Beneath The Mask

The older woman walking her two dogs toward us on the sidewalk notices us standing to one side, giving her right-of-way at appropriate social distance, but her expression is impossible to read beneath the surgical mask that everyone on the street seems to be sporting in one way or another these days.

"Is that an iPhone?" she asks as she approaches us, to Katie who is posting something as we wait for her to pass.

"Yes it is," Katie answers, looking up.

"Facial recognition doesn't work anymore," she says, and we can hear the smile in her voice.

A Glimpse Outside

There's a sound out the front window. "Scott, come in here," Katie calls.

It's 7:00 PM, so people are applauding for the health care workers - not on our block, but a block or two over, near enough to hear it. 

"The moon is up," she says, pointing, and we spend a moment or two looking at an almost full moon in a late afternoon sky until it passes behind a cloud.

Just to Feel Something Different (the Gom Jabbar)

"And I'm posting that on the internet, unless you want it to use it for your four each day," Katie says, after I tell her I'm going to go put my hands in ice water. I assure her she's free to do what she wants.

Somehow the metal mixing bowl I fill up with water and ice cubes seems colder that if I were using a plastic bowl, though of course that's unlikely, and I take a few deep breaths, hit the timer, and plunge my right hand in up to the wrist.

Instantly I am in excruciating pain, that, while it originates in my hand, seems to radiate up my arm all the way to my core, and the top of my head feels like it's expanding, like my skull is swelling up like a balloon, and it takes all my concentration just to keep breathing and leave my hand in while the timer slowly, slowly ticks down.

Alfred Hitchcock Presents

A robin has taken an immense and personal dislike to his reflection in the window of the new apartment building behind ours, and has been dive bombing himself, whacking into the window, and falling back only to repeat the process again, for hours now.

The sparrows are darting about in agitation while somewhere above us, a crow or a raven croaks and creaks and eggs the craziness on. 

A dove hunkers down on the downstairs neighbors' deck, giving us the side eye. A larger male comes up and starts chasing her around, hoping to get busy, and the robin dive bombs his own reflection again.

The Care And Feeding Of Your Body

The close quarters, the constant bad news, the worries about lost work, it can really get you up in your head, small stresses that turn into a sometimes overwhelming sense of isolation and malaise, so I'm grateful when Katie comes into the kitchen as I'm putting dishes away and lifts my shirt to hug me tight.

Her cool hands are on my skin, and she buries her face in my neck and inhales deeply. She breathes me in, and I breathe her in, too, the smell of her hair and her animal warmth that reminds me that I'm not just a brain perched on top of a meat machine that carts me around, not just a pair of eyes wired to a screen that pumps anxiety into my skull sixteen hours a day.

Then I feel her nails like little needles digging into my side, a tiny shock of pain, and she whispers in my ear with a quiet intensity, "If we don't eat those avocados tomorrow I am going to freak out."

Escaping Confinement

We climb up the fire escape to the roof to bask in the sun like lizards on the black tar. The absence of walls and the expanse of blue sky and gray clouds smearing in the wind makes me a little drunk, and my heart buzzes in my chest while I stand watching tiny planes fly so high that they look like they'll never land again.

A cardinal sings in a tree behind our building, a warbling trill that ends with a "pew-pew-pew" like a laser gun in a science fiction movie, and Katie lies on a blanket, mirrored sunglasses covering her face.

A woman across the street on her roof jumps rope, and I can only see her the bouncing mop of her black hair and the rope as it loops over her again and again and again.

Boredom Sets In

Katie come back from the bathroom and flops in the chair.

“What’s your plan?” I ask.

“I have no plan,” she says wearily, “about anything.”

“Want to go to bed?” I ask