In Separation Sonoma, a novel in real time, by Bart Schneider, Pina isolates from her husband, a San Francisco doctor, in their Sonoma condo. In the day to day of Sonoma, as it rapidly becomes a ghost town, Pina’s emotional life turns upside down and she is tempted, by someone she barely knows, to break her isolation. 

New chapters will be added every two to three days.

Art by Chester Arnold

• CHAPTER ONE
  THE FROGS   At first she doesn’t know what to do with herself. She has five loads from the car. A ridiculous excess. Pasta and dairy. Tuna, sardines, anchovies. A whole massive chicken, salmon fillets, two packs of smoked mackerel, Imagine portabella broth, a squat edifice of Trader Joe’s pizzas: woodfired heirloom tomato and arugula. …
• CHAPTER TWO
  THE DUCK POND   Pina walks to town as she has the last three days. It’s just a short stroll past the gorgeous stone building of Vella Cheese Company (still open), maker of a fabled dry Monterey Jack, past a horse farm where she counts them—six Clydesdales out grazing today. The rain has greened up …
• CHAPTER THREE
  FAMILIES OF QUAIL   She talks with Vince twice a day. He calls too early in the morning and too late at night. It’s the only time he has. He doesn’t want to discuss the hospital and always changes the subject. What he wants to know is how she’s holding up, how hard it is …
• CHAPTER FOUR
  COLD CRAB   For the first ten days she only plugged into the news via her phone, but tonight, hours before Vince’s midnight call, she figures out how to get the hotspot going and uses her computer for the first time since arriving. After flitting around the news sites, avoiding any story in which Trump’s …
• CHAPTER FIVE
  RATS   This morning, still in bed, she has a quick exchange with Vince, which begins with him apologizing for his lurid text. “What do you mean, Text? That was a fucking s e x t,” she says, loving the sound of the word, even as she pretends to despise the thing itself. She’s become …
• CHAPTER SIX
  DEER AT DUSK   She follows ten feet behind Charlie. Best to leave a little room for sudden stops, even though they are ambling very slowly along the park on the north side of the square. Charlie puts up a hand and she jerks to a stop. Now she’s directly in front of a life …
• CHAPTER SEVEN
  HUMMINGBIRDS   Coronavirus. She wakes to the terror of it every morning. Makes coffee and looks at the grim tally: Deaths in Italy. Deaths in Spain. New York. Number of medical staff down. Deficits of beds, ventilators, masks, gloves. The art of her gleaning is getting in and out quickly. Otherwise she’ll become obsessed or …
• CHAPTER EIGHT
  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 …
• CHAPTER NINE
  MOURNING DOVES     Vince calls in the morning, all charm. She figures he’s probably mixed himself the right pharmaceutical cocktail. He’s always been something of a pharmacist, and probably didn’t sleep all night. Now she gets ten minutes of his groove time. “Been listening to a lot of Trane,” he says. “Even when I’m …
• CHAPTER TEN
  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 …
• CHAPTER ELEVEN
  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,” …
• CHAPTER TWELVE
  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 …
• CHAPTER THIRTEEN
  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 …
• CHAPTER FOURTEEN
  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 …
• CHAPTER FIFTEEN
  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 …
• CHAPTER SIXTEEN
  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 …
• CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
  THE DOE     Vince did not call last night and it took Pina a full glass of cognac to fall asleep, a sleep that at best was fitful. The image of Vince lying dead in an alley seemed to hover over her throughout the night. Why she concocted this particular dark ending, she can’t …
• CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
  THE LIZARD     No Vince in the morning. Pina continues to wish him well, and she worries. She pitches herself questions as if her answers might give meaning to the inexplicable. But, of course, she has no answers and the questions are almost all posed rhetorically. The phrase downward spiral sticks in her head. …
• CHAPTER NINETEEN
  THE LADYBUG     “Hello,” Charlie calls at the door. “It’s open.” She’s drinking iced-tea, of all things. “In here.” She may have a glass of wine later with Charlie. “Oh no.” She can’t believe what she’s looking at—Charlie, in a turquoise wrestling mask and shiny black overalls, black leather high-tops, and a quilted pouch …
• CHAPTER TWENTY
  BLACK LAMBS     She shouldn’t have told Charlie in the first place. Why did she? You sleep with somebody and suddenly you’re soul mates, ready to reveal the darkest secrets of your life? Now Charlie won’t let her drive to the city alone. She tries to convince him that she’ll be fine, that it …
• CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
  THE SCARAB     She finally meets the woman from downstairs that she’s heard crying from time to time. She’s coming out her garden gate and Pina, on her way to the cemetery, introduces herself before the lady can get away. “Hello downstairs neighbor.” She speaks from a ten-foot distance on the sidewalk. “I’m Pina …
• CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
  THE WORM     It takes Charlie until Wednesday to pull the Sunday New York Times out of its blue sleeve. “I read about it,” he says, “but didn’t feel like I was ready to see it.” He lays the front page on the kitchen counter and they gaze at the countless memorialized names. “And …
• CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
  THE MONKEY     Charlie sits her down to watch a video of the comic Sarah Cooper lip-syncing Trump’s inane prattle about the bible, after his shameless photo-op at the Episcopal Church. A reporter asks: “Wondering what one or two of your favorite bible verses are. Cooper’s eyes roll back into her head before she …
• CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
  THE BLUE JAY     Vince’s black eyebrows are now threaded with gray. In the years she’s known him he’s experimented with a variety of facial hair, cultivating at one time or another a thin John Waters mustache, a goatee that came to a devilish point under his chin, and a disastrous Fu Man Chu …
• CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
  THE WOODPECKER     She tells Charlie about Sylvie’s plans to kill herself. “It’s a calculation she’s already made, and there’s no stopping her.” It’s seven in the evening at Charlie’s place. Neither of them has any interest in eating. Charlie’s already quaffed two large martinis and is sprawled on the Persian carpet looking at …
• CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
  THE BERGAMASCO SHEPPARD     Pina decides to keep her birthday to herself, but a flurry of phone calls come from old friends, and she feels pleased to be remembered, if guilty for being so out of touch since the plague began. She hasn’t spoken with her old chum Olga once in the last months …
• CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
  THE CANARY     As Pina counts the Japanese eggplants that have sprouted—a bounty that she couldn’t have imagined—she calls down to Sylvie, who she hears putzing with her roses. “Isn’t it a beautiful morning, Sylvie?” “Yes, it is. That’s one thing I’ll say for Sonoma—the weather is extraordinary. Coming from Seattle, and Minnesota before …
• CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
  THE ANTS   Olga seems less interested in greeting Pina than in scoping out Vince’s condo. She takes herself on a little walking tour of the front room. Pina wants to tell her not to touch anything, that they need to keep their social distance, but instead she’s quiet, just like one of her clients, …
• CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
  THE CLYDESDALES   Three afternoons after they discovered Sylvie’s body, a pair of Clydesdales pulls a wagon, shiny black enamel with spokes and wheels painted bright white, up East Second Street. Having heard hooves striking the pavement down the street, she and Charlie spring out of bed and hurry to the edge of the deck …
• CHAPTER THIRTY
  THE HUMANS     It’s Saturday morning and she and Charlie decide to walk to the square to have a look at what is open and to see if there’s much tourist frenzy. Along the way they stroll past the Clydesdale farm where the man from yesterday with the feed cap, sits high in his …