THE RABBIT

 

 

“I just started driving. I had nowhere to go, but I went driving.” It’s Vince, calling early.
“Are you driving now?”
“I feel like I’m driving, but I’m not.”
She props herself up on her pillows. It’s a quarter to six. He sounds scared, maybe disoriented. “Are you okay, Vinnie?”
“Not so much. I think I’m loosing it. I’m all bled out. I should go off and die in the woods like an old wolf.”
The urgency in his voice forces her out of bed. “Tell me what’s going on, Vince. Talk to me now. Is it really bad at work?”
“I don’t want to tell you. You don’t need to hear about that.”
She slips on Vince’s corduroy shirt and goes to the kitchen to start coffee. “Talk to me, Vinnie.”
“I heard about an emergency room doctor at Presbyterian New York who killed herself on Sunday. The thing is, you see too much. Human beings are not meant to process all this. You can’t. Did you know we’re very fragile . . . very fragile? You don’t know how fragile we are, Pina. Some docs will do themselves in now, some later.”
“Do you feel like you might harm yourself, Vince?”

Vince is quiet now, really beginning to frighten her.

“Should I come to you, Vince? I’ll come if that will help.”

Vince’s laughter begins as a low rumble and grows so loud she turns the volume down on her phone. “Where are you now?”
“It must be fatigue,” he says. “Fatigue has a way of getting under your skin.” He breaks into song, in a crooked voice: ”I’ve got you under my skin.”
“Will you tell me where you are, Vince?” The teakettle starts whistling “Tea for Two.” It sounds like a cruel joke this morning.
“Yeah, it’s got to be the fatigue,” Vince says.

A blush of normalcy returns after she coats the coffee grounds with boiling water and the dark aroma rises.
“Tired to the bone,” he says, and starts up with a raspy blues song: “Tired to the bone, like nothing I’ve ever known.”
“Then why did you go driving?”
“Tired to the bone,” he bellows, full voice. “No, I’m not a rolling stone.”
“Vince,” she shouts into the phone. “Then why the hell did you go driving?”
“Hey, back off, Pina, back off. Why did I go driving?”

Pina grips her mug of coffee with both hands and lets the heat radiate before taking her first sip. What is Vince fucked up on? Clearly he’s fucked up.

“Why did I go? I’ll tell you why . . . I wanted to come up and see you, Pina, if only from a distance. But then I drove in the other direction. That way there wouldn’t be any temptation.”
She tries to gauge if there is any truth to what he’s saying. “So where did you drive to?”
“I didn’t go anywhere. Downtown. I drove downtown. Drove in circles. Hardly any traffic but the red lights were still on. Drove me crazy. They served no purpose, no purpose at all. Red light. Red Light. Red light. Where’s the motherfucking green light? I tell you, I was either at a red light or aimed the wrong way down a one-way. This is the truth. This is the absolute truth. I’m not fucking bullshitting here. I felt like I was stuck in a video game, some fucking nightmare I couldn’t get out of. WHO DO I HAVE TO FUCK TO GET OUT OF THIS MOVIE?”
Pina holds the phone away from her and tries to stay calm. “What was your reason for driving downtown?”
“My reason? You’re asking me my reason. Is everything with you about reason? Are you fucking Pythagoras? Is reality a mathematical equation for you?”

Pina wonders whether to end the call, but she’s too worried about Vince to leave him like this.
“I don’t know, I don’t know why I went. Something stupid—I wanted to race around the financial district in my Miata. I pictured it, zipping around corners, no other cars or pedestrians. Dream come true. I know . . . I know . . . if it had been you, you’d have driven to the ocean, Pina.”
She slurps down what’s left of her coffee. “Where are you, Vince? Are you at home? Tell me where you are. I can be there in an hour.”
“Cut it out. Don’t talk nonsense, Pina. You’re not coming here. You are not coming. That would . . . that would defeat the whole purpose.

What purpose, she wonders, to keep her safe? Now she hears the woman downstairs weeping. Pina hasn’t seen or heard any sign of her for days. The crying is almost a comfort—that’s how strange things have become. The woman must have the opposite experience of her. Having to hear Pina clanging pots and pans while she’s cooking, listening to her do her powerwalking around main room.

“Did you have a cocktail, Vince?”
“Of course. Why . . . why do you ask questions that you know the answers to? Yeah, my mixology was a bit off—too much adrenalin. My heart was pounding, a real quarter-pounder. All that adrenalin, it’s not good with stoplights. Not good at all. Good. No I wouldn’t say things are exactly good. I’m scared, Pina. People I work . . . people everywhere, I mean rally everywhere, getting sick. All around me sick. I’ve lost whatever courage I had, which probably wasn’t much in the first place.”
“Where are you, Vince?”
“Quit asking me where I am.”
“Then tell me.”
Silence, except for his raspy breathing. He’s probably been up all night tripping.
“Is there somebody you can talk with, Vince?”
“I’m talking with you. Aren’t I talking with you? This . . . this is a conversation. Are you missing that point? That’s what’s going on here? I mean it’s pretty clear . . . all you have to do is apply your advanced reason to see what’s going on.”

Vince is not generally a nasty man, but with certain compounds, the rush he wants brings an edge. “Vince,” she says, “you need some help. Get yourself some Thorazine and talk with somebody.”
“What?” he snarls. “I should get some Thorazine? You’re telling me to get some Thorazine. When did you start prescribing, Pina? I missed that, And you want me to talk to somebody. Can’t you rise to the occasion, Pina? Is that too much for you? I mean, I’m out here . . . I’m out here all the time. All the time. And you, you’re telling me to take Thorazine . . . telling me you can’t talk me down, you don’t . . . you don’t know . . . you won’t talk me down . . . talk me down from here. Is it always about you, Pina?”
“Tell me where you are, Vince, tell me how I can help.”
“Help. Ha. You can’t help. I’m fucked.” And with that, Vince slams the phone down.
Pina tries calling him back several times, but he does not answer.

 

Some time during the night Charlie left an oversized baggie at the door with six facemasks. A note says, “Dear Pina, I plucked these right out of the dryer with a pair of tongs. They should be good to go. Wishing you a sweet day, Charlie.”

The day hasn’t gotten off to a sweet start, but she allows herself a moment to think of Charlie. It was only yesterday that they held each other’s hand. It seems so long ago. Maybe that’s as far as it goes. Maybe that’s as far as it should go.

She chooses a black and brown batik facemask and heads to the car without a plan. Didn’t shower and barely brushed her teeth. She runs the engine, revs it, and turns on the radio, as if Morning Edition will tell her what to do. She knows what to do, just doesn’t want to do it. A quick story about online dating, just before the hour, and she puts the car into drive.

There’s no traffic so she gets to San Francisco in forty-five minutes. Drives up Divisidero, with only a few small grocery stores open. When she crosses Market Street, she gazes with something close to disbelief at the empty streets of the Castro. Granted it’s early, but only one man is walking on the sidewalk under the rainbow banners.

Pina pulls into the driveway of the house on Liberty Street. Sweet Liberty. It’s more than six weeks since she’s been here. She slumps down in the car, almost hides beneath the dashboard. How much she resented being shipped to Sonoma. For her safety. It seemed like an invention. It’s so long ago now—how many deaths later? Who’s counting? Everybody. The count’s the big thing. She sees the numbers everywhere. They prove what’s getting worse—496 Hormel pork packers, who are 79% Latino, have tested positive. The numbers are flattening, they say, but the flattened numbers sure look crooked to her. Now they’re saying that flattened may be a sustained condition that we live with for the foreseeable future. All this is a distraction to delay going into the house.

She ties on her facemask. In the rearview, the batik is suave. She tugs on the drawstring so that it fits snug. Next she slips on a pair of gloves and climbs the outside steps. Before turning the key, she takes a deep breath and tells herself to touch nothing, even with the gloves.

It’s hard to push the front door open against all the mail on the floor beneath the mail slot. The stench is overpowering. When the fuck did he last dump the garbage? She’s going to retch. She’s never seen so much mail on the floor, not even after a three-week trip to Europe. Snail mail has meant nothing to her since people stopped writing personal letters. She takes care of all her bills online, but the mail doesn’t stop coming. She kicks at the pile to see if anything jumps out. Catalogs. A shitload of catalogs. Almost all of them addressed to Vince, the avid consumer.

She leaves the front door open. Let the awful smell spill out onto the street. It’s hard to believe that two months ago she lived here and life was more or less normal. What the fuck did he leave in the garbage? She’s not about to find out. No way she’s going anywhere near the kitchen. She calls his name, more from reflex than anything else. He couldn’t possibly be here, not with this smell, and his car no place to be seen. He probably hasn’t stayed here for weeks. No point wondering where he’s been. If she hadn’t just had the crazy conversation with him she’d think he was dead.

Up the stairs, there’s a display of family photographs, mostly Vince’s: his parents, two brothers, and several photos of him as a child, of his late wife Anita and all four of his children. He invited Pina to put up some family photos of her own. They could have one homogenized family, he said. Right, people who never met each thrown into an absurd collage. No way. She did, however, set off a distinct section in the stairway for her family—just four framed photos: her mother and father, Marco, and Zia Giulia, not one of her. She didn’t need to see herself on the wall.

In the years she lived in the house she learned to navigate the stairway so that she hardly ever faced Vince’s family. Except Anita. Every few months she’d pause in front of Anita, a dimpled, dark-eyed young woman in the photograph. Pina used to wonder what she and Anita had in common beside Vince, who likely cheated on her as well. Anita had been an RN, a practicing Catholic. Still, the only reason she made it on wall is that she died. No way their marriage would have lasted this long.

Pina thinks to lift her photos off the wall, but forces herself up the stairs. She screams after she pushes open the door of the master bedroom. At first she thinks the room has been ransacked by thieves, but a little voice in her head whispers: Vince. The bed’s unmade and there’s blood on the sheets. When she starts spotting needles on the ground, mixed in with the piles of clothes, she drops a hand over her mouth—there’s no point in screaming anymore. Vince is an addict who’s gone off the rail. When did he start? He can’t have gotten to this point in so short a time.

The medicine cabinet in the bathroom has been plundered as well. Pill bottles, as well as loose capsules and pills, are spilled across the floor, with disposable razors, tweezers, fingernail clippers, band-aids, containers of talcum powder, combs and brushes, and random toothbrushes. The plastic reservoir for the Waterpik is splintered; it looks like it’s been stepped on.

She wants to get out of the house quick, but first rushes down the hall to her office, wondering what disaster awaits. Somehow he’s left it alone. Was this out of respect for her? Oh, Vince, what have you done to yourself? She takes a quick look around the office, still without touching anything. Does she need something from here? No, she doesn’t need anything. Then she spots the carved rabbit lamp, with the beautifully marbled shade, that Marco gave her on their first anniversary. The life-size carving is Indonesian, crafted from an unknown hardwood, painted in a dark finish with a yellow dotted necklace of flowers that Pina decided, long ago, means that the rabbit has been deemed holy. She’s never believed in holy or in the luck that rabbits have or convey, but she wants this bunny with her. She yanks the plug from the socket, coils the cord, and holds the rabbit in her arms as if it were a baby. Come with me, she whispers, out of this house of horrors.

Once she’s settled the rabbit into the passenger seat up front, she pulls off her gloves and tosses them into the trunk of the car. She shoots several squirts of sanitizer into her hands. There’s only so much it can sanitize. She calls Vince again. Pick up. Why don’t you pick up? Who else to call? She tries Bernard, his best friend, his chess buddy, and is surprised that he answers.

“Pina,” Bernard says, in his lilting British accent, “everything okay?”
“You know,” she says, buying time. She feels oddly exposed standing on the sidewalk, but she needs the fresh air; she’s not ready to get back in the car.
“You’re up in Sonoma still?”
”Actually down in the city today. Have you been in touch with Vince?”
“Can’t say I have. Tried him a couple times but figured the poor man’s deep in the trenches.”
“I spoke to him this morning and he was very disturbed.”
“Oh, no.”

She’s not sure how much to tell Bernard.

“If there’s anything I can do,” he says.

She’s not sure what anybody can do. How do you care for an addict, even one you once loved, in the middle of a plague? Her conversation with Bernard trails off into sweet niceties and she’s left with herself on the sidewalk.

Before she gets in the car, she looks up and down the street. Somebody must know when Vince was last around. She shouldn’t do it but she does—walks right across the street and knocks on Robyn’s door. It’s a brazen thing to do given their history, but not as audacious as sleeping with your neighbor’s mate, as Robyn did with Vince for more than six months.

Pina waits down several steps and still can hear voices inside the house. Earl, Robyn’s husband, a dentist—Dr. Sconcy—has probably been off work for weeks, and, far as she knows, they have a couple of teenagers at home.

“Robyn,” she says, when the door opens and she sees the tall redhead looking quizzically into space.
“Oh, Pina. I thought you were . . .”
“Yes. I’m looking for Vince.”

Robyn steps outside and shuts the door behind her. “You know, I haven’t . . . we haven’t . . .”
“I know. I just wondered if you’ve noticed Vince coming and going.”
“Why would I? I mean . . .”
“Maybe you’ve noticed his car in the driveway.”
Robyn shakes her head. “Is something the matter?”
“You mean, beside the world going to hell.”

Robyn laughs a little too loud.

Pina is surprised to feel so little animus toward her. She’s just another woman who fell for Vince’s charms, but at least she had the decency to tell her and express contrition.

The front door opens.

“Hey Earl,” she calls to the bespectacled dentist.
“Pina. Everything okay?” That seems to be the benign question of our age.
“Peachy. Just saying hello.”
“Hey, I like your facemask. Very stylish.”
“Thank you. It’s the only fashion statement we have left.”

After Pina says goodbye to the Sconcy’s, she heads across town toward Kaiser, but before she crosses Market Street she needs to pull off on a side street to vomit. She heaves more, it seems, than last night’s dinner and is ashamed to leave her dis-ease on the curb.

She has no idea what she’s going to do at Kaiser. Surely they won’t let her into the building. She finds a parking spot across Geary on Lyon, and sets her facemask in place again, after worrying about what will happen if she has to vomit again.

After a quick search through the doctor’s parking lot for Vince’s car, to no avail, a security man approaches her. Can he help her? She tells him she’s waiting for her husband, Dr. Lester.

“Well, you can’t wait here, Ma’am.”
“I’m not waiting here,” she shouts, “I’m looking for his fucking car.” She’s surprised by her rage and apologizes to the guard as he hustles her out of the lot. Pina hurries off to the parklet on the northeast side of the main building. Staff members often catch a bit of fresh air there. What does she expect to accomplish? She approaches two beleaguered nurses, from safe distance, and asks whether they’ve seen Dr. Lester. One gives her little more than a blank stare, while the other repeats his name, “Dr. Lester . . . Dr. Lester,” and shakes her head.

Despondent, by the time she gets back to the car, she notices the carved rabbit, sitting shotgun. He appears ready to go for a ride and she’s pleased for the companionship.

THE SPIDER

 

 

Pina dashes some Irish in her coffee as she heads out to the deck. It’s a warm sun at ten. There will be wonderful dry heat today. At the rail with her coffee she notices the spring leaf bursting, in sheets of light green lace, on the long row of Osage trees, straight across. They’re beautiful trees—thirty odd feet high, with twisting boughs. She wonders when they were planted. Up a lane they make a good windbreak and property fence.

Vince told her that the Indians made prized bows out of the branches and tomahawk handles from the denser wood. She’d never heard of an Osage tree. The fruit is what attracted her. Late summer they look like huge yellow apples or round pears, but when they begin dropping on the street in the fall, they have a deformed human quality; they’re sweaty, and dimpled like brains.

At first she thought they were breadfruit, which can be turned into gruel, but these Osage oranges, are inedible, ceremonial like the Clydesdales down the street. She used to pick up a sack of them from the street and bring them back to the city—nine ugly yellow brains aligned, according to stature, atop the backyard fence.

 

After a half an hour in the sun, Pina has a trail of sweat on her forehead. She wants a cool bath. Vince can’t understand this pleasure. “What’s the point of a lukewarm bath? Baths are for the hottest water you can stand.” She even likes a cool bath at the beginning of a hot day.

Pina spots the spider as she bends to turn on the water. She’s surprised by its size—much bigger than a house spider should be. It’s so large she can see the bristling of the hair on its legs. Her first thought is to crush the spider and flush it down the toilet. Or maybe she’ll scald it in hot water from the shower, see if it can scamper away in time to save its life. The old torturer in her has returned. As a child, running with the Eichorn brothers, she became a ruthless assassin. They’d find slugs and garden snails and salt them until they sweated to their terrible deaths. She also liked gathering bees in jars of sugar water. You had to be brave to put the lid on the jar, filled with drunk, buzzing creatures, but if you pulled it off, you were the one who got to shake the jar until all the bees had drowned.

This spider is quite a stately character, thoroughly at ease in the middle of the white porcelain tub. She, too, appreciates the coolness of the tub, and why not? The spider is in no hurry to go anywhere. Ah, such languor. Pina is sorry to disturb her. She kneels beside the tub and gets a better look at the creature, standing so high on all eight of her elegantly bent legs. She tears off a few sheets of Charlie’s precious toilet paper, deftly captures the spider, and drops her on the deck, where she scrambles away, with at least the majority of her legs intact. Come on back in if you like. Pina runs a cool bath and slips into it with a shiver.

 

She and Charlie meet at noon on the bike trail. She’s wearing a pair of blue and white striped shorts with a tie, a white cotton blouse, a straw hat, and a N95 mask. Charlie, hatless, is in green cargo pants and a tee shirt advertising a restaurant in Fairfax called Gestalt Haus. He wears a beautiful mask made, it appears, from African fabric. Pleated, with a drawstring, it’s clearly of superior design.

Charlie greets her with a wave and she waves back. They both have their lunch in a bag.

“I love your mask. Where did you find it?”
“I made it. In fact, I have a few masks for you which I forget to bring.”
“You sew? You have a sewing machine?”
“Of course.”

The amazement never ends.

Charlie’s idea is to walk east to the end of the bike trail, up Fourth Street to the top of the hill, across Brazil, and back down Gehricke Road toward Sebastiani Winery, where they’ll eat their lunches along the stone wall.

They stroll single file along the trail, Pina in the rear, just far enough behind that she can read the text on the back of Charlie’s Gestalt Haus tee: The French Laundry of Sausage. That amuses her and she realizes that Charlie chose the shirt this morning in order to amuse her.

Up Fourth, Charlie goes out into the street so they can walk together at the required distance. They stroll along the vast grounds of Casa Sebastiani, with its twin baby-faced lions out front, meant to look malevolent, and Italian cypresses lining the driveway. The stone mansion, largely obscured from street view, sits atop a grassy knoll, and suggests a Tuscan villa. On one of the middle terraces a wedding cake fountain shoots water toward the sky.

She faces Charlie. “Vince says this place has six bedrooms and rents for $2,500 a night. Not now.“
“Nope.”
“Does the Sebastiani family still own it?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Looks like the family made a good dollar on their wine.”
“Yep.”
She’s not seen Charlie be so laconic.

When they reach the top of the hill and turn down Brazil Street, Pina stops; Charlie follows suit.
“Is there something wrong? You’re so quiet, Charlie.”
He shakes his head. “Just happy to be with you.”

They look at each other a long moment. It’s true—his blue eyes are twinkling above his mask. Pina steps closer to him and he doesn’t back up. That’s all she needs. She’s not going to stop until she touches him. And yet, she’s frozen, two feet off the curb, three feet from him. He smiles at her and she smiles back. They stay like that for a glazed moment. Then he reaches out his hand, and she takes it. There it is—the first time she’s been touched since she and Vince hugged goodbye six weeks ago.

Charlie’s hand is warm but not damp. She might have dropped it if it had been damp, but now she holds on, and they turn together to face down the street.

There’s nothing to say, absolutely nothing. They start walking again, her hand in his, or is it, his in hers. It hardly matters. Holding hands—a sweet buzz tiptoes all the way up to her breast. Their arms swing in the air together, as if they are on their way somewhere, as if they might fly.

Pina sucks air to her diaphragm and counts it on the way out, no trace of asthmatic breathlessness. Who knows what it means, holding a man’s hand in the middle of a plague? She tells herself to stay in her body. Stay in the warm air. Stay with the hand that’s holding hers, whose hand she’s holding.

There was a boy named Reuben, her high school boyfriend, with whom she loved to hold hands. Ruby—that’s what everybody called him—wasn’t like other boys. He’d hold hands with you as long as you liked. She and Ruby made love sometimes and it was never very good. Ruby didn’t have much control of himself and would get frustrated. Afterwards they lay together and held hands. That was the first time it mattered and this, the first time it’s mattered since.

“Warm,” Charlie says.
She’s so happy for his single syllable; it brings her back. “Yes, quite warm.”

 

She and Charlie know not to discuss the details of their lunches. They already have a history together and no longer need to go on like a pair of badgers. Instead they’re bashful, if that’s what you’d call it. They chew their food in neat little bites like kids at camp with a crush on each other. She’s so pleased with herself for not filling the silence.

Back on the bike trail, they go single file again, no more handholding. They step aside for people with dogs, people without, some sans masks, some with. She hears snatches of conversations she’d like to banish: Lysol injections; toilet paper out on Eight Street East; Tuesday night market not going to be in the park. Everybody looks like an alien to Pina. She’s savoring something they can’t imagine.

When they arrive back at the condo complex they again face each other. You’d think they’d just made love.
“Charlie, Charlie, Charlie,” she says. “Ciao.”
“Ciao, Pina.”

 

She sits out on the deck, with the summer volume of haiku, as the evening cool descends. There’s a section in the book that Blythe calls “The Coolness.” It quite logically follows the section called “The Heat.”

Shiki, the last of the great haiku poets, according to Blythe, has this one:

      The coolness
A crab climbing in a pine-tree
      In the rain.

She loves the delicacy and resonance of Buson’s:

      The voice of the bell
As it leaves the bell,
      The coolness. 

And then there’s Issa’s:

      I have nothing at all,
But this tranquility!
      This coolness!

That’s what Pina wants—to distill the coolness and somehow internalize it as she proceeds through this madness and, perhaps, into the heat of love.

THE TURTLE

 

 

He calls in the late evening after she’s gotten out of the bath. She’s on the leather sofa, her legs folded under her, wearing a long corduroy shirt of Vince’s.

Charlie asks after her, seems concerned. She tells him that his mother’s remedy worked.

“I’m so glad. Now, since you’ve used the word, I should tell you that my mother had a lot of remedies. She came from mountain people in West Virginia and led my sisters and me through a do-it-yourself childhood. I credit her with my becoming a nerd and engineer.”

She’s amazed how much easier it is to listen to Charlie than Vince.  His voice is melodious and not freighted with an attitude of having been wronged like Vince’s. She’s also pleased that Charlie’s kicked off the conversation without referencing their aborted lunch. If she didn’t know that something more was happening she’d think they were old friends.

“Yeah, I was the kid you couldn’t get out of his room,” he says, “always building something. My old man wasn’t around much and my mother had no remedy for his drinking. She had a closet full of old wives’ tales, though. Swallow a piece of gum—it’s going to stick in your stomach for seven years. Everybody eats eight spiders a year in their sleep. That one really spooked me when I was a kid, and one of my sister’s, Betsy, used to tease me at the dinner table: ‘Maybe Charlie’s going to swallow a spider tonight.’ I was fascinated with the number. How did the ninth spider know not to enter your mouth? Nope, he’s already had his eight this year.”

Pina pictures Charlie as a boy, curly headed with a yellow pencil stub propped behind his ear and a magnifying glass popping out of his shirt pocket.

“So, you were the only boy?”
“Yes, the only boy, and the baby.”
“How many sisters?”
“Three.”
“And they adored you.”
“How could they not?”
“Hush,” she says, and wonders if he can tell how much affection she feels for him. “But this wasn’t in West Virginia.”
“No, no. L.A. San Gabriel Valley. Rosemead.”
“You actually grew up in a place called Rosemead?”
“Hey, don’t malign my hometown. It’s not like it’s in the middle of nowhere. It’s only three miles to Temple city. And you’re from San Rafael.”
“Did I mention that?”
“I don’t believe so, but Vince did when he introduced us.”
“You have a good memory.”
“I wrote it down, Pina.”
“Get out.”
“And you’re an only child, my notes tell me.”
“You’re bad, Charlie.”
“You know that Ellington song, ‘I’ve Got it Bad, and that ain’t Good’?”

She’s doesn’t want to go there. There’s no reason at all to go there.

“How’s Roscoe?” she asks.
“He was very upset to miss you. At lights out, he practically cried, ‘Pina, Pina, Pina.’”
“You’re such a liar, Charlie.”
“You’ll see.”

With the phone in tow, she heads over to the liquor cabinet and drains what’s left of the bottle of Courvoisier into her snifter.

“What are you drinking, Pina?” Charlie asks.
“You could hear that?”
“No, that was telepathy.”
“You’re spooking me, Charlie.”
“Well, you’ve already spooked me, Pina.”

Time to change directions. No need to keep going this way. This will not take either of them anywhere good. “So the world as we know it,” she says, “is turned on its head.”

“What exactly are you referring to, Pina?”
“The Plague.”
“Ah, the Plague.”
“Did I mention that I’ve been reading the Camus? The parallels with our time are chilling, but when you realize that that plague only takes place in a single city, Oran, while ours stretches across the globe, the novel begins to feel a bit tepid.”
“Yes, this is worse than science fiction, but Camus was writing allegory, not science fiction.”
“Something that’s begun to disturb me about the book,” she says “is that Camus doesn’t make a single reference to Arabs or Berbers or Muslims, whatever they are. It’s like he’s disappeared them. They do not exist. So this is Algeria with only European types: doctors and journalists, priests and bureaucratic functionaries. Catholic churches. He tosses in a Spaniard here and there, shopkeepers and smugglers, for a bit of exotica. Of course, I’m only halfway through the book. Maybe the Arabs come on strong in the second half.”
“Don’t count on it,” Charlie says. “It’s a pied noir novel. You’re seeing Algeria through the eyes of a colonizer.”

She just lets herself taste the cognac on the tip of her tongue. Pied noir. Black foot, maybe for the black shoes of the French soldiers. “As a reader, does that make me a colonizer or the colonized?”
“I think you’re like a U. N. observer.”
“Is that good?” She doesn’t know what anything means any more. “Charlie, how are we supposed to live our lives in the face of all this?”
“You mean the pandemic?”
“I mean everything. How do we live with others? What if we want to hold somebody in our arms?” There, she’s said it. He isn’t quick to answer. Maybe he shouldn’t.
“I think that if we are true to our feelings and ourselves,” he says, finally, “then we take a chance.”
“That’s a good answer, Charlie. And what if we get sick?”
“That’s the chance we take.”
“The only one?”
“There’s the chance you’ll lose Vince.”
“That may be a choice.”
“Hmm,” he says.

She can’t believe they’ve said all this, no longer even speaking in code. “You know I’m feeling really tired now, Charlie. Very tired.”
“Goodnight, Pina.”
“Ciao.”

 

Last night she did go to bed before ten, but Vince’s phone call woke her at midnight. He said nothing about not calling in the morning and she didn’t ask. Maybe that’s how their relationship will devolve—the twice a day calls will become daily, then weekly, monthly, and not at all.

He wanted to talk plunging oil prices, something she doesn’t give a flying fuck about. She turned the volume down as he blathered: “The benchmark price on a barrel hit minus 37 on Monday. There’s no place to put it. They have to pay to get rid of it.”

She asked if they ‘d pay her to fill up her car, but he didn’t even hear her and kept yammering: “They got oil tankers up and down the coast from Long Beach to San Francisco Bay, with twenty million barrels, and no place to go. It’s enough oil to fuel a quarter of the globe, and there’s no way to suck up the fucking glut.” Vince’s voice was agitated, nearly hysterical.

Meanwhile she tried to get a handle on what these factoids really meant. The world, now in shutdown mode, demands so little oil that it’s drowning in its former glut. You had to admire the justice and inverse beauty of that. She finds it cosmically satisfying. And what are the consequences of this? Some oil speculators will go belly up and people in the Himalayas get to the mountains for the first time in their lives.

It turns out that Vince is heavily invested in oil. She should have known that his passion for the subject hadn’t risen out of neutral interest. Clearly, Vince is not a U. N. observer on the issue.

He said, “I’m directly and indirectly invested in oil.”

“So you’re directly and indirectly fucked,” she couldn’t keep from saying.

Again, he didn’t call in the morning. They seem to be advancing their tacit dance to dissolution.

 

It’s Earth Day, the fiftieth anniversary. She had just begun toddling in the backyard at the time of the original commemoration. Her father particularly liked the outdoors. They hiked every Sunday at Mt. Tamalpais, Samuel Taylor State Park, or along one of the beaches. You could even visit Muir Woods back then, before the hazard of tourists that have plagued the site in the subsequent years. When she was little she loved hiking like a big girl, especially on Mt. Tam. On those hikes they usually ended up at West Point Inn, the historic lodge, where the old railroad from Mill Valley stopped. That was gone long before her time, but throughout the year you could get fresh lemonade there and, during the summer, a pancake breakfast. Her father liked to say, “Pancakes on the mountain—heavenly.” He said it so often during those years that she and her mother joined in for the last word. That may be her favorite childhood memory—the little family of three on the porch of the West Point Inn, high in the mountain woods, pronouncing the word heavenly.

Pina read an article about a place in town to hike, in the Sonoma Index-Tribune­­­—what an uninspired name for a newspaper in so beautiful a place. Why not the Valley of the Moon Light, like the Pulitzer Prize winning Point Reyes Light?

Fryer Creek starts just south of Whole Foods. She takes a narrow packed- dirt path off Second Street West that looks like it leads somewhere. It’s supposed to be a native restoration site. The creek is on her left and in no time at all it turns into swampy grasses and then high water with large piles of branches. She feels like she’s on a Bayou hike out of New Orleans. Ducks, in ones and twos, swim by. No alligators here, but she spots a mallard hiding in the reeds.

There are beavers in the creek, the article noted. She wants to see one, but they happen to be nocturnal creatures. She notices a couple of large trees they’ve brought down. The trunk of one has a gaping ax-like wound, miraculously engineered by the beavers. From the one article she’s read, she has a fount of information about beavers: they are rodents and build dams because they like flat waters to more easily defend themselves against predators. Unlike humans, beavers are naturally monogamous, mating for life.

She reaches the end of the narrow dirt path and sees that the trail broadens and is paved. But before continuing she sits on a bench facing the afternoon sun, imagining someone snapping a picture of her and applying the caption: Earth Day sun worshipper. She thinks of Charlie, sitting amid his blossoming citrus. She hopes that by now the sillage from her Ylang 49, with its flush of gardenia, has dissipated. Charlie—aside from the possibility of illness, what chances will he be taking?

The paved trail is quite populous. Folks with and without masks, do their best to create the phantom six feet whenever she approaches. She is unmasked today, vulnerable to both disease and love.

The creek and trail bend left and she sees something she hadn’t expected—a large turtle, climbing from the water and up a side bank. She wants to get closer to see its little head, but doesn’t want to scare it. Do turtles, covered so broadly by their shells, sun themselves? What does it portend to spot a turtle? Go slowly, she thinks. Stay close to the earth. You will soon be carrying your house on your back. And then, as if the turtle has just fulfilled its function, it slips down the bank into the green-mossed water.

THE BEE

 

 

Vince did not call this morning. She’d made an early cup of coffee at 5:30 after going to bed late. He’d been odd when he called at midnight, troubled, and lashing out, not at her but at the civilization. He’s part Old Testament prophet, the voice of doom. That’s where he goes when he feels out of control, ineffectual. And sure, he’s in the middle of it now.

She humored him as well as she could: “Yes, I think the end of the world may be near. I lurked a half an hour on Facebook the other day. Everybody’s putting up vintage photos of themselves, pictures from the first grade and their prom. ‘Oh, you’re so cute, Andrea.’ I think people’s instinct is to make their own memorials.”
“Right. Next they’re going to start posting what they want for their last meal.”
“What would you choose, Vince?”
“Oh, don’t do that to me, Pina. If you knew the garbage I’m eating to get by.”
“Come on, Vince, we’re talking last meal here?”
“Alright, alright. It’s crazy, all I’m craving is fish. I want an endless meal from Cala. Start with the kampachi ceviche, then bring me a dunganess crab tostada, a squid taco in salsa negra, the sopes with smoked lingcod, and a mussel tamale.”
“That’s it?”
“Enough of this nonsense, Pina. Cala’s closed for the duration and the most I can hope for is a fillet-o-fish from McDonald’s.”

The thought of a McDonald’s fish sandwich made her cringe, and she remembered the cheeseburger she made earlier in the evening, a massive patty filled with diced red pepper, broiled to a perfect rare like you can never get in a restaurant, and bathed in Vella pepper-jack cheese with three thick slices of bacon between a toasted caraway seed bun. She ate it all and let the grease drip off her chin onto the plate—heathen that she’s become—before resorting to the serviette. She’s been overwhelmed by an obsession with food since the plague started. It must be a survival instinct kicking in, that and having so much time on her hands. But, clearly, her mantra has become that of the carnivorous plant in “Little Shop of Horrors”: Feed me, feed me.

Now she asks how it’s going at Kaiser and, per usual, Vince changes the subject. Instead he talks about grim stories he’s heard recently on “All Things Considered.” Parents have stopped bringing their children in for necessary vaccinations. “Do you know what that means, Pina?”
“Epidemics of measles,” she ventures.
“Right. And much more.”

Then he pivots to a story about a Kenyan flower grower who had to plow under his whole harvest because nobody’s buying flowers anymore.

She wonders when he finds the time to listen to “All Things Considered.” Do they have the radio on at the hospital?

“Now meat packing plants are closing all over the country.”
“Wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world to become vegetarians.”
“That’s not the point, Pina. Safeway’s distribution center in Tracy is reporting fifty-one cases of Covid-19, which means all the produce coming to Safeway is suspect. The damage to our food chain is absolute, irrevocable, down right nuclear.”
“Then we better start growing a victory garden, Vince.”
“Yeah, right. What are we going to live off of—San Francisco fog tomatoes?”
She glanced out the picture window toward The Patch. “Everything grows in Sonoma.”
“I’ll tell you what it’s going to be like.”
She didn’t want to hear his version. They’d do better going back to phone sex, although she could do without any more of his dick pics.
“Did you ever see that sci-fi film ‘Soylent Green?’ Nice wholesome dystopian flick. The world has run out of natural food so people eat these wafers called Soylent Green. Old people like me are encouraged to be euthanized. Edward G. Robinson, the veteran of gangster films, volunteers. They give him a nice send-off, play Beethoven’s ‘Ode to Joy’ as he fades into the ether. The great line in the movie comes when somebody discovers the source of the wafers: ‘Soylent Green is people!’”
“So you think we’re going to be eating Soylent Green, Vince.”
“I think the human race may turn into the Donner Party—the survival of the fittest.”
“Well, that’s good news for me, Vince, because I’m feeling especially fit.”
Vince spit out each word of his response as if he were disgusted with her: “Bully for you, Pina.”
“And I’m going to survive without eating anybody else’s kidneys. Get some sleep, and take care of yourself. I do love you, Vince.” She said the last sentence because she wanted to hear how it would sound. But there was some truth to it. Did she think I love you would serve as a palliative for a man whose nerves are shot?

He didn’t respond, not at first, but finally he mumbled, as if distracted: “Yeah, yeah. Night, Pina.”

She expected he’d at least, sign off with a love you, too.”

Later, after sniffing her cognac for the longest time, she took a mouthful and chewed on it before swallowing. Then she whispered out loud: “Tonight is the end of Pina and Vince.”

 

She still expected his phone call in the morning. She will continue taking them, and will keep being his faux wife until they reach the far side of the plague. The thing is, she’s already made the separation from Vince. She can feel it in her body. Breathing has become easier. She seriously doubts that she’ll be troubled with seller’s remorse.

So what happened to Vince? Had he gone to bed without setting his snooze? Was he exasperated with her for not sharing his fatalism? Or had he arrived at the same conclusion as her?

 

Soon as Pina realizes that Vince isn’t calling, she whips up a Bloody Mary. Strong and spicy. That’s how she wants to go through this day. She’s not about to eat a Soylent Green wafer. In fact, she has a lot of goodies in the fridge, enough to make a lunch bag the badger Albert would be proud of. Feed me, feed me.

She’s not sure what to wear. There’s supposed to be a high of seventy today. After concluding jeans would be too casual, she decides on a sleeveless ivory linen dress; she’ll throw her cornflower cashmere sweater over her shoulders in case the wind comes up. Now she sprays a floral perfume on her wrists and her throat. It’s Ylang 49 by Le Labo. She discovered it last spring when she wandered into Macy’s on Union Square looking for a new fragrance. She tried a number of them before settling on this blend of gardenia and ylang ylang. It was ridiculously expensive and she enjoyed making the splurge. Now she realizes she’s sprayed on too much and, unless she takes a shower and starts in all over again, her lingering sillage will be like what a thoroughly-doused woman leaves after departing an elevator. What the hell? She will live dangerously.

“Pina,” Charlie says, “so nice to see you. Come out on out to the deck.” He walks faster than she wants to go, so she simply pauses in front of three intriguing paintings on the south wall. Each of the square canvases, maybe 16 x 16, feature a gloved hand with a watch timed 6:05 on the wrist above the glove. The first is a rust-hued suede work mitt, with a rough nubby texture that you can practically feel; the middle one is an ebony dress variety with gentle creases that suggest the ultra soft leather might be deerskin; the third picture, painted with more of a cartoonish approach, depicts a fat synthetic glove made for ultra cold weather.

“Those are quite amazing paintings,” she says, as she stands on the deck in front of her appointed chair, a good ten feet from Charlie’s.

“Have a seat, Pina, have a seat. Yes, those are made by my Sonoma buddy Arrow Wilk. He’s got a studio off Lovell Valley Road. Old barn. Wonderful spot. I’ll take you out there some day. Arrow’s a disciple of Philip Guston. You can see it in the fat glove and the timed watches. Maybe ten years ago, I was out at his place and everything on the wall looked like a Guston. I said, ‘Arrow, Arrow, what are you trying to do, out Guston, Philip Guston?’ He goes, ‘Charlie, what can I do? I’m like one of those alto sax guys after Charlie Parker came on the scene—they could care less about their own style; all they wanted to do was sound like Bird.’

“I have several more of Arrow’s paintings in the second bedroom. He’s onto something really cool now. I think he may be capturing the zeitgeist. He’s painting gloved hands scratching masked faces, and calls the series, Hand to Mouth. I’ve been trying to buy a couple off him, but no more people’s prices for Arrow. Say, I have something cold in the fridge for us, if that’s alright. Did you bring a glass, Pina?”

She pulls a little Ikea tumbler from her bag.

“That’ll do.”

She’s a little afraid of Charlie right now, how drawn to him she is. She glances at his impressive row of plants: huge pots of roses just beginning to bloom, and several miniature citrus, also in blossom. Bees, drunk with nectar, swarm the blossoms.

“What kin of citrus are these?” she asks.

“Well, that there is a Mandarin,” he says, pointing to the smallest plant. “It’s yield will be modest, eight or ten fruit, but they’re lovely as they grow and I keep them on there for as long as I can. The next, as you can see, is a striped kumquat with last year’s fruit still on and plenty of fresh blossoms.”

“Those are the hugest kumquats I’ve ever seen.” They seem to grow in pairs and once she sees them as testicles she can’t stop seeing them that way.

“The others are a blood orange that went on strike last year and the prolific meyer lemon. That little plant will give me upwards of forty fruits.”

Charlie stands and with a puckish expression, says, “Boy, I love your fragrance. Floral. I pick up a note of gardenia.”

“Wow, you have a good nose. I accidentally put on too much.”

Charlie nods to her on his way to the kitchen. “Come on, Pina, there are no accidents.”

The way he says that lifts the hair on her arms. All the senses at once, but the scent is too much. Why did she go mad with Ylang 49? What’s the matter with her? Is her thermostat shot? Plus she remembers the saleswoman repeating how long lasting Ylang 49 is. She’s going to have to make a quick getaway or she’ll asphyxiate them both. But Pina only gets up briefly to squeeze a pair of massive kumquats.

Charlie brings out a bottle of Veuve Clicquot and a vintage ice bucket embossed Moet & Chandon. Two champagnes at once, she thinks, and then looks at Charlie, really for the first time as he shimmies the cork out with his thumbs. The two of them are in sync, at least in one way—he, too, wears linen, shorts down fall past his knees. And yet he becomes unquestionably dominant in a weathered polo shirt, a painter’s shirt, you’d think, with wide stripes in uncommon colors: creamy turquoise, chalk with a bit of sand in it, and bruised bronze. On top of that he’s barefoot and has beautiful, long toes. Oh my God, he’s aroused her; just by the virtue of his long toes she wants him.

Charlie produces an identical Ikea tumbler and fills both of their glasses, and lifts his. “I thought that we should toast the fact that we’re both alive.”
“Indeed.”
They air-toast as she squirms a bit in her deck chair. “Poor Vince thinks the end’s near, not the virus but civilization in general.”
Charlie lifts his glass again. “To Vince and the apocalypse! That be a good title for an album. Oh, I shouldn’t jest. Vince is on the front line.”
“He’d do the same.” She drinks her Veuve right down and wants more. Charlie, like Marco before him, doesn’t miss a beat, and now she sips the lovely brut.
“So where’s Roscoe? I though I’d be meeting him.”
“He’s sheltering in place in the second bedroom.”
“With the other Arrow’s?”
“Yes, they’re a series of tongues, unquestionably human. One is dotted with studs like a cloved Christmas ham. Another appears double-jointed, the way it arches back on itself. As you can imagine, Roscoe finds the tongues enchanting. “
Pina wonders what Charlie has hanging in the master bedroom and, just as she has the thought, he says, “Guess what I have up in my bedroom.”
This is getting fucking scary. She should get up right now and leave. “What do you have?”
“Vince’s Mexican wrestling mask collection.”
“What do you mean you have Vince’s . . .”
“Oh, didn’t you know? He sold the collection to me a few years ago. I know I paid too much for them. But what the hell, I love the masks. I guess Vince tired of them.”
“He never had them up. I think he was afraid of them.”
“Hell, they don’t scare me; I find them inspiring! But back to Roscoe. He’s a very intelligent parrot, you know. They’d love to have him at one of the zoos, turn him into an entertainer, but that’s not where his potential lies. I think his future is as a linguist. He has a growing vocabulary of more than 500 words. I play all sorts of recordings for him, human and animal. He loves the soundtrack of “The Lion King” and he does a good Simba. He’s mastered a few accents—the Texas drawl: Hey, y’all; gangster: ya dirty stool pigeon; and French: a tout a l’heure, al-i-ga-tour.”
“He doesn’t say that, Charlie.”
“He does, he really does. He definitely wants to meet you, Pina. Maybe a little later.”
Her head is swirling and she’s hardly had anything to drink.
“So what do you have for lunch today?” Charlie asks.
This is the moment she’s been waiting for. “Funny that you ask. I have a peanut butter and honey sandwich on Mike the baker’s Einkorn mini loaf, a cucumber and onion salad with sour cream and red wine vinegar, and a little bunch of Muscat grapes.”
“How many food miles do those grapes have, Pina?”
“I don’t know, how far is Chile? Are you having any more than bread and jam for lunch, Charlie?”
He refills her glass. “You bet. I’ve fixed myself a Jewish lunch.”
“I didn’t know you were Jewish.”
“I’m not, but I grew up among Jews and I appreciate a largely maligned cuisine. I also hit the discount Passover shelves at Safeway as soon as the holiday waned. I’ve got Gefilte fish and horseradish, matzos with homemade chopped chicken liver, and a kosher l’pesach macaroon. Do you want to trade?”

She shakes her head and pulls out her peanut butter and honey sandwich. Just like that, three bees form the citrus find her and the sandwich. She’s never been phobic about bees and swats casually at them. They flutter off and return.
“Are they bothering you?” Charlie asks.
“It’s nothing.” This time she gives the bees the back of her hand and one manages to stick to her. “Ouch.” Aroused, and smelling like a perfume factory, she’s fucking stung, right here on Charlie’s deck.
“Did he get you?”
She nods. Everything is too much.
“I wish I could help you, Pina, but, you know, the distance thing. Get the stinger out. My mother always rubbed apple cider vinegar on them. You’re not allergic or anything?”
Pina shakes her head. Apple cider vinegar. She stands and forces a smile. “I got to go, Charlie. I got to go.”

 

THE PARROT

 

 

The sounds of morning: a delicate crisscross of bird songs; two tractors, with comforting mechanical resonance in the baritone range; and a remote-control monster truck, perhaps inspired by the tractors, a piercing irritation, racing up and down the street. She’s learned in her study of speech that everything has a voice and that it’s good for the training of one’s ear to pay attention especially to sounds that annoy.

Her favorite sound of dawn over the last month, and one that she controls, is the custom teakettle, Vince’s pride and joy, which whistles the opening phrase of “Tea for Two” in a stiff, yet fetching, brass call to morning.

When she and Vince initially courted—if you can call it courting when you fuck the first night—he showed off the teakettle, and offered a seminar on the song. She’d always thought “Tea for Two,” was a ditty from a prehistoric time like the thirties. It actually came from a Broadway show of the twenties, “No, No, Nanette.”

Vince, the king of playlists, commanded his Bose system to play a number of versions of the tune, each of which he dubbed seminal. At the time she wondered how so many renditions could be seminal—wasn’t seminal a singular attribute? Only one example of the group was seminal, the way she saw it, but soon, she realized, that Vince favored absolute modifiers like ultimate, supreme, and definitive because they signified authority.

In any case, she paid close attention to his commentary, because the man, in the first blush of knowing him, did seem rather supreme. He began with the seminal Art Tatum recording of 1939, a dazzling complex of piano voicings with enough piano notes flying every which way to fill a hundred tea cups. Then came Tommy Dorsey’s cha-cha version, which struck her as perfectly camp, followed by Thelonious Monk’s off-beat side, spiked with tension-building dissonance, which Vince suggested grew out of Art Tatum’s example, though was seminal in its own right. Finally, Vince played the recording he clearly loved the most, a singer with the unlikely name of Blossom Dearie. Her voice was even more improbable: thin and girlish, almost seeming like a whispering parody. The song, on which the singer also played piano, was recorded at an uncommonly slow tempo.

Vince directed her to listen closely to the lyrics, the second time through. She had to admit that Ms. Dearie had precise diction and that the lyrics were lovely. Vince said, “Isn’t her tenderness unequivocal?” She didn’t know that one could equivocate tenderness, but she was cheered that Vince seemed to value tenderness. That’s what she wanted, after all, a man who was tender like Marco.

Pina soon learned the song, practicing it every morning in the shower, and one night, at Vince’s house in San Francisco, she sat on his lap and sang it to him, albeit at a more rapid tempo.

          Picture me upon your knee
          Just tea for two
          And two for tea
          Just me for you
          And you for me alone

          Nobody near us to see us or hear us
          No friends or relations
          On weekend vacations
          We won’t have it known
          That we own a telephone, dear.

So goes the first chorus. Pina’s voice is much deeper than Blossom Dearie’s, closer to a contralto range. Although she’s not as musical as Dearie, she can at least carry a tune. For a couple of years after Marco died she went weekly to a karaoke bar with a couple of girlfriends who claimed that she’d be holding out on them.

Vince was very moved by her a cappella version. Tears welled in his eyes. Yes, he was tender. That was the night he invited her to move in with him.

The sounds that affected her yesterday: the curdling, high-pitched yelp of the cocker spaniel, and Charlie’s voice message, the one a horror, the other an enticement. She listened to his message a half dozen times. It sounds like he savors her name, and he pronounced it just once. That’s all she needs. And the sweet pauses around his modest proposal—effective, if not especially artful.

 

But she’s not ready to call him back. After a moment of inspiration she decides to drive through the city to the ocean. She packs a lunch: a tuna and deviled egg sandwich, the same spread her mother used to make for picnics, and a baggie of dried mango slices. That and a thermos of black coffee will fortify her when she gets to the beach.

The traffic down 101 is very light and she’s shocked to see so few cars on the Golden Gate Bridge. Even under a high overcast, the city, on her left, gleams, and the channel that opens to the ocean, already hints at immensity. Years ago she’d read an article about suicides from the bridge, which mentioned that the vast majority of leapers jump from the east side, facing the city, the supposition being that few people can face the abyss of the open waters. Pina’s not sure which side she’d choose.

She exits right after the toll and drives the winding road through the Presidio, which traces the line of the bay. After a wide turn the superrich neighborhood of Sea Cliff comes into view, appearing like a white Mediterranean city, even without the sun beaming on it.

Past the beaches on the Golden Gate: Baker and China, both closed to cars, she drives up through the muni golf course—Vince’s fave, which he calls a “poor man’s Pebble Beach.” No golfers today. Vince pointed out that the golf course was built on the site of an old Chinese cemetery and that a monument from those days still exists in a clump of cypress near the first green. “That’s where my approach shot ends up half the time. Some would call it the Chinese curse.”

“But not you?” she asked.

“Heck no, I’m not a racist.”

She wasn’t sure. She’d heard him curse Chinese drivers and refer to the race as “inscrutable.”

When she asked what happened to the Chinese graves, Vince shrugged.

She drives to the top of the hill past the Legion of Honor, a repository of much mediocre French salon painting, and a cast of Rodin’s “The Thinker,” cogitating out front for the world to see.

As she shoots down to Geary, past the old fire station and the Seal Rock Inn, a motel she’s always imagined would be the very spot for a sleazy tryst, she wonders if she should try and reach Vince. Maybe she can catch him, from a distance, on a break. Selfish or not, the prospect of seeing Vince would put a damper on her day.

Just like that, the ocean comes into view, with plenty of open parking down along the Cliff House, with the actual Seal Rocks in view. But she continues down to the flats of Ocean Beach. She can see people walking on the beach, and though the rows of parking are closed off, all she has to do is drive a little further and park across the Great Highway near Beach Chalet.

Pina grew up going to the pristine beaches of Marin County: Stinson, Muir, and Point Reyes, and to the state beaches on the Sonoma Coast. Ocean Beach was always maligned as a city beach with few attributes, but she has a fondness for the democracy of it and, even on an overcast day, she finds the straight edge of the horizon line, and all that she imagines lying beyond it, beguiling.

She lays out a blanket, has a good hit of coffee, and rolls up her jeans past the calves. It’s not really cold at all and she has the perfect layers on top. She opens her arms to the ocean as if she was a kite and the wind might lift her up over the sea. She can’t remember when she last felt such exhilaration.

Barefoot, she strolls along the hard wet sand, on the apron of the waves, past masked and unmasked people, with dogs and without, feeling a tug of despair at the thought of the cocker spaniel she maimed yesterday.

At Kelly’s Cove, the north end of the beach, she watches several long-beaked seabirds she doesn’t recognize, neither standard seagulls nor pelicans, swoop down over the wet sand to dig out morsels and dive into the water for larger side dishes.

Back on the blanket, she thinks of her mother as she bites into the tuna-deviled egg sandwich. It’s taken her years to discover her mother’s secret about this comfort food: it requires a ridiculous amount of mayonnaise. A picnic at the ocean was her mother’s favorite ritual, as close as they came to going to church, and clearly more liberating.

On the way back she drives through Golden Gate Park, stopping almost at once at the Dutch Garden, by the old windmill. Not another soul to be seen. The tulips, arranged in a wide circle, are losing their petals, but there is much else in bloom in the glade, bordered by cypress trees.

She spots a perfectly ripe tea rose on the way back to the car, and brazenly breaks off a wedge of the lower branches. That, too, was a favorite activity of her mother’s—capturing wild branches in spring bloom, like mimosa, cherry blossom, and quince. As a child, Pina was horrified by the practice. Her mother kept clippers in the glove compartment, and would have her dad stop the car so she could plunder the wild. It seemed like the behavior of a peasant. Now, all these years later, she’s become her mother.

 

Pina feels triumphant on her return to Sonoma. She finds a vase for the tea rose, which she decides are a saturated hue of blackened fuchsia. The branches bend forward as if wind-blown by an ocean breeze. For a long moment she’s actually delighted with herself and mixes a martini.

“Vince was pleased that you left me the toilet paper,” she says, when Charlie answers. “And so was I.”
“I’m glad I pleased you.” He has a little laugh in his voice.
“We talked about how toilet paper hoarders of this era should have their heads shaved like the colabos in France after the war.”
“That was Vince’s idea?”
“No, it was mine. He thought you were generous.” She lifts her martini and savors the first crystalline sip.
“I wouldn’t go that far. I had the means.”
“Well, you may be able to keep your hair.”
“Thanks. Hey I want you to meet somebody.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Say hello to Pina, Roscoe.”
A clipped, nasal voice says, “Pina, Pina, Pina.”
“What are you doing, Charlie?” she asks, before taking a bracing swill of her cocktail.
“I wanted you to meet my parrot, Roscoe.”
“How do you do?” the strange, alternative voice says.
“I didn’t know you were a ventriloquist, Charlie.”
“No, that’s Roscoe. Aren’t you going to greet him?”
She shakes her head, but says, “Hello Roscoe.”
“Hello, hello.”
“Shall we sing a song together, Roscoe?”
Now she hears two voices, the faux parrot voice and Charlie’s, intone “Row, row, row your boat.” She reminds herself that Charlie’s an animator who specialized in sound projection.
“That’s a nice trick, Charlie,” she says. “What else have you got?”
“Maybe you should come over and meet Roscoe, Pina.”
“Pina, Pina, Pina,” the parrot voice says.
“Yeah, right.” She all but finishes her martini, swirling the thimble full at the bottom of the glass.
“That brings me to my proposal. I thought you could come over to my place for lunch, out on the deck. We’d do it staying absolutely mindful of social distance. I have my friend George over once a week.”
“Is George a parrot as well?”
“No, no, George is quite human. He’s a retired violist from the symphony.  He likes to pass out his business card, which says: ‘George Kostelanetz. Since 1945. Persona non grata.’ But as you can imagine he’s very accomplished. He has perfect pitch and makes the most beautiful wind chimes.
“When he comes, I leave the door open. He doesn’t touch anything, and I have his seat ten feet away from mine out on the deck. So, Pina, you’d have to bring your lunch and a glass for wine.”
Pina wants to shout YES into the phone, but tempers her reaction. “Let me think about it. I’ll get back to you.”
“I’d certainly enjoy having you here. Now say goodbye to Pina, Roscoe.”
“Arrivederci, Pina, Pina, Pina.”

THE COCKER SPANIEL

 

 

Vince is back to his usual curt self at the beginning of his morning call. She makes the mistake of mentioning the news she heard on the radio suggesting that perhaps the hospitals will not be so overwhelmed here because of the early social distancing in California.

“That’s a lie,” he says. “Whoever says that is not seeing what I’m seeing. Everybody’s in such a hurry to have this thing over that they’re starting to tell fairy tales. Listen, Pina, it’s not going to be over. It’s not going to be over for a very long time. And when it’s over it won’t be over.”

This isn’t the kind of logic she needs at this time in the morning, but she isn’t about to argue with him, despite wondering how he can be working such ridiculously long hours if the cases in the Bay Area have begun to flatten out. He’s at Kaiser, not San Francisco General.

“Trump closed the country down late,” Vince says, “and now he wants to open it early.”
“But he’s got a lot to brag about, Vince. We’re now number one in the world in Coronavirus cases and deaths.”
“Very funny.”
“I wasn’t trying to be funny.” Time to change the subject. “Hey, your friend Charlie just dropped off a dozen rolls of toilet paper.”
“A dozen rolls—you’re in business.”

When in doubt, talk about toilet paper. “From his private stash. Apparently he’s one of those toilet paper hoarders we’ve been hearing about. I think after the plague’s over all the toilet paper hoarders should have their head’s shaved like the French who collaborated with the Nazis.”
“Well, at least Charlie’s is sharing.”
“I had to shame him. I told him I was down to my last roll.”
“Were you?”
“Yes. I went to Whole Foods and Safeway the other day, and nada. The two things I noticed that were completely gone—toilet paper and tortillas.”
Vince chortled. “Come on, Pina, you weren’t thinking of wiping your ass with tortillas, were you?”
”Oh, Vince.”
“Listen, I’ve got to go. But I’m happy for you, really happy for you about the toilet paper.”
“Up your ass, Vince.” Every now and then she can’t help stooping to his level.

 

Pina takes a ride over to Glen Ellen. She needs to get out of the condo. For days she doesn’t realize that she’s been suffocating, not so much from the place, as the endless hours of not being able to escape herself. Everything else has departed, but not the worm of daft theories, questions, and fantasies that keeps circling her brain. Her doppelgänger hovers like an insufferable saleswoman peddling chatter for chatter’s sake, warped nonsense. The churn of her mind, with its filigree of foreboding, is an endless loop. You’d think she were a philosopher, given how often she asks herself who she is. The thing she’d really like to find is her soul.

Of course, she misses physical touch, more than she thought she would. Even if they only make love once a week, she and Vince cuddle every night. His body generates such heat she clings to him. Their bodies understand intimacy that is absent elsewhere in their lives together, which is why she’s started to realize that she prefers Vince sleeping to awake, which is quite a commentary on the state of their relationship.

As she drives through Sonoma to the west, Pina feels a flush of giddiness to be going somewhere, even if it’s only a seven-mile ride to another empty town. The weather is splendid—it will hit seventy today—and she’s zipped all the windows down. She dials the radio to the classic rock station and blasts Janis Joplin singing “Piece of My Heart,” followed very nicely by The Stones “Wild Horses.”

Along with the huge vegetable market, she’s cheered to see the bodegas open in Boyes Hot Springs. However, nobody is out walking in an area usually busy with foot traffic. A sign outside El Molino Central, the best Mexican spot in the area, says that the restaurant is now offering curbside carhop service. She loves the sound of carhop service. When are they going to bring back drive-in theaters?

Years ago, she’d heard from a friend at work how good El Molino was, but she had the hardest time getting Vince to have a meal there. “Why go to an over-priced shack in Boyes when we have so much good Mexican in the city?” He changed his tune as soon as she pointed out that El Molino made the Chronicle list of best 100 restaurants in the Bay Area. Maybe she’ll swing by one of these days for a little carhop. She could go for the red mole poblano chicken or the three-cheese chile relleno.

Pina drives through Agua Caliente, where Vince used to swim as a kid, and past the bodega that makes the great barbecue chicken that you can smell from a half mile away. Nothing’s cooking outside today. Now she heads through a few miles of open vineyards. She can see small leaves starting to burst off the recently dormant vines, but there are few mustard flowers left, growing in the fields, although scattered rose pushes are blooming along the edge of the road.

She waits for the green arrow to turn off to Glen Ellen. That’s when she begins crying. She didn’t think she would this time. Glen Ellen was Marco’s town. He’d started reading Jack London when he was a kid, and went on to read just about everything London wrote. Marco loved hiking at the state park named after London. He insisted each time that they take the short walk to Wolf House, before beginning a more rigorous hike through the park. When they first visited Wolf House, London’s twenty-eight room dream mansion, you could scramble among the ruins—Marco loved climbing the stairways and turrets—but later they fenced it off. Marco was disconsolate the first time he encountered the fencing. “It’s like going to the zoo, without animals.”

There were different theories about the cause of the fire that burnt Wolf House to the ground just before its completion. Marco had read a report on a forensic investigation of the fire that concluded that it had ignited in the massive kitchen, which had just had linseed oil applied to the wood shelving, and that it may have been caused by incidental combustion. Pina preferred the popular theory, which suggested that workers disgruntled with London ignited the blaze.

Personally, she found Jack London a boor. He may have been a great adventurer and facile writer, but he was also a racist, narcissist, and dipsomaniac. She never let Marco know how she felt. For him, it was something like hero worship that started when he was a boy.

Pina loved the village of Glen Ellen, though. That was something they shared. She even liked drinking whiskey at the London Saloon, where the man supposedly drank, even though this establishment, with its long oak bar, was a rebuild of the original that, too, had burned down. She’d read London’s story “To Build a Fire,” in school, about some dolt traipsing through the Yukon, unable to make a fire. The fires did not elude London.

Marco wanted to buy a second house in Glen Ellen, which had been a hippy town back in the day. Now, it was way too pricey and they could never afford it. They came up every year for a week and stayed at the London lodge, hiked in the state park, hit wineries, good restaurants, and loitered in the saloon.

She drives past now, thinking to pull over and have a walk around the small center of the village, but instead bears right up into the hills, growing nostalgic as she pauses by Benziger, the family winery, the welcoming grounds which she and Marco adored. Benziger farms biodynamically, a designation she’s never quite understood. The copywriters, however, found a brilliant way of describing the earth-friendly product: a wine with both character and conscience. Personally, she’s never met a wine with a conscience. An insectary thrives on the property, breeding the bugs that kill the vine’s pests. Does an insectary exist, she wonders, which could breed bugs to prey on the pestilence plaguing the planet? That’s what the pharmaceutical firms are after.

She drives further up the twisting road to the state park gate. A park ranger in a green uniform, wearing a yellow homemade facemask with playful cat whiskers, indicates, by windmilling his right arm that she needs to turn around. Damn. She knew the park would be closed but she hadn’t expected the ranger. She wanted to walk up to the ruins of Wolf House and have a good cry. She thinks of making a case for exemption just like the journalist Rambert in The Plague. I’ve come from a long way . . . my late husband adored this place. . . but, obediently, she follows the ranger’s direction.

On the way back through the village, Pima pulls to the side across from the saloon. She tries to gaze through the front glass, imagining that she can see Marco sitting at the polished bar, she beside him. Marco never got polished himself. She used to joke that watching him nurse a tumbler of whisky and water all night is what drove her to drink. But he was good company with his boyish grin and all the attention he paid her. He truly seemed to enjoy refreshing her drinks, and said, “I don’t know how you can go on effortlessly drinking without ever getting smashed.”

“You just can’t tell whether I’m smashed or not, Mister.”

She loved flirting with him, straight through their dozen years together. He was so beautiful with his olive skin and blue eyes—a northern Italian beauty. When she purred at him he’d be shy at first, bunching his full lips modestly. Then, slowly, he got bolder. He liked telling her how lovely she was and describing each of her features as if he were crafting the Song of Songs. Despite being a physicist, he had the sensibility of a poet. She always figured that was the Italian in him. Maybe his strategy of plying her with drink was to get her to relax her resolve not to have children. Poor Marco. She may have liked having his child; she just didn’t want to care for it. A barren woman, but not frigid, fully sexed, always raring to go, an apparent contradiction that’s never bothered her. Let people think what they will. Better this way than to be frigid with a brood of kids.

With that settled, Pina checks for traffic and puts the car in drive. Before she really gets going, a cocker spaniel, from out of nowhere, leaps in front of her. She can’t be going ten miles an hour, but she hits the breaks a beat too late and clips the poor beast in its hindquarters. The spaniel is spun around in an imperfect one-eighty, and hobbles back the way it came, ringing the air with the horrible squealing yelp of primal betrayal that only a wounded animal can make.

Pina gets out of the car. The cocker spaniel is long gone, even in its compromised condition. One day a fox dashes past her; now a dog can’t quite get by. Is she on her way to a head-on collision?

There appears to have been no witnesses. She looks around to find someone, anybody. She needs to tell somebody that she’s sorry. The dog is still yelping in the distance, or is it her addled mind that’s creating the echo? She stands beside her car, crying. A young couple, both in facemasks, walks by and regards her with indifference.

 

When she drives up to the condo, she sees that they’ve almost finished plowing the fava beans in The Patch, they being one guy on a tractor, his face masked in a red bandana, for dust rather than Coronavirus.

The favas had gotten so high, lustrous in the midday sunlight, and now they were plowed beneath the skin of earth, leaving only green stubble on the surface. Pina took pleasure in looking out over the field of favas and will miss them. Pretty soon the real crops: onions, potatoes, peppers, and early girl tomatoes will be rising out of the earth. She parks the car and walks over to the fence at the field’s edge to watch as the man on the tractor carves the last furrows.

 

By the time she gets upstairs, she’s wrecked and proceeds to get more wrecked after fast-sipping a second dry martini. She is all sorrow and mewling. She killed a cocker spaniel, or at least maimed it for life, because of her distraction and carelessness. Even today, taking a field trip, she couldn’t get out of her head.

Tear-sodden, she falls asleep in a deck chair, and wakes from a dream that she wants to capture with whatever shadowy memory of it remains. She’s chilled and goes in for a sweater.

As often happens to her in dreams, she’s walking rapidly in one direction or another trying to remember where she parked her car. But now there are men in hazmat suits prowling the streets. They are lugging large canisters marked with heads and crossbones. The men do not seem extraordinary to her. She’s on a mission and keeps switching directions. Where the hell did she park her car?

Funny, she’d heard a story the other day on NPR about a website that collects people’s plague dreams. Everybody is having them, but she’s stuck with the same old dream, trying to find her damn car. Sometimes in her dreams, amid her manic, speed-walker chase to discover where she’s parked, she relies on one of Vince’s favorite quotes to wake herself. It’s from Terry Southern’s novel Blue Movie, in which the porn actress asks, plaintively, “Who do I have to fuck to get out of this movie?”

Pina warms a bowl of yesterday’s vegetable soup and makes some toast. All she wants to do is plunge into a warm bath and read a few pages of The Plague, with a snifter of cognac on the side table.

While she is in the bath, the phone rings. Who in the world wants her at this hour? Vince’s midnight call is not for hours. Before getting into bed she checks the message. It’s Charlie. “Pina,” he says—and only says it once—“I hope you had a good day.” Yeah, right. “I was thinking . . . well . . . I have a modest proposal to make. Call me when you have a chance.”

THE FOX

 

 

She gets a call from her cousin Enzo while she’s gleaning the news. It’s her Zia Giulia; why else would he call. “Pina,” he says, “Mamma went to the hospital last night. I think she caught this bug. She got the fever and the shortness of breath. I don’t know about the dry cough. Allison wouldn’t even let me go in her room. We called the ambulance. Who knows, maybe it’s a blessing in the end. You know, her quality of life, you had to wonder.”

A blessing for you, Pina thinks, but surprises herself with her restraint. “I’m so sorry, Enzo. Zia Giulia wasn’t going out was she?”

“No, no. At least she wasn’t supposed to go out. We can’t keep her under lock and key. She wakes up before either of us and goes down to the beach—an old lady with a cane—before it’s even light. And you know what she does? You’re not going to believe what she does. We have evidence. She feeds the homeless. I’m not kidding, Pina. She feeds the homeless like she’s feeding ducks. The dementia . . . the dementia. A couple of weeks ago a half chicken was missing from the fridge, all the bread gone, a five-pound sack of apples. I’ve been telling her for years, You stay away from the homeless, mamma, those people are bathed in germs, those people aren’t people anymore. What am I supposed to do, put a lock on her door?”

Pina has disliked her cousin Enzo from the time they were children. Three years older than her, he was a fatso, and that’s what she called him, if not jelly belly. He’d chase her around the block in Redondo Beach, but he couldn’t catch her and he couldn’t climb trees like she could.

She and her mother spent two whole weeks down there, the year her father started getting sick. Two weeks playing with Enzo. It was the summer she turned eight. She’d just cut her hair herself. Real short. Went into the bathroom with a scissors and clip, clip, clip. She left hair all over everything. Her mother had a fit and marched her down to the beauty shop, where the beautician did what she could to calm her. “We’ll have her looking like Audrey Hepburn in no time.”

Pina was angry all the time that summer. Her father had stopped being her father. He’d become this unshaved block of a man spending the whole day in bed propped up by a thousand pillows.

Enzo started taunting her as soon as she got down to Redondo.
“You look like a boy, Pina.” And then he’d chase her around the block: “Pina, Pina, she’s got a wiena. Pina, Pina, she’s got a wiena.”
She did her best to respond: “Enzo, Enzo, with a missing wiena.” Even though her version didn’t have the rhyme, it set Enzo in motion.
“Sure do have a wiena,” he’d holler. “You want to see it?” And then he’d unzip his jeans and pull out his peewee.
“Put it away, Fatso. You’re a disgrace.” Pina was usually up a tree by then, doing her best to hang a long loogie on Enzo’s head. She’d learned the language of the neighborhood from the Eichorn’s, next door. Five roughhousing boys, age four to thirteen, who adopted her, miraculously, when she was six. On weekends and when school was out, she played with the Eichorns from morning until the streetlights came on. Tommy Eichorn, the oldest of the brothers, built a platform in the backyard that they turned into a pirate ship.

Enzo coughs into the phone. “Now Allison and I are probably going to get sick with this Chinese virus.”

Ah, evidence of Trump killing his supporters. She wants to gibe Enzo again, like she did forty-odd years ago. Do you believe it’s real now, Enzo? Are you still wearing your MAGA hat and jammies? But she doesn’t want to soil Zia Giulia’s demise with eight-year-old behavior. “Thank you for letting me know, Enzo. I’m very sorry. Your mother and I have had a special relationship.”

 

It’s not a surprise that, a couple of hours later, she wants to walk up Second Street East to the Mountain Cemetery, her sacred ground in Sonoma. Vince introduced her to the cemetery, but refuses to hike up there anymore. “I’m gonna hang among the living,” he says, which generally means, I’d rather stay here, drink wine and watch golf. She’s glad to go off by herself. Who needs his haggling? Come on, Pina, enough’s enough. How many graves do you have to see?

The Mountain cemetery is historic, opened in the 1840’s. Few fresh bodies are buried there any longer, maybe one or two connected to the old families. Governor Vallejo and his wife are there, as are a survivor of the Donner Party, lots of Italian pioneers, early winemakers, founders of nearby towns, and old Sonoma common folk: stone cutters, carpenters, barbers, school teachers, dentists. The only descriptive attached to women is wife or daughter.

Pina finds solace amid the shifting terraces of graves. She loves scampering off trail to remote burial spots, many with cracked gravestones, their chiseled lettering blurred with moss or eaten by the mists. Humble wooden markers stand like crooked teeth, no longer bearing identification. Earthquakes and erosion have shifted whole outcroppings of graves downhill.

And yet the cemetery is alive. Palm trees, black walnut, live oak, olive, bay laurel, California buckeye, horse chestnut, willow, and all manner of ferns. Volunteers grow sideways from crevices and complex stone formations, spotted with lichen. And the flora: lupine, wild cucumber and radish, golden poppy, Mariposa lily, blue dick, mule ears, and the Toyon bush, make a mockery of the plastic flowers, rising like a toxic species from odd vessels and strewn haphazardly across graves. Pina has seen deer roaming through the cemetery, wild turkeys, lizards, snakes; she’s been circled by butterflies, and heard that coyotes and cougars have been spotted on the hillside.

It’s a quick, steep hike from the condo and she’s cheered to not be winded at all when she reaches the top, but then she notices the sign—the cemetery has been closed, along with everything else in town. What could be more ominous than a shuttered cemetery? Are they trying to keep the dead from getting out or the living from slipping in? Doesn’t matter to her. She’s going to risk a citation. Beg off in a loopy Italian accent in the unlikely event that an authority sees her. I dida not knowa.

Pina slips around the gate and, on Willow Walk, stops in front of the tombstone of Francis Thornton Seawall, a native of Gloucester County, Virginia, born 168 years, less a day, before her. Time has split his stone into vertical halves and she thinks of the Ten Commandants. Yes, she does honor her father and mother, in her way.

Up weaving Cypress Way, a fox darts past her, not even separation distance away. She leaps in the air as if she’d just beheld a pod of whales spouting, and tries to spot the fox on its downhill dash, but it’s long gone. What does a fox in a cemetery mean? It has to be portentous. A fox is a form of trickster, so in a cemetery he must be outfoxing death.

She heads up Cedar and down Sea Breeze, past graves she’s known for years, and has affection for: the pipe fitter, whose colleagues at PG&E in the 1920s, had his tombstone crafted out of a fat pipe; the guy, nicknamed Jazz, lamented as a fine gentleman; the seaman, as his plaque attests, who served as a mate on The Hazard in the Colonial Navy, later becoming the captain of a merchant ship, The Albatross, and sailing around the world seven times, to be buried, not at sea, but on a hillside in Sonoma nearly 175 years ago.

She passes mausoleums branded with family names, rough stone sepulchers, cracked, canting from their foundation, the Druid tombs of Sonoma.

Pina climbs a boulder atop an outcropping of rocks. Today she is a trespasser, a breaker of the code in a time of plague. Her justification is that she’s come up here to mourn the recent dead, and the whole scourge of death that blankets us. The problem is she’s not in the mood for mourning. The air’s fresh and she’s walked past more than one almond tree, in blossom, bursting out of a side hill. She saw a fox rush past. Everything is alive. She has no need to mourn her mother and father, her husband Marcello—Marco. She’s done that. Neither will she mourn her Zia Giulia in advance. When there is so much gone, so many lives and ways of life lost, she stands with the living. Up here, she is alive, she and the fox. It is important to remember that she, too, is a part of nature.

 

Her phone’s marimba interrupts her just as she’s sparking a joint. She drops it into the abalone shell on the deck. Shouldn’t be smoking anyway. The whole business is respiratory and, with her past, it’s a death wish. She takes a deep breath and answers.

“Pina, Pina, Pina.”
“Yes.” She’s curt. Why does he insist on repeating her name like she’s a trained seal? He sounds like a guy, swallowing his words, trying to sell a bag of peanuts. Pina, Pina, Pina.
“Vince gave me your number. Hope that’s all right.”
What if it’s not?
“I thought I could do some shopping for you. I go shopping pretty much everyday.”
“You’re crazy,” she says.
“Yeah, I think I am.”

His agreement disarms her. She wants to tell him to fuck off, but instead, says, “Toilet paper.” She’s down to her last roll and starting to eye the stack of newspapers.

“Not a problem. I’ve got a fortress of rolls. Anything else?”
“No, the toilet paper will do it.” That strikes her as the perfect line for the end of a flirtation, but rather than hanging up, she holds onto phone long enough for him to ask: “So, how are you, Pina?”

He says her name so warmly this time that she feels obliged to finesse an answer, but something else happens. She becomes garrulous, chatters on endlessly about her afternoon in the cemetery, profiling the cabin boy on The Hazard who became captain of the Albatross, as if he were a member of her family. Somehow she even spouts lovingly about playing pirates with the Eichorns.

“Was that recently?” he asks, deadpan.
“I wish. It was forty odd years.”
“Why did you quit? Who grew up first, you or the brothers?”
“You call it growing up? I would have kept on playing. I saw a fine future in being a tomboy, but when my father died my asthma kicked in, and then I got my period. I was that girl that screamed, I don’t want it, I don’t want it, I don’t want it, when I realized what had happened. I’ve been devastated ever since.”
“Hmm,” Charlie says.

She has no idea why she’s saying all this. Is she so lonely, so desperate for talk that she ends up telling a stranger about her first period?

“Pina, can I ask what it was that devastated you?”
“All of it. As an eight-year-old, playing pirates, I was indestructible, impervious to fear. I had everything I wanted. Even my father.” She plucks the joint from the abalone shell. She’d like to take a toke right now.
“You would have scared me, Pina,” he says. “I was what you’d call a nerd. My parents couldn’t get me outside. All I wanted to do was stay in my room and build things. I had no friends; I had no need for them. It’s funny how you can see in your childhood, the person that you’ve become all these years later.”
“You seem sociable enough.”
“Yes, I’ve learned to live among people.”
“So, you must be thriving with the isolation.”
“Let’s just say it’s reminded me of who I am.”
She thinks of his once calling himself Raoul. “Aren’t we all a multiplicity of people?”
“A multiplicity of people,” he echoes. “Hmm. I have trouble enough being a single person. But Pina, may we pause for a moment so that I can tell you how much I love hearing you speak. On the phone, without seeing you, your voice is a treasure.”
Now, he’s playing with her. Or is he for real? She lights the joint and takes a deep toke.

Charlie says: “Your diction is a revelation, and I tell you that as a former animator with a keen interest in vocal fidelity. And one more thing, Pina, you shouldn’t forget that you’ve retained some of your fearlessness. You broke into a cemetery today.”
“I know, in the middle of a plague. Doesn’t that sound gothic?”
“Indeed. Good night, Pina.”

So, now he cuts her off. She should have known it.

“The TP will be on your doorstep in the morning.”

THE FLY

 

She wakes early in anticipation of the 6:30 call. Her inner clock is spot-on. Unlike Vince, she never uses an alarm. He likes to hit the snooze button thrice. She doesn’t get it—interrupt your sleep three times for the sake of a few pathetic reprieves.

As she waits for the phone to ring, she thinks of Charlie’s wrestler roar, a mid-range bellow, not exactly Walt Whitman’s “barbaric yawp across the roofs of the world.” Charlie surprised her so marvelously with the wrestling mask that she nearly wet herself. What did he mean by it? Was he expressing his exasperation with her? He admitted, to use her mother’s idiom, having feelings. What does it mean to have feelings you can’t act on? What do risk-free feelings amount to? It’s too much to contemplate with Vince’s voice practically upon her.

 

He’s brusque this morning on the phone. He’s starting to freak out. She’s at the window in a light robe, listening and letting him know she’s listening. Everything’s about him. She doesn’t try to distract him, not today, but applies her bare-bones reflexive listening skills: That must be hard, Vince. Oh, I bet that’s scary. He thinks he’s going to die and doesn’t like the idea. He sees it in a very singular way as if others haven’t contemplated the prospect, as well. Of course, he’s on the front line or will soon be. On the other hand, she has her history of asthma. Even though it hasn’t flared in years, her lungs are compromised. If she’s going to die, she’ll die, but she’s not going to waste time worrying about it.

She wonders if Vince would have been a man who fled in battle. She’s ashamed for having the thought, but she persists. What does it mean, to flee a battle, a worthy battle just to spare your own life? Isn’t part of the Hippocratic oath to serve your community, even in times of war and pestilence? Or as Camus’ Dr. Rieux puts it, while contemplating the plague, “The thing is to do your job as it should be done.” Lovely perch she has, above The Patch, for grading other people’s nobility.

“Alright, it’s off to the slaughter yards for me,” Vince says, before signing off, not once asking after her.

Some men burn out quicker than others, she decides in the shower, and some, like her father, die young. The fact is she met Vince too late. He’d already started to wind down. It didn’t stop his philandering. He’d just turned sixty but was ready to bale from his job; he said he’d socked away enough dough. Still vital, he was casting around for hobbies. Playing chess online. Yes, he may have been fond of her, but he was also seeing Pina as his retirement maid.

And if she had met Vince earlier there would have been a lot more hot blood and ugliness. By now she’s sharpened a functional skill, traditionally a male skill, to disassociate. When Vince gets hot she stays cool, so cool that it doesn’t even threaten him.

Once the bathroom mirror is no longer fogged, she stands in front of it for a moment. Pina, Pina, Pina, she says to the reflection of herself. That makes her smile. Her mother used to say, “Smile, Pina, show off those beautiful teeth.” She smiles again, still obedient.

The truth is, she doesn’t know who she is anymore. Maybe she’s never known. Fifty-one-years old and she’s beginning to look worse for wear. Little bags under the eyes, the first sign of vertical wrinkles like slash marks marching across her upper lip, and a suggestion of turkey flesh, beginning to form pleats under her chin. The skin itself has become drier and drier no matter how much moisturizer she lavishes on it. She needs a haircut, that’s for sure. How is she going to accomplish that? First world problem, she thinks, and turns away from the mirror. That nifty phrase, with which the happily privileged gently nudge each other about their advantage, is dated. How do we now differentiate the haves from the have-nots? The solvent and the insolvent? The fed and the unfed? The armed and the unarmed?

She has a new companion this morning: a fly. He, like Vince, wants her undivided attention. But reflexive listening—I hear you, you little buzzer—isn’t as effective as it’s been with Vince. She crosses and re-crosses her legs, flails her arms, but the little guy keeps coming back for more. Rather than trying to swat the fly, she decides she’ll try to better understand it, and picks up the summer volume of Blythe’s Haiku set, where she remembers the fly poems are catalogued. Jackpot. Issa describes the situation perfectly:

            One human being
One fly,
            In the spacious chamber.

And then he offers a cautionary tale:

Striking the fly,
I hit also
            A flowering plant.

Shiki also does the deed:

Killing the fly,
For some time, the small room
            Is peaceful.

But Pina decides to leave the domain to the fly and closes herself out on the deck where the bees are active but have no interest in her. She flips open the summer volume to a page where she’s left a marker: “Planting Songs,” a category of its own. Basho has a lovely one:

The beginning of poetry:
The song of the rice-planters,
                        In the province of Oshu.

And again, Issa:

In the shade of the thicket,
            A woman by herself,
                        Singing the planting song. 

Pina imagines a field of women singing planting songs. The same song, not in unison, but in rounds with thin and stout voices, young and old.

Soon they will be planting at The Patch. The few planters here, Latino men, are remarkably efficient. If they sing, she doubts it’s planting songs they’re singing. The Miwok must have planted seeds in this valley. Maize. But what does she know? Nothing about the Miwok, that’s for sure. She goes on a silent rant. Why are we not taught anything about the people whose ancestral land this is? Born and raised in the Bay Area, and we have no curiosity about the first people to live on this land.

Without disturbing the fly, she dashes in to grab her computer, and discovers, on the Angel Island Conservancy site, this pithy profile: “The Miwoks had no pottery, made no fabric, and planted no seeds. They kept no domestic animals. Instead, they were gatherers, fisherman, hunters, and basket makers.”

Pina admires the efficient distillation, in three short sentences, of a way of life, and realizes, sadly, that her thirst for information about the Miwok has been slaked.

 

Pina walks into town with a ham and cheese sandwich, a baggie of salt and pepper potato chips, celery sticks, and a teeny Tupperware of almond butter, a lunch almost worthy of Albert the badger. She didn’t bring the mango cannabis gummies she set aside for dessert. She’s a truant. It’s already 12:15 and Charlie’s not expecting her. He may have scarfed down his goose liver paté and scrammed. She’s not going to go directly to the white bench. She doesn’t want to look desperate. She’ll loop the square the opposite way. If he’s there when she makes it around, fine.

She scoots south down the east side past Dirty Girl Donuts, which produces glazed profanities in iridescent shades that don’t exist elsewhere in the world.

Despite their bakery exemption, D. G. is shuttered for the duration, but the Basque Boulangerie is still open for take-out.

Charlie’s probably seen her by now, and is watching her loiter, timing her as she makes her way around the square. Is he following now? She doesn’t look back. Charlie is playing with distance. It’s rather thrilling. Is he following her?

She cuts up the alley past the Basque’s cooling racks, sniffing country rounds and sour baguettes. Murphy’s Irish Pub, a ghost of itself with the chairs crooked atop the tables, offers take-out, five evenings a week, beer-battered fish & chips and buttermilk chicken breasts.

The real temptation comes next door at the 1920’s Sebastiani Theatre, which under normal circumstances would be showing “Portrait of a Woman on Fire,” the title hand-lettered above the blue-suited eternal ticket taker. Pina would truly love to break into the theater and flick on the digital projector. If Charlie snuck in and chose one of the lumpy seats two rows behind her, she might become undone. But she keeps going, without glancing back toward Charlie, who surely must be following by now. Past the shuttered Town Pump, the lively tavern that usually has a signboard out front advertising, Daycare for Husbands.

She can’t resist a glance back as she turns onto the south side, but Charlie must be laying low in a storefront. She’s surprised to see a guy, high on a cherry picker, affixing a regal sign to a yet-to-open shop, The Sausage Emporium. Nice that somebody’s feeling bullish about the future. The building blocks of the new Sonoma, reborn beside the old adobes, will be garish-glazed donuts, buttermilk chicken breasts, and artisanal sausages. Surely, all of the winetasting shops—maybe twenty-five around the square and in the alleys—can’t survive.

But Pina expects The Church Mouse thrift shop will thrive. It’s the place that helped Vince get going with his cocktail shaker collection. She stops at the window, which as thrift store windows go, is top drawer. It’s designed to honor the Academy Awards and the Sonoma Film Festival (cancelled). Posters of Marilyn and a few old movie reels flank a woman in a floor-length magenta dress, bejeweled in faux diamonds and a mink stole. Pina keeps expecting Charlie to creep up behind her so that she’ll first see him reflected in the window display. But, no.

She crosses to the park side of the street, where she spots three rapacious mallards resting in the grass. By the time she makes it to the north side of the square, Charlie’s nowhere to be seen. She’s made the whole thing up. Such absurdity. She’s behaving like a prepubescent teenybopper. How can she fall in love with a man she can’t even touch?

She’s reminded of a story Sylvia, a psychotherapist friend told about her daughter Allie, who, at twelve, announced that she was “going out” with a classmate named Alec. “They didn’t go out once,” Sylvia said, “and then a few weeks later Alec broke up with her. Allie’s stoic response, “I guess were not going out anymore.”

Pina sits a moment on the white bench, reaching into her sack for celery sticks. Actually, she has no heart for eating. As she leaves the square she wishes she could hear his call: Pina, Pina, Pina. The silence is not golden.

At home, the fly is also silent. Maybe he made his way out an open window. She pours herself a Campari—a little something to stimulate the appetite—and opens to the second part of The Plague. Nodding along, she reads: “Under other circumstances our townsfolk would probably have found an outlet in increased activity, a more sociable life. But the plague forced inactivity on them, limiting their movements to the same dull round inside the town, and throwing them, day by day, on the illusive solace of their memories.”

Time to refresh her Campari. After another, with a couple of splashes of Hendrick’s and Cinzano, she’ll have the appetite of a horse.

Pina puts her feet up on the ottoman and settles back with The Plague. Her Negroni isn’t quite right; it’s a little on the sweet side. She wonders how two mango gummies will alter the flavor and, as she chews them, the wily fly finds her again. He’s risen from his slumber and his personality, after repose, is friskier than ever.