Category: Fiction

First, the car door. Slow to open. Then the visitor. Slow to emerge. It seemed she was having some trouble connecting with her purse. Problem apparently resolved, she finally tottered out, only to struggle with the car door, which didn’t catch the first time she tried to slam it, swinging back and nearly knocking her over. A second try, a little unsteady but with follow-through that did the job, left her teetering. It didn’t take much to see that something wasn’t right.

I threw a house-warming party. It was a mild evening and I opened the windows in the sitting room. A smell of pepperoni wafted up from the pizza place a few doors down. About a dozen people came. I invited Simon, but he was ghosting me.

We talked our way to a raggedy field, where we sat in the sparse grass and he condemned our past relationship, bid it good riddance, flipped it off. After half an hour of this I asked if we could find a place for me to pee, which led us to stand and to walk more, two hours more, to be precise.

“Who is this?” I asked, exasperated.

“I asked you first,” he said.

“No, you didn’t.”

“Okay, I didn’t. This is Elmer Doyp.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Oh no, I’m not,” he said.

Fatema visited. I stood at the window, while she stayed about two meters away. Eesha didn’t know. It would have been wrenching, if she came and I couldn’t hug her. Or would she understand? She was seven after all and wanted to learn everything.

What is quarantine? She had asked. She would still call every day, and ask the same question: when would I go home?

“If we’re going to do this, I kind of need you to do something first.  Or during.”

“Like what?”  I leered at him, trying to make my voice sexy.

“Throw me out the bedroom window.”