

Telly makes a retching sound and spits.  “I appreciate the healthy thought, but at ninety-two, I’m past watching what I eat.”  My neighbor trudges past me, pulls a chair from the patio, parks it beside me on the other side of the porch screen.  And sits.  “This should be social-distancing enough. Got any coffee?”

“Are you sure that won’t keep you up, having it this late?”

“Not as much as your bean pizza would.” 

I go to the kitchen where I pass the time for percolating by singing the happy birthday song about fifty times.  When I return to the porch, Telly and Toby are deep in conversation, but the second they notice me they stop.

“Here you go.”  I hand one cup through the door to my guest. 

He sniffs first.  “Did you put black beans in here?”

“Only the finest.”

He takes a sip.  “I guess I can keep it down.  So, what’s the deal with that woman you work with?”

I don’t where this is coming from.  “Is that what you and Toby were talking about.  I work with about a hundred women, when I’m in the office.”

“You know the one.”

“Teri Lin?”

He nods.  “So why aren’t you seeing her?”

“Both of us are still sort of quarantining.  And I’ve told you, she’s not my type.”

“Why do you say that?  Is it because she likes you?”  Before I can pull together a good defense for my inaction, he says, “I’ve noticed that about you.  As soon as it is clear that something good is accessible, you back off.”

“Hold on.  Give me one example.”

“That woman who used to deliver your mail.”
“Oh yeah.  Every time I opened the door, there she was.”

“And how about the one who worked at the grocery store?”

“Beth.  She was always trying to check me out.”

“She had nice legs.”

“She did.”  We sigh together in our common recollection.

“That’s fine,” Telly says.  “Keep the real answers to yourself.  I’ve just been thinking.  What if this is just the beginning?  I mean the virus, the social distancing.  What if there is another wave of it coming?  What if wave after wave of the virus keeps us in isolation for the next eleven years?”

The play in our banter drops.  The coffee chills.  Three months of this ordeal has been an inconvenience for some, worrisome for most, tragic overall.  The thought of riding this wave until Telly is one-hundred and three is unimaginable. 

We are quiet.

“Tomorrow will make eleven years,” he says, “since my Alexi died.  That’s eleven years of isolation from my sun and my moon, my seasons, my breath.  God, how am I still living after all this time?”

I tell my friend I am sorry for his perennial loss.

“They say time heals all wounds.  Idiots.  Only Death heals all wounds.  And he won’t have me, yet.”  The old man sighs.  “Sorry to piss on the end of your day like that.  But I wanted to share this with you while it was on my mind.”

After a quick glance at Toby, I ask, “Thank you?”

Telly roars with laughter.  “There is a point.  And here it is: you shouldn’t wait for the end of the virus to find your sun and moon.  It could outlast you.”

“Are you saying I could be dodging home deliveries and check-out lines for the rest of my life?”

“I’m saying this might be the new normal.  If so, there is no waiting it out.  And a social life limited to a cat and one cantankerous old neighbor is probably not enough.”

“I guess I have enough gloves and masks to venture out a few times.  I’ve got a couple hazmat suits hanging in the closet.” 

Toby nods, confirming this.

“Only you.”  He looks through the screen at me.  “There is another way, without all the gear.  Go on one of those dating websites and create a profile.”

“You walked all the way down here to tell me that?”  I tell him his effort was a waste.  “I want you to know I’ve already looked into that.” 

“And?”

“I don’t know that online is the way for me to meet women.”

“Why?  Were you scared off when you found an account for a good-looking US postal worker?”

“No’oh.  There’s this long questionnaire that kind of put me off.  It has aaaall these questions.”

“That’s why it’s called a questionnaire.”

“Basically, you’re being asked to sell yourself.  I’m just not comfortable selling myself, especially to someone who’s reading my answers when I’m not there to explain them.”  In my ensuing pause, I try to wait for the cantankerous rebuttal I know is coming.  But I’m no waiter.  “I know what you’re going to say: I need to sell me, because no one else is going to do it.”

“Not at all,” Telly says.  “Read me the list.  I’ll answer your questions.  Seriously, the only thing I like more than talking about me is talking about someone else.”

I look at Toby.  He brings me the phone.  

“Okay.”  I pull up the list. 

Telly takes another sip of coffee and cracks his knuckles. 

“Interests,” I read.  “What are your interests?”

“Talking politics with my close-minded son-in-law, walks around the block with God, looking at the ocean…looking at a woman against the ocean, laughing my ass off at my close-minded son-in-law.”

“Okay.  What about religion?”

“What about it?”

“It just says religion.” 

“Tell them to refer to the previous answer.”

“Politics?”

“Anything that promotes world peace.”

“Alright Miss America.  How about your income?”

“Put down we’re looking for a relationship, not a cause to support.”

“That could get us some hate talk.”

“I’m not worried.  It’s your name on the profile.  But that’s the nature of online conversation.  People responding vehemently in a moment of misunderstanding.  You gotta have thick skin.”

“For a dating website?  Maybe I’ll just skip the income question.”  Toby is with me on that.  “Money was often a divisive topic between my lovely ex and me.”

“Speaking of divisive topics, do they ask about cats?”

Toby and I laugh.

“Seriously,” Telly says.  “Cats are very divisive, as a self-definer, that is.  You’re either a cat person, or a dog person.  Publicize that you have a cat and you immediately lose a big population of eligible women.  But, at the same time, you attract a big population.  By virtue of the cat.” 

“So it has nothing to do with me.”

“It has everything to do with you!  What kind of guy would choose life with a cat when he could spend it with a dog?  There’s a reason why the phrase cat is a man’s best friend has never gained any traction.  No offense Toby.”

Toby dismisses the comment by raising a hind leg in my neighbor’s direction and giving himself a good lick.

“Well, I would not be true to myself if I didn’t include Toby.”

“Understood.  But maybe the cat is something you should you lead up to.  Talk about stepping barefoot on a hairball, or finding litter in your bed.  Drop a few clues before you pull the cat out of the closet.  Starting off with all your fur front and center may make a questionable first impression.”

“Speaking of impressions, the website asks for a picture to put with your profile.”  

“Of course it does.  They want to make certain you’re not a ninety-two-year-old man.”

“You know, Telly, with a little rewriting, I’ll bet you could drum up some interest online.”

“Maybe, but when all the beauty you have left is on the inside, it’s easier to sell that in person.  Besides, I’m not interested in finding that kind of relationship.  I had Alexi for over half-a-century.  I still have her, on the inside.  That’s my lingering beauty.”  He drains his cup and looks through the screen at me.  “Make certain you clean up for your profile picture.”

“Are you saying I look dirty?”

“Quarantine makes it easy to slide a little bit.  You look fine.  I’m just saying you want people to know you own a brush.”

Create a profile on Kat Chat, for social cats looking for that purrfect mate.

The Song

Faithful to the law of quarantine, I have gone few places outside the house.  When I do, I go to the grocery store, of course.  And there’s the pet food store, of course of course!

(Interestingly, I have found that face masks and gloves per shopper are greater for those shopping for their pets than for themselves.  Just an observation.)

Food aside, my needs are humble.  I don’t think of myself as a particularly materialistic person.  I don’t equate house-size with success nor stockpiles of toilet paper as a measure of preparedness.  I don’t need a sporty car to convey to others what words cannot.  But my humble ascetism pales next to my cat’s value on the things of this world.  He could care less about the new toy I bring home to him.  And then he does it. 

He cares less. 

Toby understands that I am on a budget, and I appreciate that I am not expected to buy expensive baubles with strings and faux-feathers.  (What are those things, anyhow?)  I go to the pet store for two things: food and kitty-litter.  Okay, three things: food, litter and treats.  But I usually leave with four things.  Four to ten, depending on what I find on the toy aisle. 

On that aisle I find shelf after shelf of balls on strings, feathers on strings, feathers-and-bells on strings.  (Strings figure heavily into cat-play paraphernalia.)  There are blankets that crinkle, remote-control mice, and the laser-dot pens.  OMG!  There are few joys that compare to the satisfaction of watching one’s historically catatonic cat go bonkers chasing an uncatchable red dot. 

So, I get home from shopping, ditch the mask and gloves, think happy birthday to myself while I wash the suds from my hands.  And I dump everything from the paper bag onto the floor in a grand display of toy decadence.  Toby looks at the littered floor, and he looks at me. 

“Check out this tail on a string,” I say excitedly and wave it about. 

It’s like I’m not there.

“I got one of those crinkle tunnels.”  I open a flat box and the spring-loaded tunnel explodes into existence.  And the crinkling sound!

“No?” 

I unbox the laser pen and cast a red dot on the floor in front of the chair he’s sitting on.  Toby’s head jerks, against his will, to follow the movement.  But when he recognizes what has caught his eye, he remembers how the red dot has played him before.  At once, he reels himself in and restores his bored posture.    

“Fine.  Be that way.  Lesson learned, I hope,” I say to myself.  I put the laser pen in my shirt pocket for later when the cat’s not around and I go to the sink to sing. 

It’s true we have been in isolation for a while.  Perhaps he has forgotten what these things mean.  Or perhaps he’s waiting for me to sing the happy birthday song out loud.  Of course!  The sink and the song.  They go together in the time of quarantine.

But before I can get one happy out of my mouth, someone hops onto the floor.  I turn and watch as Toby steps carefully among the brightly colored toys so as not to touch them.  He peers into the open pet store bag, laying on its side, and assumes a get-ready crouch.  Then, for no reason one could point a laser pen at, he darts into the bag and hits the end with a loud ka-POW. 

He hits it again, and again. 

ka-POW!

ka-POW!

He keeps hitting the bag’s bottom, effectively pushing the bag across the floor, plowing a clean swath through the balls and bells and things on strings. 

I pick up the play things and carry them back to my study where the landfield of toys-past would suggest a materialist in me after all.

Back in the kitchen, the bag takes a beating.  The ka-POW’s sound a bit more like ka-RIP. 

On my way back, Toby bursts into the hallway, his head extending out of the bottom of the bag like an MGM lion wanna-be.  His feet have made holes in one side of the bag so that he can move about.  He looks like a bizarre cosplay creature out of a cubist painting.  You know what I’m talking about.

He comes to me with rare humility and meows.  That one word or sound, that creature utterance, is so packed with meaning that it’s not always clear to me what he means.  But this time I know.  I take a seat on the floor, and Toby stands almost-still, thrusting his head forward to bite me as I gently extricate him from the heavy brown paper.  When we are done, he decimates the bag, kneads it with his front paws and lays on it like an attendee at a concert in the field.

And then he proceeds to watch me. And he keeps watching me. Waiting.

Until I get it.

Like a choral director at his sink, I pretend to turn a faucet, and together my audience and I sing the song.

The sound a cat makes leaving a bag.

So

A text message pops up on my screen: I am calling you. 

Not May I call? or Are you busy?  The name under the message is Diane Bismark. 

Toby reads my mind and leaps off the desk, kicking back and up a desperate wave of papers, still kicking back as he runs through the stack, hitting solid desk and leaping as I lean too late to catch him.  

The phone rings and I tense.  “Hey, Diane.”

“So, Loch…”

In the absence of a real office to prowl, the office managers, in the time of the virus, have been taking turns spot-checking our work, reading through file notes, listening to calls.  Diane Bismark is the quintessential uber (see footnote) -manager.  She knows everything, she can do anything, and she has the managing stamina of a border collie.

“…First of all, how are you?” she asks.

I hear the effort in the nicety.  Not that Diane isn’t nice.  But she was made to do business, not chit-chat.

“Pretty good, all things considered.”  I look down at the floor and see Toby’s head sticking out from under the bed.  On his back, he looks up at me, inviting me to run.  “I hope you are.”

“So…Loch.”  Back to this.  “I have been listening to your calls.  Some of them, they are kind of long.”

“Oh?”  At this point, stupidity is my best defense.

“Yesterday, you spoke with Teri Lin.  Twice.”

“Yeah.  I realize our conversations weren’t all work-related.  But being stuck at home by herself for such a long time, she had a few things she wanted to get off her chest.  And then she wanted to get them off again.”

“You are very generous with your work time.”

How should I interpret that?  Is this a prelude to a write-up?  I look to my sympathetic cat.  Still on his back, he retreats under the bed like a cat on a slow spring.

“So.”

This could go anywhere.  

“Like Teri Lin, we have all been working from home several weeks.”  Diane’s voice sounds tired and reflective.  Not-Diane-ish.  “Sometimes I forget what personal things I left on my desk.  They said a cleaning crew was going to come into the office and sanitize.  I hope they don’t break anything.”

I want to respond, but her comments are so far outside the scope of my expectations that I don’t know my own words yet.

“I see my home every day,” she says.  “In the breakfast room where I work, all the walls are yellow.  In the morning, squares of sunlight from the window move across the wall.  By nine, they are already losing definition, that which makes them square.  By ten, they expire into yellowness.”

“Diane.  That’s quite poetic.”

“It’s yellow.”  She drops her first correction.  “Like a school bus with four walls.  You know.”  She waits for me to get onboard with her analogy.  “Did you know that if an angry or violent person is left in a pink room, that person will gradually calm down; but if they are left in the pink room too long, they will become more enraged than before?”

I consider the room Diane is in now.

“All this yellow,” she says.  “It is so annoying.  You know those retractable measuring tapes that springs back?”

I tell her I know exactly what she is describing.

“Well, I used a yardstick to measure the dimensions of each wall.  These walls I see now, eight and ten hours at a time.  My mother told me when we bought the house, I should paint with neutral colors and add red or green accents using seat cushions and pictures.”  

I want to ask her what happened to the retractable measuring tape. 

“Don’t tell me how to paint my own house!” she shouts at the past.  I hear what sounds like a gasp with a general mix of incredulity with accents of regret and insight.  “I have lived with these yellow walls so many years, Loch.  How many more years can I do this?”

I’m still not certain where she is going with this.  But by calling my name, she tries to pull me with her, into the middle of an untold measure of yellow. 

“My husband has also been working from home.  His job is not essential enough to do some place else.  So, I see him all day.  Every day, Loch.”  The caller pauses.  Her silence builds.  “He is sooo annoying.  Sometimes…”  She considers her next confession.  “Sometimes….I cough.  You know, like maybe I have the virus, to justify social distancing with him.”  She hesitates before she laughs.  “Listen to me.”  She invites me to chuckle respectfully with her.  “Next thing you know, I’ll be telling you about our sex life.” 

And then she proceeds to relate her first-hand experience with intimate conjugal relations at six feet. 

That respectful laugh is a little more difficult the second time. 

But I understand now what I am hearing.  The Office-Diane I know is too rock-solid, too uber (remember the footnote) to be pushed around by any mere person or virus.  But she has finally met her match in Home-Diane, her self-reflective equal, a manager of a different sort, conducting spot-checks internally.  Now she is forced to consider just where she stands in a room of yellow as annoying to her sensibilities as the man she married.

Diane is not alone.  So many of the people who get me on the phone have encountered their reflective self in this time of isolation.  In addition to getting their vehicles back on the road, they want to improve their health, take up yoga or contra dancing, return to church after a long hiatus, get involved in local politics.  Repaint the breakfast room.

“So.”

This unassuming two-letter pivot is a transition Diane knows how to use.  She springs from it and retracts to it, like a person trying to measure herself now against the person she was before the extended lockdown. 

“It is always good to speak with you, Loch.  Hopefully, we will be in the office soon.  Remember to watch the length of your calls.”

…The footnote: Not the company. Think Frederich Nietzsche.

The non-essential husband.

Co-Workers and Beyond

It continues, the conversation with a virus at its core.

Derick Fallon dozed off seconds before his accident, detoured through a dealership and then proceeded to take off the rear bumpers of eight brand-spanking new Cadillacs. 

“But you’re okay,” I tell him.  “That’s the important thing.” 

Derick concedes that if he had respected the lockdown, he wouldn’t have been on the road to have an accident.  I don’t point out that staying on the road would also have played a real preventative role.

“I just couldn’t sleep,” he actually says. 

Irony shows no mercy.

Some of the callers I know personally.  Before the days of the virus, we worked in the same office.  One of these is Rembert.  He called me to make tentative plans for a round of golf sometime in the near future.  He says he is going nuts cooped up in the house with the wife and three kids.  He says, “I just need something to look forward to beyond.”
Unfortunately, our future plans hinge on Rembert, whose first name I don’t know and didn’t think to ask for when I had him on the phone because I was so preoccupied with his use of the word beyond. 

Only now do I wonder why we all call him Rembert.  How did that start?  Maybe he doesn’t have a second name.  Like Madonna or Cher.  I wonder if the wife and kids have a second name beyond.  In the company directory, there are five Remberts listed.  

I can’t imagine inviting five Remberts to play eighteen holes of golf just to make certain the one who invited me is included.  And just like that, I have imagined it!

I take the natural next step and wonder how many in the five-member household respond when someone shouts “Yo, Rembert.”

In the middle of it all, I get a call from another co-worker, Teri Lin.  Like everyone else in lockdown, she is trying to look beyond.

“Loch, I am so depressed.”

“It’s rough not seeing me for such a long time.”  I laugh.

“It really is.  Do you have a minute?”

I would give Teri Lin the rest of the workday, if she would let me.  We have wonderful animated conversations that take me out of the storms and doldrums of the workday.  We have done a few things outside the office as friends.  And we have been friends long enough for me to know that she is not what I am looking for in a woman.  Nevertheless.

“It is so hard not going out,” she laments.  “So unfair, when the weather is nice and the mean government says we are supposed to practice social-distancing.”

“Yeah.  I think the CDC says that too.”

“Everybody is trying to take advantage of the situation.”

“I don’t think there is anything in this for the Center of Disease Control.  They are simply telling us how to stay safe.  Do you ever play the online game Words With Friends?”

Teri Lin laughs.  “Oh, I needed that Loch.”

“What?”  Seriously.

“Your little games.  That’s just another way to spy on us to make certain we are staying six feet apart.”

“I know games that don’t require a smart phone.  I’m thinking of a word with seven letters.”

“More games.”  Teri Lin huffs.  “I want to feel the sand between my toes, lime at the back of my throat.  I want to spend money at the traveling hot-dog kiosks at Myrtle Beach.”

“That’s sounds great.  A friend of mine actually moved to Myrtle Beach to work one of those hot-dog kiosks.”

“Really, Loch?”  Her voice is full of sunshine and ocean.

“Oh yeah.  He makes his own fresh chili each morning and has fourteen bins of onion, mustard and other fixings.”

“You are making me so hungry.”

“Unfortunately, right now he and all the fixings are in lockdown.”

Teri Lin moans.  “I would give anything for a real hot-dog.”

“I miss the simple things too.  I didn’t expect to miss them.  But then, I didn’t expect that six feet would come between us.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You.  I miss seeing Teri Lin in the office, less than one foot away from me.”

“Why do you miss Teri Lin?” Teri Lin asks.

“She is my friend with all the fixings.  And I’m hoping she will stay inside until this corona business passes.”

“What if it doesn’t pass, Loch?”  I can hear the tear in her voice. 

I tell her what I tell everyone.  “I’ll make a few calls.  I’ll make something happen.  Maybe I’ll swing by to pick you up in my four-pedal hot-dog kiosk.”

She laughs like that first sunny day out of lockdown.  “I’ll bring the napkins.”

BYO Hot-dog.

Deal

People who have accidents are not the only people who need to talk.

I’m shutting down my work computer when Telly Bishop, my ninety-two-year old neighbor from up the street, rolls a smoking grill right in front of my bedroom/office window and points down.  “I’m grilling,” he shouts. 

I step out onto my screened porch and Telly rolls the gill toward me.  “Stay on your porch,” he says.  “We need to social distance ourselves.”

“Got any food under all that smoke?”

“I’m going to let that go, because I have three salmon flanks and I don’t like to eat alone.  Hey Toby.”

The cat joins me on the porch and together we watch and debate how bad the smoke needs to be before someone calls 911. 

Telly’s wife, Alexi, passed years ago and now it’s just him in what he likes to call the outhouse, a spacious in-laws suite in his granddaughter’s back yard.  Sometimes he wanders down to my house and we visit with a cup of coffee.  Today it’s a smoking salmon.

“Does Ally know where you are?”

“My granddaughter doesn’t need to know every time I take a walk or move my bowels.”

“I just don’t want her to worry.”

“Don’t kid yourself.  She and that Republican she married forget I live in that outhouse and just pull the plug on my lights when it suits them.”

“Isn’t Ally a Democrat?  You know, it takes both to make a bi-partisan household.”

“Spare me.  When Alexi was alive, I had a real soul mate.  We thought the same things.  Held the same values.”

“Sounds like the same person.”

“The country could do with a little sameness.  We’re too divided.”

On this, Telly and I agree.  “But what if we all decided on the same things, and it was all wrong?”

My friend pulls a table and chair from my patio set and parks them outside the porch so that he faces the street.  He asks me if I have some plates or if I want to eat my flank directly off the grill.  I pass three plates through the screen door and he gives me two back.

“Is this all we’re eating?  Fish?  No broccoli or bread?  No potatoes?”

“I like simple,” Telly says.  Then he shouts, “Is this the best damn fish you ever had or what?”

I point out to him that the screen on the porch has lots of little holes and that I can hear him just fine.  That’s before I see who is passing by the house on the street. 

“Doesn’t stink like pork?  Does it?  Hey Big Jeff,” he calls down the driveway, over the head of the neighbor on the sidewalk closest to my house, to the big neighbor on the far side walking his dog.  “Sorry, Eddie,” he calls to the over-shouted neighbor, Ed Howell, who likes to smoke whole pigs.  “Didn’t see you.”

“Telly, what is it with you and Ed?”

“I don’t like the way he talks about you.”

“When do you spend time with Ed to hear how he talks about anyone?”

“I hear things.”  He taps his head.

“From other neighbors?  Or is this self-generated?”

“How is your fish?” he asks me with cool disregard.

“It’s the best damn fish I ever had,” I shout through all the little screen holes.

Telly laughs. 

I grab a couple Kombuchas from the fridge and pass one to Telly.

“I can’t wait for this virus to run its course and let my grandson-in-law start going back into the office again.”

“That bad?”

“Geezsh.  I pretend to feel otherwise, for Ally’s sake, God bless her.  Neither of us can say the words ventilator, shortage or preparedness, without Scottie getting all indignant.”

“Is that what you call Scott?”

Telly smiles.  “I like you Loch.  I like Toby.  Let’s not ever get on opposites sides of the line.”

“What line is that?”

“Any line that keeps us from using words that upset my dear Ally’s husband.”

“Deal.”

Basic food groups ungroup…sort of.

Business

The virus brings with it a new time.  A time of anxiety.  A time of prayer.  My work now is the same as it was in the time before, before the novel virus, when the office building was a safe place to take a phone call or hang out at the ice machine.  My office now is one desk at a window in the bedroom.  Quite a down-size.  But once the phone rings, it's business as usual.

This day, I get a call from Bryan Vasquez in Los Angeles.  Nice guy.

As I pull up his account, I take note of the two triangular ears extending over the top of the monitor.  Someone is always listening.

I ask Bryan for some basic personal information to confirm I am speaking with the real Bryan Vasquez.  He answers by telling me he doesn’t have a mask.  Real quick, I scan the account to confirm this.

“I’m sorry, I don’t see that.  How about a home address?”

“What are you talking about?”  His tone rises sharply.

More gently, I say, “I just need something that is uniquely yours to confirm you on the account.”

“I’m an x-ray technician at a hospital.  I was on my way to work, circling on Tremont Terrace, telling myself that nothing can touch me, that I can dodge gurneys and microscopic germs with equal ease.”  His laugh is a bark.  “I was on my third lap when I rear-ended a freaking garbage truck.  It was just sitting there.  No red light or stop sign.  No garbage at the curb.  No reason to just be sitting there, unless it was to show me there are some things you just can’t dodge.  And now my car won’t start.  Of course, there was no damage to the garbage truck.  It just pulled away and I’m stuck in the middle of the road.”

“With no mask.”

“Right.”

A hospital technician with a car involved in an accident.  While it does narrow the field, it’s not an uncommon collection of traits.  Even without a mask, the caller is just one of many with this same broad description.

“So where do you get your mail?”

“Every day, the hallways are filled with people coughing and sneezing, adding to this invisible floating virus wetland.  And I’m just breathing that stuff in.  It’s my job to put people in the right position before I take their x-ray.  That means I have to touch.  Do you know how close you have to be to someone to do that?”

I mumble something, keeping it incoherent.

“I mean, I am going to keep doing my job.  That’s what I signed on for.  But what if I get the virus?”  He is still circling around the information I need from him to move forward.  “What if all the doctors and nurses get sick?  Who is going to help us?”

Although twenty-four hundred miles removed from Mr. Vasquez’s little breakdown, I can feel his anxiety seeping into me.   “You are describing a worst-case scenario,” I say, trying to rationalize the two of us through this.  “I don’t think that’s likely to happen.”

“That’s what they say in a Godzilla movie before somebody starts shooting radioactive beams of light.”

I don’t have a good comeback for that.  And Toby’s no help.  He is preoccupied turning around in the curtains like a quantum of fur caught in a revolving door.

“It’s all I can think about,” Bryan says.  “What if I get sick?  All because there are no masks.”

“If that happens, they would probably send you home,” I say with an agenda.  “And where would that be?”

Caught off his guard, Mr. Vasquez finally gives me one thing I can confirm on his account.  

“Okay.  And would that be Street?  Or Boulevard?”

I push too hard and the broken-down technician starts to cry. 

“Man…I’m sorry,” he says.  “You don’t need to hear this.”

Nor do I know what to say.  Again, I look to Toby who, after several revolutions, steps out of the curtains, the long material draping from his coat like a majestic cape. 

“If it’s something you need to tell me, then I need to hear it.  Maybe we all need to hear it.  Maybe then we would take better care of the heroes taking care of us.”

“I’m not a hero.  I’m just an imaging tech.”

“You were driving to ground zero of a viral contagion so that you could peer inside the bodies of sick people and see how they are broken.  You were going there of your own volition,” I say.  “Without a mask.”

We are quiet for a long time. 

“I still need to get to work.”  He brings us back to the reason for his call.  A uniquely selfless healer who lives on an avenue, stranded on a distant terrace, in need of a way to get to work.

“Let me make some calls.  We’ll get your car towed to a local shop and set you up with a rental car so you can go to work and perform your heroics.” 

Mr. Vasquez laughs. 

Toby and I do a quick fist/paw bump. 

And I make those calls.

Slipping into something more heroic.

Inception Story

It is no longer true that there is safety in numbers.  The corona virus is the quiet guest, the uninvited tag-along in groups of fifty, or ten, five or two.   Really, anything over one. 

Unless your place of business provides an essential service like selling groceries, medical care, or deliveries, you’re at home, or probably should be.  Of course, governors are starting to lift restrictions, but it’s still not clear how many consumers or business owners will be sprinting out of their gates.    

I hear again and again, from journalists and wannabe’s, that the virus is not political.  And yet, it smacks of politics.  I’ve been listening to a few political podcasts.  Red podcasts and blue.  It can feel like listening to a sporting event with divisions from the field to the fans.  Infections up, PPE’s down.  The virus doesn’t care.  It moves through the crowd while the game plays on.

I share my isolation with a cat.  Toby.  In the time that I have been working from home, both of us have gained about five pounds.  He naps on the Kitty Condo beside my desk until I am pinged to join a video conference.  It’s good to see the faces of my homebound co-workers.  It’s cute when the homebound kids or the homebound spouse appear in the background.  I consider it might be less cute if the homebound family members were crawling over the co-worker, kneading his or her lap or swatting at the foam-covered mic.

After work, I fire up a podcast and listen until I can listen no more.  I call family and friends to ask how they’re holding up.  They are good.  They are worried.  I give the cat some more treats to help him with pound number six.

My furry shadow stays with me in this difficult time.  He follows me into the bathroom.  He sits on my clean towel while I shower.  He watches my food while I eat.  I find him staring at me from the bedside table if I wake in the night.  Watching over me, watching over my food, whatever it is, Toby takes the loneliest number and raises by it one. 

Lately, he has been spending an inordinate amount of time upstairs in the litter box.  With, I need to add, no results.  No doubt, I assumed, he is picking up on my stress, and now his own worry is manifesting itself in the box.  Ask any cat-owner, what happens in the box, or any business conducted outside the box, is the surest indicator of a cat’s well-being.

So I followed Toby upstairs to see for myself.  

What I discovered was a troubled cat leaning over the side of his box, tracing his paw thoughtfully in the litter.  It’s not clear to me what he was trying to say, but he seemed to feel better having said it in the box. 

And so it occurred to me, that writing might be a good way to get out of my system all the pent-up feelings and thoughts about the new life under lockdown.  It seems cathartic for the cat.  If it doesn’t do the same for me, I can just scoop and delete.

Writing through it.