THE WOODPECKER

She tells Charlie about Sylvie’s plans to kill herself. “It’s a calculation she’s already made, and there’s no stopping her.”

It’s seven in the evening at Charlie’s place. Neither of them has any interest in eating. Charlie’s already quaffed two large martinis and is sprawled on the Persian carpet looking at a third, which is sitting within reach on the tile table. Pina’s helped Charlie discover his natural affinity for drink, but a third jumbo martini would be hallucinogenic for him. He needs to build his endurance. She mixed the first two martinis, but refused to make a third. With martinis, she observes the maxim: Three is too many and a dozen’s not enough. The third one’s on Charlie, if he partakes. At this point he’s only flirting with it.

“You know, Pina,” he saws, drawing out the final vowel of her name forever, “People who decide, you know, to do themselves in, don’t generally blab about it.”
“It wasn’t blabbing. More like seasoned reporting. She called me a noisy drunk.”
Charlie smirks from the floor. “I don’t think that you’re that noisy, Pina.” Charlie sits up and has a sip of his martini.
“Be careful.”
“Is that why you’re drinking bubble water tonight.”
“It’s not just bubble water. It’s San Pellegrino. Tell me, Charlie, have you ever been suicidal?”
“Me? No, not really. I went through a macabre period as a young teen when I built suicide sets in shoeboxes. I was always building thing, but I hit upon this idea of coming up with suicide tableaus. I remember I had a guy in a prison cell hanging by his bed sheets, and another dude sitting lotus style at the rear of a Karmann Ghia with a tiny hose extended from the exhaust to his mouth. There was a woman in a bathtub who slit her wrists.”
“I can’t believe this, Charlie. You were a sick kid.”
“I don’t know. They were true scale models and I built every part of them, except for the Karmann Ghia, which came from a kit. It was painstaking work.”
“But why suicide?”
Charlie lifts his martini, studies it for a long moment, and takes a full swig. “I guess I was processing some baggage. My mother killed herself when I was seven.”
“Oh, shit, Charlie. You never told me that.”
“Yeah, some things I tend to keep to myself.”
Pina gets down on the rug beside Charlie and holds him close. “I’m so sorry.”
“Thanks. Lot of water under the bridge.” He grabs his martini and pours down most of it. The poor man is putting some genuine hurt on himself.
“Anyway, I made five different models. They didn’t go over so well at the science fair. There was a lot of talk about self-determination in those days. So I called my project: Five Varieties of Self-Termination.”
“Oh, Charlie.”
“How about you, Pina? You ever been suicidal?”
“We don’t have to talk about this, Charlie.”
“No, I want to.” He gulps the rest of his martini and vaults himself up from a sitting position, staggering a few steps sideways.
“Where are you going, Charlie?”
“Make myself another.”
“I won’t let you.”

Charlie stands on his spot, bowlegged as a cowboy, before his knees buckle and he veers over to the sofa and collapses. In two minutes he’s asleep. Pina finds a light blanket and covers him.

She returns to Vince’s condo, disturbed by Charlie’s revelation and wondering what else he’s kept from her.

Tonight she’s going to keep some sort of strange vigil, her thoughts are with her downstairs neighbor. The curious thing is she hasn’t heard Sylvie cry for weeks. Maybe having made her decision eliminated her grief.

For Pina, suicide’s never been a viable option. She doesn’t like the idea of leaving a mess behind, and even if you did the deed in a neat way, say with pills, you’d leave a psychic mess in your wake, with everybody close to you forced to consider what they could have done to prevent your death. What was it like for Charlie at seven? She’d never be able to forgive the cruelty of the act.

Vince told her about a poet, whose name she can’t remember, who’s father killed himself while his wife was pregnant with the future poet. The poet lived to be 100 and was beloved, but he never stopped writing about the father that he never knew.

The Eichorn brothers gave her an odd introduction to suicide. Benny, the oldest, who spoke with a hushed authority, explained to her that suicide was a crime and that if you killed yourself they threw your body in jail. They had special jails for suicides way out in the country and the bodies stayed behind bars until they were fully rotted and nothing was left but skulls and bones. Then they came and made soap out of the suicide bones. “You never know, Pina,” he said, “you may be taking a shower with a suicide. That’s why I never use soap.” Benny went on to explain that one of the really good things about suicide prisons is that they didn’t have to spend a lot of money on prison guards.

Tonight Pina limits herself to one glass of wine, which amounts to a vow of sobriety. She’s not sure what’s she’s waiting for: A gunshot? The smell of gas? She opens all of her windows. The deed may already be done. It’s silent downstairs.

To say she slept fitfully would be an understatement. In the morning she calls Charlie to see how he’s doing.

“It’s like I blacked out.”
“You went past your limit.”
“I guess. The hangover is epic. What should I do?”
“Make yourself a short screwdriver, take three Advil, and lay low.

She wants to ask if he remembers telling her about his mother, but she doesn’t. She tells him she’ll come over in the late afternoon and make dinner for him.

Now as she poaches eggs, she hears the sliding door open downstairs. When she dashes out to the deck, she sees Sylvie watering her potted roses. So she’s willing to keep her roses alive if not herself.

Pina has just started a garden. Her first. It’s humble, a galvanized tub that takes a cubic foot and a half of soil. The two pepper plants, padrone and serrano, delight her with their efficiency, already flowering and birthing miniscule suggestions of the peppers to come. Past the ripe green of the copious sweet basil, sits a small thatch of Thai basil that she loves to squeeze. The redolence spills off her hands and it smells like sex to her. A corner of the galvanized planter sprouts a fat, curly leaved lettuce, a bit bitter, that holds up to a robust vinaigrette. Beside the tin, in a good-sized turquoise pot, her Japanese eggplant is already sporting a splash of aubergine in its flowers.

She peeks over the railing; Sylvie is still down there fussing with her roses. She’s got to know that the noisy drunk is knocking around up here. Pina’s been conspicuous, thumping the tin a few times with a trowel and then whistling some damn jazz tune stuck in her head.

She leans over the railing. What does she have to lose? The worst thing that can happen is the woman kills herself. “Sylvie,” she calls, “are you ready to apologize?”
“Apologize to you? Ha.” Sylvie does her best to broadcast some arch contempt but, really, it’s a weak performance.
“You called me a noisy drunk, and I’ll admit that I can be noisy, but all I had to drink last night was a glass of rosé. So, how are your roses, Sylvie?”

No answer, but she can feel Sylvie stiffen in the garden, just out of her sight. Sylvie wants to be outraged that Pina would deign to engage with her, but she isn’t able to disengage. She doesn’t know how to stay ill-mannered, even during what could be her final day.

Pina hears a woodpecker begin drilling in one of the Osage trees across the street. Is Sylvie listening to the woodpecker as well?

“Myself,” Pina says, pitching her voice so that it falls softly on Sylvie, “I’m growing Japanese eggplant, the first of my life. It’s a revelation. The leaves themselves are an amazement. They’re so large and many-chambered. I wish I were a photographer, I really do. And this morning, the first blush of purple sur les petites fleurs. I’m humbled.” Pina’s enjoying herself. Is she playing with house money or Sylvie’s life? “I’m also enamored of the Thai basil that I have growing.”

“Pina,” she hears, in an arch croak from below, “You are a chatterbox.”

“Yes, I’ve been accused of that before. I think it may have something to do with my work. Did I mention that I’m a speech pathologist and I spend a lot of time helping people talk naturally? The worst thing somebody in my position can do is to fill the silence. They should take away my license.”
“They should.”
“You haven’t told me about your roses, Sylvie.”
“There’s nothing to tell.”
She’s grasping at straws here. ”Have you found your next book to read?”
“I’m not going to read another book, Pina. Now goodbye.”
“Wait,” she says, though she has no idea what she’s asking Sylvie to wait for.
“What?” Sylvie says, trying to project impatience.
“I have something for you.”
“No thank you.”
“You can’t decline before you see what it is.”
“I can do as I wish.”
“I’ll be right down with it.” She listens again to the woodpecker. Such persistence. It’s a good model for her.

She wraps her knuckles on Sylvie’s door three times before she answers.

“I wanted you to have this,” she says, and thrusts Blyth’s Summer Haiku volume into Sylvie’s hand. I thought it might be perfect as a follow-up to Proust. Here you have three-line masterpieces. And the book’s beautifully arranged.” Pina flips open to the index. She can’t believe that Sylvie’s still standing in her doorway, listening to this spiel. “Look: The Season, Sky and Elements, Fields and Mountains, Gods and Buddhas, Human Affairs—I think that one is my favorite—Trees and Flowers, Birds and Beasts.” The longer she talks the better chance she has to keep Sylvie alive. It’s as simple as that. Or is that madness? As it is, she’s petrified Sylvie. The woman can’t move; she can’t speak.

“May I read you a poem? I think my favorite poet is Issa. In three lines you see his humanity. To call the poem a snapshot is to belittle it, but I’m not particularly good with words except, perhaps, with speaking them.”
“Yes,” says Sylvie in a far-off voice.”

Pina flips to Human Affairs. “Alright, I’m going to cheat, and read two poems, six lines total. Same theme.

The change of clothes
                Be careful of your head
                        With the door.

I think the poet’s talking o himself. And here’s the second one:

The change of clothes;
               And sitting down,
                          But I am alone.

“That’s the one that gets me. We are all alone.” She’s said too much, probably hit the wrong note, but she can’t stop now. “I think part of my love of haiku comes from my ADD. Like, seriously, I’ve been reading the same novel, McTeague for more than a month and I’m just halfway through. It’s really a spectacular book. Do you know it? Well, it’s set in San Francisco in the 1890’s, a folk opera, if you will, on Polk Street. Dr. McTeague, the outsized, unlicensed dentist, who learned his trade in the mining camps, realizes his primal desire—to have a giant gilded molar mounted beside the sign for his dental parlors on the corner of Polk and California Streets. But I can tell the book’s going to turn dark. Also, the book was made into a legendary film in the twenties that nobody’s seen, called Greed,”

“Pina,” Sylvie says, “it doesn’t sound like there’s any chance of my reading that book, so can you stop talking about it?”
“I’d be happy to give you the book.”
“I don’t want your book.” Sylvie’s face turns stern and then she offers a total surprise: “Would you like a cup of tea, Pina?”
“I’d be delighted.”
“We shouldn’t have our relationship end on a bad note. Go around through the garden gate. I don’t want you coming through my house.”

As Pina waits in the garden for Sylvie to come out with her tea tray, she listens to the insistence of the woodpecker as he peck peck peck peck pecks away at the Osage tree.

THE MONKEY

Charlie sits her down to watch a video of the comic Sarah Cooper lip-syncing Trump’s inane prattle about the bible, after his shameless photo-op at the Episcopal Church.

A reporter asks: “Wondering what one or two of your favorite bible verses are. Cooper’s eyes roll back into her head before she opens her supple face and nails Trump: Well, I wouldn’t want to get into it, because to me that’s very personal. You know when I talk about the bible it’s very personal, so I don’t want to get into verses.”

Pina bursts into uncontrollable laughter as the reporter presses for just a single verse and Cooper uses both hands to play a dissonant chord on an imaginary piano. No, I don’t want to do that … the bible means a lot to me, but I don’t want to get into specifics. Then Cooper taps her chin with a finger to indicate the answer is complete.

Another reporter asks a question that also cracks Pina up: “Are you an Old Testament guy or a New Testament guy?” Cooper’s eyes go deer-in-the-headlights, shifting from right to left before answering. Probably equal. I think it’s just an incredible . . . the whole bible is an incredible . . . the whole bible is . . . I joke . . . very much so . . . they always hold up The Art of the Deal, I say my second favorite book. But I just think the bible is very special.

“Play it again,” Pina shouts. “The idiot doesn’t even know the difference between the Old Testament and the New. He’s not opened a bible once in his life.”

Charlie plays it again and when the thirty-seven second clip is done, Pina asks for it once more.

“Gosh, you’re reminding me of my daughter when she was a tiny girl. I’d throw her in the air and catch her and she’d say, “Do again, da-da, do again.”

Pina follows suit: “Do again, Charlie, do again.”

If she hadn’t already been through menopause, Pina may have thought she was pregnant, waking up this morning with a craving for pickles. It’s not the store bought varieties she wants, but the type of sweet and sour, thin-sliced vegetables her mother used to prepare. She is certainly not pregnant, though she’s become a bit frightened by her longing to return to the comforts of her early childhood, most often expressed, since the plague has exerted its grip on her, in the desire for foods from childhood. She’s concerned by what this nostalgia, or whatever you want to call it, portends. Is she about to die or, perhaps, entering her second childhood?

In any case, she searches the Internet for quick pickling recipes before heading off alone to Sonoma Market in search of vegetables to pickle. Charlie cast her out of his condo this morning so he could spend a few hours alone with Roscoe. “I’ve neglected the poor bird lately,” he said.

“I’m sorry to have come between you,” Pina responded, with a wink and a rueful smile. “I don’t need exclusivity, Charlie. Stay away from other women and you can spend as much time with Roscoe as you like.” After saying this she wonders at what point she’ll become jealous of the talking bird.

Home from the market, with a massive load of vegies: baby carrots with their stems, Japanese eggplant, haricot vert, young beets, cauliflower, zucchini, and red onions, she washes all in a colander. Before preparing the various pickling solutions and rounding up her jars, Pina links her computer with the hotspot, and watches the vast protests in Washington D.C., Philadelphia, Chicago, and Atlanta, as CNN flits from one city to another.

Damn, she’d like to be at one of these protests. With the computer on the kitchen counter, she slices vegetables and measures her solutions, halving the recommended amount of sugar. She will soon be in quick pickling heaven and when her bounty is ready she’ll bring a jar downstairs to Sylvie.

The peaceful turn the protests have taken astonishes her. She’s not clear how it’s happened. Did the cops actually root out all the white supremacist agitators, even though a good number of their own subscribe to those attitudes? The discipline and high energy of the protesters are remarkable—the country is being remade right before our eyes with the inspiration of the masses. She particularly loves the massive yellow letters: B L A C K   L I V E S   M A T T E R that the D. C. mayor ordered painted on the street facing the White House, which is now circled in ugly black fencing to protect the bunker baby from himself. The protesters have made use of the black fencing as a spot to mount posters and lay memorials.

Now the news shifts to San Francisco where a huge crowd of protesters on the Golden Gate Bridge blocks the northbound lanes of traffic. Social distancing appears to be a thing of the past. She can’t go. No, she can’t go.

Once all her vegetables are in jars bathed in pickling solutions, she slices up a cardboard box, finds a couple of markers, and makes signs to hang from the balcony of the deck. Two signs are ubiquitous around town, one in support of Sonoma Valley high School’s 2020 graduates, who missed their live graduation, and the other, which strikes her as curiously cryptic:

YOU  C A N ‘ T   Q U A R A N T I  N  E   L O V E.

She’s been seeing that sign for weeks and hasn’t a clue what it means.

With pencil, and black and red Sharpies, Pina crafts two handsome posters, using statements she noticed while watching protests on TV. One reads:  S I L E N C E   I S   V I O L E N C E, the other: W H I T E   S U P R E M A C Y   C A N C E L E D.  She tapes the posters to the outer balcony rail. It ain’t much, but it’s something.

She’s come to town to see what’s opened up this weekend. Sonoma, which has been so barren since the quarantine started, is now brimming over with people. Every parking place in the square is filled. It seems like a typical Saturday in a typical June. She and Vince tended to avoid the square in summer; now it is dangerously exciting. A long line of people waits outside the ice cream shop. Folks dine on linen covered tables outside of the Plaza Bistro. Pina turns up the first alley and notices all the tables filled in the back patio of La Casa. She skips the second alley, with the idea of catching a beer in the patio of Murphy’s Irish pub. The tables are well distanced from each other and there’s actually one waiting for her.

For a moment she wishes Charlie were here and thinks to call him. Has he had enough time with Roscoe yet? But, no, it’s lovely to be here herself, basking in the mild sunshine. At the next table, three white women in their twenties, are talking about George Floyd and about the concept of being complicit. What she can hear of the conversation is intelligent. The woman in the group whose voice projects the most forcibly—a redhead with a perky nose, wearing a crucifix, says, “It’s really counterintuitive, but one can be as guilty doing nothing, as doing something evil.”

The woman beside her, with juicy red lips, shakes her head. “No,” she says, “evil is worse.”

“Silence can be evil,” the first woman asserts. “How about those cops who stood by while George Floyd was murdered right in front of them.”

Pina wants to tell the redhead that she’s right.

Finally the masked server approaches, offering Pina a lunch menu.

“No, I only want a beer. I’ll have a Lagunitas on tap.”

Given a choice between a sixteen-ounce glass or a twenty, she doesn’t hesitate before choosing the twenty. The young women at the next table are now talking about CNN host Chris Cuomo, debating about whether he’s cute or not. Two of them think he is, but the redhead says, “I think there’s something boorish about him. Pina agrees with her again.

On her way out of the alley Pina hears a boisterous crowd on the square. She’s thrilled to see that it’s an actual protest on the square. Tractors, adorned with signs, are parked at the foot of the square. “Black Lives Matter.” “Cultivate Justice.” There are maybe 200 people bunched in the street around the tractors. Everybody is wearing a mask and, because the wind is blowing formidably enough to dissipate any virus floating around, she feels it’s safe to join the others. Notably, there’s not a single law enforcement officer visible. Have they already been defunded?

The crowd is made up almost entirely of young white people, mostly women, but an older black lady with an American flag-styled straw hat holds the megaphone. She balances herself on a long red staff. “I was just driving through town and I saw y’all, and I thought, Sonoma, all these white people—amazing. So I hope you don’t mind me saying a few words. This is doing my heart good. Look at how young you are. You don’t have to be out here, but you are. You’re out here speaking up for justice for black people, for all people. I grew up in Austin, the capitol city of Texas. The Clarksville neighborhood where I lived was founded by freed slaves, but didn’t even have its streets paved until 1975.”

The woman says that she’d like to lead demonstrators in the singing of “We Shall Overcome,” describing it as “a nugget of the Civil Rights era, written by Mr. Pete Seeger.” Before commencing she says, “Only we need to change the tense of the verse. With all due respect to Mr. Seeger, we shall not be overcoming SOMEDAY; we ARE overcoming TODAY.” The crowd responds with a rousing shout. The song, which had always sounded dirge-like to Pina, is far more powerful in its new iteration.

Next a young black woman takes the megaphone and leads some call and response. “NO JUSTICE,” she shouts, and the protesters holler back, “NO PEACE.” “SAY HIS NAME.” “GEORGE FLOYD.”

Pina is thrilled to be a part of this—a genuine protest in Sonoma, the first she’s attended since the Woman’s March, just after Trump’s inauguration. She realized then as she realizes now that it’s women who are the most inspired leaders of these movements.

They now march around the square, at safe distance, with more call and response and, somehow, all the storefronts that she’s familiar with look different. There is something transformative about being numerous. When they’ve made it all the way around the square. Pina stands close to a man she noticed earlier sitting atop his red tractor. She loves seeing a guy in big beard, cowboy hat, and bandana mask standing beside a tractor emblazoned with all manner of Black Lives Matter signs. The man, no doubt noticing her appreciation, gives her a big wink.

Pina also spots a man with a small monkey on its shoulder. Every time there is a round of applause the monkey claps its little pink hands. Monkey see, monkey do. She wonders how much she’s lived her life as a monkey, behaving according to script. The monkey has no choice, but she . . . She’s reminded of a poem, “The Woman at the Washington Zoo,” by Randall Jarrell, which Vince read her more than once in their early days. One line of the poem, in which the woman stands at the cage of an animal, has stayed with Pina:

Oh, bars of my own body, open, open!

Pina gazes again at the monkey and is astonished by how everything she sees is filtered through her monomaniacal consciousness.

Now the young woman with the megaphone introduces herself as a graduate of Sonoma Valley High, who attends Santa Rosa Junior College. She reads a well written and harrowing history of the racism she’s experienced in her life from age five to the present, and then she talks a little bit about white privilege. While in college, Pina had read Peggy McIntosh’s seminal essay, “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack,” which contained a long list of ways that whites in this culture had unearned advantages. At the time, Pina took the list very seriously and strove to add items to it, but that was a long time ago and her resolve to remain mindful of her unearned advantages has all but disappeared.

The speaker has them all raise two hands in the air and gives the instruction for people to put down a finger each time they’ve experienced one of the racial indignities she reads from a list. These indignities range from being called a racial epithet to losing a job to a less qualified person who happened to be white. As the list proceeds, Pina gazes around the crowd. Most people have not dropped a finger. She notices a few Latinas and black people with many missing fingers. When the list is finished Pina’s fingers are all still stretched tall in the air, emblems not of triumph but privilege.

THE WORM

It takes Charlie until Wednesday to pull the Sunday New York Times out of its blue sleeve.

“I read about it,” he says, “but didn’t feel like I was ready to see it.” He lays the front page on the kitchen counter and they gaze at the countless memorialized names.
“And to think that this is only a fraction of the 100,000 dead.”
“It’s very difficult to represent enormity,” Charlie says, “but they’ve done a good job of it. And look at the short phrase they’ve written about each person. Look at how it humanizes them. Here’s where seven words are worth more than a thousand pictures. What a lot of work this represents, combing obituaries, talking to the mourning families. They’ve honored these people with epithets worthy of Homer.”
“What’s a Homer epithet?” she asks, trusting Charlie enough to show her ignorance.
“Oh, you know, it’s the defining attribute of each character. Hector of the glinting helmet; Hermes, the messenger of the Gods and conductor of men; Zeus, who marshals the thunderheads. But listen to these, Pina.” Charlie begins reading: “June Beverly Hill, 85, Sacramento, no one made creamed potatoes or fried sweet corn the way she did; Denise Camille Buczek, 72, Bristol, Conn, loved writing birthday cards, holiday cards, poems and lists.’”
“That sounds like my mother.”
“’Norman Gulamerian, 92, New Providence, N. J., art supply businessman with a romantic streak.’”

She thinks Charlie has a romantic streak. She’s surely too skeptical for that.

“Oh, I found a guy here whose distinction is that he turned down a job playing trombone with Duke Ellington, but I can’t find him again. It’s like the names keep rolling past me on a ticker tape. I’m deeply moved.”

She admires Charlie’s access to his feelings. Unfortunately she’s trained herself to hide her own. Can the gate to her emotions be coaxed open or has it atrophied?

“Read a few, Pina. Look.” He opens the newspaper. “There are more pages of names here.”

She takes hold of the newspaper and scans the front page, trying to make contact with an individual amid the infinity of names. Now, spotting one, she hopes to find the appropriate voice. It comes out quiet like someone speaking in a library: “’Marlene B. Mandel, 88, Collingswood, NJ, first woman on her block to work outside the house.’”

“Wow, a whole wedge of cultural history there. Read some more, Pina.”
“Here’s one I love even if I can’t really picture it: ‘Lovie Barkley, 69, Chicago, while revelers did the Soul Train line at a wedding, he combined it with The Worm.’”
“Well, I can tell you about Soul Train. I used to watch it all the time and I created animations of some of the dancers, just for fun. The show started in late Mr. Barkley’s Chicago so he may have been with it from the beginning. Didn’t you ever watch Soul Train, Pina?”

She shakes her head.

“Oh you were deprived. I mean it. What a pleasure to watch black people dance. The show ran thirty-five years, all these different eras. It started with Rhythm and Blues. You had Gladys Knight and the Pips doing ‘I Heard it Through the Grapevine,’ and the godfather of soul: ‘WOOO!’” Charlie throws his voice as a startlingly good James Brown: ‘Get up off of that thing . . . get up off of that thing, and he shimmies up the long narrow kitchen and then herky-jerks his way back, his joints going from crisp to slack, deliberate and precise.”
She claps her hands. “Oh, Charlie, you are great.”
“I used to be able to dance a little.” He dives to the floor and stops his fall expertly with his hands. “I can’t really do The Worm anymore. Don’t have the strength.”
But he does slither across the floor with beautifully articulated faints to each side. “Charlie,” she says, moved almost to tears, “what a wonderful memorial tribute you’re paying Lovie Barkley of Chicago.”
Charlie springs back onto his feet. “Yeah, but what they’re not telling you about Lovie,” he says, a bit breathless, “is that he could probably do The Caterpillar, as well.”
“Want me to teach you The Worm, Pina? You might have more strength than I do.”
“Yes. Please teach me The Worm, Charlie.” She drops to the ground. “Can we do it side by side?” This was not supposed to happen. She told herself not to let this happen, but, damn it, if she’s not falling hard for the guy.

Bernard calls her after he drops Vince at the treatment facility in Nicasio. “The grounds are quite lovely, Pina, and the program appears sound. They keep the clients busy with group meetings and private therapy sessions. They even get daily homework.

She tries to imagine Vince doing homework, but she can only picture him humoring the counselors, treating the whole enterprise as a farce.

“Vince will be in blackout for two weeks,” Bernard continues, “which basically means he can’t use his phone or get calls during that time.”

That sounds good to her—it gives her a two-week reprieve from having to worry about him.

“In usual times, you would then be able to visit Vince during the Saturday afternoon family program, but they’ve suspended the family visits during the Coronavirus.”
For once she’s glad that these are not usual times. “I can’t thank you enough, Bernard. So how is Vince?”
“I’d use the word sober,” he says, following up with what she’s come to think of as his British pause, “if sobriety wasn’t the heart of the matter at hand. But he seemed to me to be really quite serious. I’d say determined, but his determination remains to be seen. I saw sadness, I saw remorse, and Vince clearly expressed concern about you.”
“About me?”
“Yes, concern about the damage he’s done to his relationship with you.”

She wonders if that really has anything to do with worry for her. More likely his concern is about having upended the status quo. “Did he say anything about his work, Bernard?”
“Only that he was ashamed of himself for not being able to rise to the occasion. He called himself a coward. Yes, coward is the word he used. I reminded him that he isn’t the first person to have cracked under pressure.”
“He isn’t suicidal, is he, Bernard?”
“I don’t believe so, I really don’t. But then his recent behavior, with the drugs and in the streets, belies that assessment. What I know about these treatment centers is that clients tend to thrive during their residence. They eat well, get their sleep, and go to several meetings every day that keep them engaged with their addiction and give them direction. Of course, the genuine challenge begins when they get out.”
“Yes, that makes sense.” She wonders if Vince has the stuff to meet the challenge. Sadly, she doubts it. And what would Vince look like sober? He’d have to give up everything, including drink. He’d lose his personality. Nothing like a dry drunk who likes to pontificate. She wants to ask Bernard whether Vince mentioned where he’d been living, after he left the house in shambles—she suspects he was staying with Nurse Reina—but it doesn’t seem fair to get Bernard mixed up in all that. Does it even really matter anymore? Instead, she thanks Bernard again for all he’s done and, although it seems inadequate compensation, she tells Bernard that, when they are on the other side of the virus, she would like to take him out to lunch.
“That would be a pleasure, Pina.”

She and Charlie watched the video together. Charlie had read about it online and suggested they both watch it. Pina became furious. “The cop is taunting the guy while he’s killing him,” she screamed. “’Ah, you’re a real tough guy now,’ and look at these other cops, these bastards are just standing there like it’s just another routine day killing a black man. What’s the matter with these people?”

Pina stood up from the sofa and marched in circles around Charlie’s living room, shouting: “The fucking bastards, the fucking bastards.” Charlie approached and tried to throw an arm around her waist, but she pushed him away, “Leave me alone,” as if he, too, were the enemy.

The rest of the week they stayed together, glued to the cable stations in Charlie’s condo, as Minneapolis burned, and peaceful protests and riots proliferated in large and small cities across the country.

“The cable stations have turned this into a spectator sport,” Charlie complained.
“Well, look at us, we’re the willing spectators.”

And yet they couldn’t pull themselves away from the television, except to mix cocktails. Charlie really upped his drinking game. He must have realized it was necessary if he was going to continue to hang with her.

They didn’t even make regular meals anymore. Pina whipped up a bottomless bowl of guacamole and, when they ran out of avocados, she blended a double batch of kalamata olive hummus, and when the Greek olives were gone she concocted a strange tasting pile of martini olive hummus.

By the weekend, after watching peaceful protests and the destruction of cities on TV, after listening to real people and countless talking heads speculate about the potential for racial equality in America, as well as the strategies of law enforcement for controlling the violence in dozens of cities, including Trump’s sick threat to sic the active military on the protesters, and after hearing about the goals of white nationalists, particularly a group called the Boogaloo Boys, who wear a uniform of Hawaiian shirts and fatigues as they rampage through cities in caravans of cars without licenses, with the stated goal of igniting a civil war between the races, after all of that watching, Pina clamors to attend a demonstration in San Francisco.

Charlie argues against it. “There’s still a pandemic out there, Pina, and you’re in a high risk group.”

“Enough with me and my risk,” she hollers. “I read an article that said it’s seventeen times more difficult to catch the virus outside than in.”
“Who made up those numbers?”
“They’re real. It’s from a study.”
“Mmm hmm,” Charlie says.
“Do not patronize me.”
“So, are we going to have our own civil war, you and me, Pina?” he asks, after dipping one last piece of pita bread into the martini olive hummus, and then pushing away the bowl.
“The world is coming to an end and I don’t want to be this old white woman watching it on TV.”
“First of all, you’re not an old woman and, secondly, the world is not coming to an end.”
“Every time she begins a dystopian rant Charlie shoots it down. Finally, he says, “You’re behaving self indulgently, Pina. Stop it.”

She knows he’s right and feels embarrassed. There’s something else that bothers her: Each time she returns to Vince’s condo to get clean clothes, food or drink, she hears Sylvie, downstairs, crying and, instead of going down to ask after her, she simply slips back to Charlie’s place.

The next evening Charlie presses her to become more responsible. They are sitting at his dinner table after he’s made the first real meal they’ve had in nearly a week—a tagine of shrimp in tomato sauce with Moroccan spices.

Charlie skillfully peels a shrimp with his fork and knife, and then asks, “Have you been thinking about what you’re going to do, once the pandemic is over? We’re all going to have to contribute to the rebuilding our country. Or are you just going to sit on your privileged white butt and complain about the world going to hell?”

At first she’s speechless. She can’t believe that Charlie’s going off on her like this. Angry, she narrows her eyes on him. His expression is placid; there’s nothing provocative about it. Somehow she keeps quiet and continues to stuff her mouth with the savory meal, pausing only to quaff the good Bourgogne Charlie decanted.

“You have great skill at helping people find their voices, Pina. That’s a calling. You could contribute a lot of good to the world as you’ve done, no doubt, in the past, but you seem disinterested in the future, content to live off the proceeds of your house.”
“I wouldn’t use the word content to describe myself.”
“I never hear you talk about going back to work. Is this really enough for you?”

She finds herself shaking her head even though she doesn’t like the idea of agreeing with him. Why does she have to be so damn stubborn? Finally, she relents. “No, Charlie, I do want to contribute. I’m just not sure if it’s as a speech pathologist, but I do want to do something useful. How about you?”

Charlie refills her glass. “I think I told you from the time we first met that I believe that PTSD will be a widespread problem on the other side of all this. A lot of people have been emotionally damaged and now with the murder of George Floyd a lot more hurting is inevitable. For starters, I’d like to find a therapist who specializes in PTSD and develop with them some form of public service messages for TV and social media platforms.”

“Wow, that’s so specific.”
“We’ll see what I actually manage to do.”

Pina gazes across at Charlie with admiration. His blond, going-white hair stands up wildly. Could that figure into his epithet: Humble man with a comic cowlick? Charlie is genuine and kind, filled with imagination. At first she found something lacking in him, a quality that Vince possesses, which amounts to little more than grandiosity. What attracted her to Vince’s faux splendor? Did it make her feel grander?

Now she falls to the ground, more nimbly than she expects, and squirms up the hardwood floor, wiggling from side to side.

“What are you doing, Pina?”
“Maybe this is where I belong.  I don’t know how to do the dance, but I’m really feeling a bit like a worm.”

In the morning she knocks on Sylvie’s door. She’s not sure whether Sylvie will open it. Finally she does. Pina stands well back from the door. Sylvie’s expression shifts to a smile when she recognizes Pina, who notices a smear of tears on the older woman’s face.

“I’d invite you in, Pina, but . . .”
“No, no, we need to keep our social distance. I just wanted to say hello and see how you are and if I could do anything for you.”
“That’s so sweet of you, Pina. To tell the truth, I haven’t been doing too well. I wouldn’t call it loneliness exactly, but this isolation has been difficult for me. Now on top of that, I’ve been very upset with the violence, particularly in Minnesota. You see, my husband and I spent most of our married life in Minneapolis, where he grew up.”
“Oh, I’m so sorry.”
“I always thought it such a beautiful city filled with progressive minded people and this . . . this violence and destruction almost makes my life there seem like it was a lie.”
“It wasn’t a lie, Sylvie.”
“I don’t know. I never spent . . . I never spent any time at all thinking about the reality of black people’s lives. I just lived in my upper middle class bubble by the lake.”
“I know what you mean, Sylvie. It takes a lot for some of us to see beyond ourselves.”
“Why is that, Pina?”
“I don’t know. The culture teaches us that in order to be happy we just need to accumulate more things for ourselves. It doesn’t teach us to think of others.”

Sylvie closes her eyes and bows her head.

For a moment it’s like having her mother back again.

“Pina, do you think I could have your phone number?”
“Of course, Sylvie. In fact, I would like it if we could talk every day.”

THE SCARAB

She finally meets the woman from downstairs that she’s heard crying from time to time. She’s coming out her garden gate and Pina, on her way to the cemetery, introduces herself before the lady can get away.

“Hello downstairs neighbor.” She speaks from a ten-foot distance on the sidewalk. “I’m Pina Trentini, the one you have to blame for all the noise above. I’m sorry about that. The virus has turned me a little crazy and I spend a lot of time up there walking in circles.” She wonders how it sounded below when she and Charlie ran around the apartment in Mexican wrestling masks, exercising their war chants, on the way to having loud sex.

The woman blinks her eyes and almost forms a smile. “You’re not so bad. I’m Sylvie Saunders.”
“You moved here recently didn’t you?”
“Just before the holidays. From Seattle, to be closer to my son and his family in San Francisco. Now I can never see them.”
“That must be so hard.”

Sylvie nods. She looks to be in her early seventies. Her wedge of gray hair has grown out in odd ways since she’s been to the hairdresser, but she’s still put together. In that way she reminds Pina of her mother. She’s quite elegant, really, in a wool button-down blouse, a creamy shade of aubergine, and a straight black skirt. She stands with her legs crossed, apparently at her ease. Sylvie wears a pin on her blouse that Pina would love to see better, but she can’t get closer. It’s a black enamel scarab, beautifully dimpled over the body of the beetle, and set in old brass.

“By the way, I love your brooch.”
“Oh thank you. It’s Egyptian Revival, a gift from my husband forty years ago. It’s at least 110 years old, Edwardian, if the dealer is to be trusted. It’s really nothing more than a dung beetle, but the Egyptians held it sacred. The scarab shares a hieroglyphic with the early morning sun, if my memory serves me.”
“It’s marvelous.”
“The Egyptians believed that a scarab amulet brought luck.”

She wants to ask if this one brought Sylvie luck, but she keeps quiet.

“Oh, what a beautiful smile you have, Pina.”
She hadn’t known she was smiling. “Thank you.”
“I’m going to leave my scarab to you. I’ll write a very short codicil to my will.”

Pina nods her head reflexively a half dozen times; she’s just met the woman and she’s going to pass on her luck, good or bad. It’s seems a fair gamble is such an unlikely event transpired.

It’s an odd flirtation they’re having—mother and daughter? Pina’s curiosity gets the better of her and she asks a question that may be too forward: “How do you spend your days, Sylvie?”
“Reading. Reading and listening to music.”
“Funny, I never hear your music.”
“Headphones.”
She’d really like to ask Sylvie what’s prompted her bouts of crying, but that’s clearly a bridge too far. Instead: “And what do you read?”

Sylvie becomes animated. “I’m working my way through Proust’s À la recherche du temps perdu in French. My mother was French and I grew up speaking it, but I’m afraid my French has faded over the years. It’s a bit of a struggle, but what else do I have to do? I’ve always wanted to make it through the whole thing. I will get through two books or three but I’ve never read all seven. Now I’m going to make it.” Sylvie has a cute gesture—wrinkling her nose after certain sentences, which has a way of brings a bit of lightness to her visage.

“Are you familiar with Proust’s À la recherché du temps perdu, Pina?”
“I know about it, but I’ve not read it. I’m sorry to say that I’m pretty much a philistine.”
Sylvie smiles at her tolerantly. “Proust has a character in the first book, a composer named Vinteuil, who’s written a sonata for violin and piano in F sharp minor, a little phrase of which sticks in the mind of the central character, Charles Swann.”

Pina realizes that Sylvie has probably not spoken to anyone face to face for weeks and she’s happy now to be a listener. How different from her drive to the city a few days ago with Charlie when she thought if he said any more she would have to scream.

“And every time Swann hears the phrase,” Sylvie says with a bouncing nod of her pointed chin, making sure she has a listener still, “every time he hears that musical phrase he becomes emotional. It brings him back particularly to his lost love Odette. For decades people have speculated about who Proust based the composer on. Camille Saint-Saëns is a popular choice, and the same can be said of César Franck, Gabriel Fauré, Claude Debussy, and even the Richard Wagner of Lohengrin. So, you see, I listen to all those composers as I read Proust. My son set-up Spotify for me, which I think is, frankly, one of the wonders of the world.”

“So have you figured out which composer the character is based on?”

“Oh, I’m glad you asked. There happens to be a lesser-known composer named Gabriel Pierné. The man was by no means obscure in the Paris of his time. Among other things he conducted the premiere of Stravinsky’s Firebird Suite with the Ballet Russes, and he has a square named after him in the Île-de-France. His Sonata for violin and piano in D minor, opus 36, composed in the year 1900, just might be what Proust had in mind. We’ll never know for sure.

“The funny thing is that the phrase catches in my brain as well. It comes early in the second movement, the allegretto tranquilo. The violin states it. Let me see if I can give you an idea.” With surprising alacrity, Sylvie hums the melody, articulating each note precisely. “You see, it’s really a folk melody. Nothing more.”

“Does hearing the phrase bring you back to anything, Sylvie?”
She sighs in a satisfying way. “Yes, it brings me back to who I want to be with.”
“Lovely, and to think you may have solved the puzzle about the composer.”

Sylvie’s hazel eyes brighten. “Yes, I may have. And now I’m getting close to the end of the seventh book.” She squints and her expression turns grim. “Each day I read a little less. It’s roughly 2,000 pages and I have only 200 pages left. I really don’t know what I’m going to do with myself when I finish À la recherche du temps perdu.”

“I’m sure you’ll find something else to read.”
“After Proust? I wonder.”
“It’s very nice to meet you, Sylvie.”
“And you too, Pina, and you too.”

Each evening she and Charlie make dinner together. He is a much more gifted and imaginative cook than she is and she has no problem at all serving as his sous chef. Tonight they prepare slow roasted lamb shanks and Pina takes pleasure chopping onions and herbs while drinking a fine Gruner Veltliner that Charlie had on ice. The last days, she’s been trying to imagine what sharing a life with Charlie would be like. It’s lovely to watch him standing at the stove, barefoot, in cargo shorts and an apron that reads: Country Master, as he braises the shanks, the fragrance of shallots, garlic, and charred meat, spilling through the kitchen.

He cranes his neck toward her. “Would you open the window, Pina?”

She does. “I know you, you want to share the great smell of our dinner with the neighbors.”

“Exactly.”

If she were to move in with Charlie she’d need to make peace with Roscoe. Charlie’s done a good job of keeping the bird in his own realm. He senses Pina’s ambivalence to the parrot, and she makes a point, in deference to Charlie, of always greeting the bird when she comes over. “Pina, Pina, Pina,” he says in his parrot bark, “where you beena?” Roscoe’s added a new trick phrase: “I’ve been thinking about you.” She wants to tell him not to bother.

Meanwhile, there’s some hope for Vince. Once he’s done detoxing, which should be soon, he’s scheduled to spend a month in a treatment facility in West Marin called Harmony Acres. The morning after Charlie took Vince to the hospital, she called Vince’s close friend Bernard and apprised him of what was going on. Since then Bernard has been a godsend, helping to make the arrangements at Harmony Acres and offering to drive Vince out to the Nicasio facility.

A psychiatrist at Kaiser, Bernard offered to take charge of the situation during the long conversation they had together. Pina revealed that it was unlikely she’d move back in with Vince. “I don’t want to live with an addict,” she said. She doesn’t need to tell Bernard that she has become very fond of another man or that she an Vince were already having problems. His addiction on top his philandering is more than she can fathom.

“But what,” Bernard asked in his posh English accent, “if Vince managed to get clean?”
“This is a little rough to say, Bernard, but I wouldn’t bet on his staying clean. I’m going to start looking for a new place to live because the place I’m staying in is his.”

Bernard, really a good friend to Vince, got her to agree to wait until Vince came out of recovery “before she did anything rash.” Pina likes Bernard and really appreciates what he is doing for Vince, and what he’s sparing her from having to do. And yet she felt obliged to describe the depth of Vince’s fall.

“Let me explain what it was like walking into the Liberty Street house, Bernard. What Vince did to that house was criminal.” She described in sordid detail what she encountered in the house that she’d called home for seven years.
“I can only imagine how you must feel, Pina. It must seem a harsh betrayal.”
“Yes, one of many.” In the end she relented. She wouldn’t do anything rash.

“The lamb shanks are in the oven,” Charlie announces, triumphantly. “We eat at ten o’clock, just like the Spaniards.”
“And what shall we do in the meantime?”
“Well, in keeping with the Spaniards, I think we should have a siesta, of sorts.”
“Of sorts?” she asks.
“In a manner of speaking.”
“So we shouldn’t expect much from this siesta?”
“It remains to be seen,” says Charlie. “We keep our expectations low and likely exceed them.”
“Is that your philosophy of life?”
“Pretty much.”

She walks behind him and unties his apron. Then she lifts his black Yosemite Park Half Dome t-shirt over his head and leaves a trail of kisses from his neck to his navel.

Charlie pulls her close. She loves the smell of him: a mélange of sandalwood body lotion, Arm & Hammer rosemary and lavender deodorant, and his native tang, which she can’t get enough of. Charlie kisses her sweetly at the corners of her mouth. “I think this is going to be the kind of siesta we like best.”

She wakes after Charlie to the smell of coffee. By the time she gets to the kitchen in her short kimono Charlie is truly angry. She’s never seen him like this. “It’s Memorial Day weekend,” he shouts, “with 100,000 dead, and this fucking asshole is out playing golf and tweeting personal attacks and conspiracy theories from his golf cart.”

She pours herself coffee. “And good morning to you.”
“I’m sorry, Pina. It just gets the better of me sometime and I need to blow off steam.”
“Please go on. It’s fine with me as long as you’re not aiming your anger at me.”
“At you, no way.” He gives her a big lollipop kiss on the lips, and then veers off into a more muted rant. “What percentage of those dead would still be alive with a competent leader?”
“A wild guess—50%.”
“You’re underestimating it, Pina.”

Charlie hustles out of the room, clearly on a mission.

She sits at the kitchen counter sipping coffee and dangling her legs. She wouldn’t mind a little Irish in her cup this morning. Take a nice hop into the day. Charlie has a bottle of Bushmills, she noted when she took inventory, but she doesn’t want to scandalize the man. As it is, she’s kept her imbibing to a minimum in his presence—no more than a bottle of wine a night, and a couple of snifters of cognac for the varnish. Now he’s been gone a while. She should have grabbed the Bushmills.

Charlie hurries back, doing the dance of a man with an open laptop and a cup of coffee.

“Charlie, why are you going back and forth with your coffee?”
“Thought I might want some. Got to stay agile.” He grins at her. The guy’s falling in love. That’s what she was afraid of.
“Look at this, Pina, look at this.” He crouches down beside her and cues up a video as well as the narration: “A mass of white people,” he says,” in a voice from an old newsreel. “Yes, very white people, no masks, keeping scant distance as they jump up and down in a pool the size of a valley, which looks like it might run to the River Jordan. These are the new liberators of our country.” She loves to see him get worked up and admires the humor he can bring to his earnestness. Pina doesn’t know if she has the heart left to be earnest.

“Look at them prance around in a sunken American petri dish under a massive flag.”
“Are they getting baptized?” she asks.
“They already have been. Make America Great Again.” Charlie’s brogue has become urbane like a voiceover by John Hamm on Madmen. She bets that Charlie’s an old Toastmaster.
“We must understand,” he says, “that this is Lake of the Ozarks, the Babylon of Missouri.”
“You mean the Ozarks are a real place?.”
“And look at this.” He starts up another video: “Very unpleasant. A trio of unmasked white women deliberately coughing in the face of a masked restaurant host.”

Pina shakes her head. “Who is this guy, Christ? Turning the other cheek. I would have smashed them.”

Charlie switches back to his newsreel delivery. “This is America 2020. The silent majority has finally discovered all its grievance and its moronic voice.”

THE LIZARD

No Vince in the morning. Pina continues to wish him well, and she worries. She pitches herself questions as if her answers might give meaning to the inexplicable. But, of course, she has no answers and the questions are almost all posed rhetorically. The phrase downward spiral sticks in her head. How come you never hear about upward spirals? Once one spirals downward is there no hope of return? Is Vince engaged in a time lapsed suicide, one that stretches out for weeks or months? When did it start? Can the momentum be reversed? How did this become his fate?

Pina decides on a hearty breakfast. Yesterday she had no lunch and only a small salad for dinner. This morning she’s ravished. She gets out the cast iron pan, fries three slices of bacon, reheats some potato wedges, and cracks in three eggs, stewing them sunny side up in the bacon fat. She knows better than to prepare so unhealthy a meal but, damn, how she loves the apron of egg whites crisped in bacon fat, and the three bright yolks staring up at her from the plate like a good-natured Cyclops.

She wishes she had someone to talk to beside herself. A parrot? She recalls the bird’s sober recital, Pak the ca in Haved Yad. No, a parrot is not the ticket. She turns on Morning Edition and listens to a feature about comedians surviving without comedy clubs. One comic sees opportunity in the plague. “When comedians get a glimpse of their own mortality things can get very funny.” Survivors can rejoice in years of gallows humor. She listens to another story about dogs being trained to detect Covid-19. They’re trying everything they can, since the damn government is not interested in providing tests except for themselves. Next there’s a report about the epic job losses, and the suffering for so many. She can’t listen anymore.

Cleaning up after breakfast, she’s back to Vince and his downward spiral. She’s not yet ready to condemn him for his likely tryst with Nurse Reina, and yet she wonders if that was his reason, in the first place, for bundling her off to Sonoma. Is the royal nurse really ill? Dying? Or is Vince primarily concerned with his own exposure? When did he stop being a doctor? How could he do it at a time like this? Is his plan for dealing with the plague an overdose? Oh Vince, why are you doing this to yourself?

Pina doesn’t ask what he’s done to her, because she’s way detached by now. Perhaps she always has been. In a certain mood she holds herself culpable for that, a practiced distance that can freeze a man like Vince, who needs a lot of petting to function. She once asked him if his mother doted on him to such a degree that he’s unable to thrive without the doting. He glared at her and then dodged the question. “What are you getting at? I’m too old to remember.” Finally, he admitted that his mother neglected him. In the end, Pina’s neglected him as well. She’s failed Vince, unquestionably, like she failed others, after Marco. She should have lived alone instead of searching for another Marco. She thought she had learned something about sorrow. She practically memorized Elizabeth Kubler-Ross’s Five Stages of Grief, but she learned little. What she did was adopt a posture, which kept her like an ersatz existentialist, immune to emotion and conversant in irony, which is to say, unable to love anybody or to be loved. It didn’t stop her from trying.

Both she and Vince knew early on that she was the wrong girl for him. After his initial charm faded, she found it difficult not to bust his chops when he spoke about others with contempt, or acted arrogantly, and yet her irony was a first cousin to his contempt.

Over the last couple of years, she and Vince have practiced a jagged tolerance, treating each other with surprising graciousness, more or less like adults. But as Pina wades deeper into middle age, she no longer wants to live out her life with an aging narcissist. Vince’s choices, she thinks, insure that won’t happen. Or are they even choices for him anymore? How can a man lose his will so quickly?

Charlie breaks through her malaise with a text that soon becomes a flurry.

Roscoe misses you, is Charlie’s opener. He asked, ‘Where’s Pina, Pina, Pina?’ in his wistful inflection.

She texts right back. Has Roscoe become your id?

He doesn’t respond for a while and she worries she offended him. She makes herself a Campari Spritz, even though she’s newly on the wagon, a resolution that grew out of yet another conversation with herself during breakfast. But a Campari Spritz is nothing—she’ll nurse it into the afternoon.

No, I think not, Charlie replies, finally. I would not entrust my needs and desires to Roscoe.

And yet, you say Roscoe has an id.

Yes, Charlie texts, I’ve spoken with him numerous times about the facts of life. Finally I think he gets it. Most recently, during a session, he said, ‘Roscoe wants a girl.’

You’re shitting me. Charlie.

Well, lets say I’m connecting the dots.

That’s when she goes off script, which is similar to driving off track in a two- wheel drive vehicle, something she’s done more than once to her detriment. Charlie, she texts, I’d like to connect the dots with you.

Let’s do it, he responds.

In time, darling, in time.

On the deck’s chaise lounge, Pina is shade-bathing in the buff. It just hit ninety-one degrees, her phone app tells her. She wishes she could swim in the complex’s pool, but it’s closed for the duration. Maybe if she and Charlie become friendly she’ll convince him to go swimming with her sometime at midnight, when the rest of the place is sleeping. Can Charlie be nudged toward a bit of benign rule breaking?

Pina has a new book that she’s enjoying. She finally finished The Plague, which steadily lost interest for her. Along with the book’s beguiling disappearance of the native Arabs and Berbers, the account struck her as excessively patriarchal. Aside from the Dr. Rieux’s sweet mother, the only female characters make the briefest walk-on appearances.

Pina stopped at a late passage, which read: “For the moment he wished to believe like all those others around him who believed, or made believe, that the plague can come and go without changing anything in men’s hearts.” After reading it several times, she stood up in the empty room and shouted, “What about women’s hearts?” Instead of an echo, she heard Vince’s voice, from the recent past, saying, “Pina, aren’t you taking your feminism a little too far?”

She also took issue with Camus’ philosophical posturing, which often seemed forced and pompous, as if he were trying to squeeze every drop of wisdom while observing men’s behavior during a difficult time. She began to think of the narrator’s pronouncements as blood-from-a-turnip wisdom. Camus was thirty-five when he published the book, already a hero of the Resistance, and more sexy than anybody smoking a cigarette. Where does she get off questioning the philosophical bone fides of a man who pioneered existentialism and won the Nobel Prize in Literature? And yet, in this book, he says a lot of things that sound more important than they are and, as is the case with many male writers, he was given a pass.

Pina plucked a few books at random from Vince’s shelves of man novels. Surprisingly, she chose one called McTeague, about a primitive dentist operating in San Francisco in the 1890’s. What grabbed her was the introduction to the book, particularly the sentence: “Has any other dominant character in a novel every been called ‘stupid’ on so many pages?” She liked the idea of reading about a stupid man, since idiot men are so underrepresented in literature, given their dominance in the population. Another thing that grabbed her was the dentist’s fantasy of having a huge gilded molar mounted above his sign, on the corner of California and Polk: ‘Dr. McTeague Dental Parlors. Gas Given.’ The gilded molar struck her as quite an imaginative leap for an idiot.

Just as she finishes a passage about McTeague drinking a pitcher of steam beer on his Sunday day off, the phone rings, a number she doesn’t recognize. She thinks better of dismissing the call. As soon as she answers, she hears Vince’s breathing on the other end. How strange to be so familiar with a man that you recognize his breath from afar.

“Vince?”
“Yeah, it’s me.” His scratchy voice sounds more raw than usual.
“Why the strange phone?”
“I lost mine.”
“You lost yours?”
“Didn’t I just say that?”
“Where are you, Vince?”
“Where am I? That’s the $64,000 question. I don’t know where I am.”
Pina tells herself to stay calm. “Are you in San Francisco?”
“Yeah, San Francisco, but not anywhere you know.”
“Do you know the neighborhood?”

Vince doesn’t answer but he’s still there.

She gets up and walks through the house, putting on one of Vince’s tee shirts. It’s too warm for one of Charlie’s flannels.

“The Tenderloin,” Vince says finally.
“What are you doing in the Tenderloin, Vince?”
“That’s where I live.”
“Why aren’t you staying at the house?”
“I don’t belong there.”
She keeps herself from asking about Nurse Reina. “What street are you on, Vince? What’s the intersection?”
“Why do you always, why do you always ask so many damn questions? You’re persecuting me,” he says, his voice breaking into a screeching wail.
“What’s your intersection, Vince?” she persists.
“I don’t know. How should I know? Leavenworth.”
“Leavenworth and what?”
“Enough already,” he says, and she hears the line go dead.

At nine o’clock she texts Charlie: Would you like to go for a swim?

He wastes no time responding, The pool’s closed.

I know, I was going to wait until midnight, but I could go now.

We would get cited.

I’ll take the risk. In the middle of all this caution I need some adventure. Maybe I’ll see you.

She wastes no time and puts on her swimming suit and drapes her light Japanese robe over her shoulders. It would be nice to have a shot of Irish first, but not now. She’s been good, had nothing more than the Campari. She grabs a towel and walks barefoot to the pool.  It’s clear from a sign on the fence that it’s closed due to Covid, so entering through the gate is a clear violation. They haven’t changed the locks so there’s not need to climb over the fence. Is she being selfish to do this? Will anyone follow her lead? Could she be charged with being a spreader like all those kids invading the Florida beaches? She can’t think about that now.

She’d hoped it would be dark but there’s an obnoxious light atop the pool house. So much for atmosphere. She reminds herself that there’s still air and water. Anyway, she’s not going to sit around and wait for Charlie, who in all likelihood is not coming. The night has cooled considerably, but she’s still warm. She slips off her robe and asks herself the point of her suit, and loses that, too.  She goes to the deep end and dives. In a flash, her body is caramelized in the warm chill of water and air. She swims a lap. She was right to do this. How good she feels to have followed her instincts. Her body feels like a teenager’s, not the body of a woman pushing fifty-two.

But now, of course, there’s somebody at the gate. Will it be trouble or more pleasure?

Charlie opens the gate. He’s wearing pretty tan trunks, a print with seashells, and a muted Hawaiian shirt, bamboo on black. He nods to her and takes off his top. She’s surprised that he’s come and very happy. She swims another lap, this time underwater, and then treads water on the deep end. He has a hairy chest, but not too hairy. His legs are beautifully turned. She’s so pleased that neither of them is saying anything. She swims one more lap. Before she gets back to the deep end, he’s in the pool. They keep their social distance.

She swims a final lap, climbs out of the pool, and quickly wraps herself in her towel. No need to be an exhibitionist. “Come on over, Charlie, and have a nightcap.”
“Yeah?” he asks.
“Would you rather wait until the plague’s over?”
Charlie shakes his head.
“Give me fifteen minutes to shower.”

Vince’s welcome mat says Get Lost. She’s railed against it for years but has done nothing to replace it. And now, nearly two months into the plague, she steps on it every day. As she climbs the stairs tonight she sees a dead lizard on the mat. Given her history with lizards, it must mean something to have one come home to roost. Perhaps it’s the sign of the plague itself. Before she can admire the creature, it skitters off into oblivion.

She loved catching lizards as a kid. She wasn’t lacking nerve, but it seems like it took her years to be able to catch one. They called them mini dinosaurs and put them in a shoebox with pinholes in the lid. It was common to torture them with live dissections.

She also remembers the time Corky Eichorn said, “I’ve got to go drain my lizard,” and she asked if she could come and see.

He shrugged. “Sure.”

Pina went off dutifully with Corky to the bathroom and watched him pull out his little pinkie penis and pee.

Now she showers and puts on Charlie’s red flannel with the bright white buttons. It’s cozy. She’s all wrapped up like a prize and she likes the feeling. How nice it is to wait for him.