Day 34: From the Food Goddess to Elizabeth Taylor

The world outside strives to look normal. Nina stayed in, responding in ‘normal’ fashion to calls from her office. The bank is reanimating, even if she’s not.

Ric will reopen his restaurant when things settle down. The LES DIY members have put aside their protective gear and are debating whether (and how) to keep their soup kitchen going if (and when) he clears them out.

The woman who runs the food operation looks on grimly as her volunteers grumble. Two of them are calling Ric—their mentor—the *&@%$^ embodiment of greed. Some religious members are complaining about some of the spoken words.

THIS TRAIN MOVES MORE THAN PEOPLEI’ve learned that the food czar lost her daughter in the first onrush of flu. That would be a month ago—or even less—which explains the anguish I witnessed in the back garden. I don’t see how she manages to work so hard. I guess it makes her feel better to help people, a wonderful kind of functional grieving. I applaud from afar (as other Randians call me a fraud).

Like so many East Villagers, this woman looks great in black—light, airy fabrics.

She can be tough: Faced with a colorful and contentious gang that never shuts up, she periodically roasts everyone, then whips up a feast for the survivors. Her dove-gray eyes miss little, even when streaked with red. Yet she always looks startled when I go to Ric’s, as if she’s seeing me for the first time.

Let’s call her Anna, for Annapurna, the Hindu goddess of food and cooking. It’s fun renaming everyone! Don’t try this at home.

Outside, there were lots of naked faces. The streets are filling with grinning souls, though lots of conversations are conducted at more than arms’ length. A few unlucky souls will regret discarding their masks so quickly.

For once, I didn’t see anyone spit. Ordinances passed from coast to coast may have had some effect. They arrested spitters in 1918, too.

The sidewalks were lumpy with dog crap. New Yorkers usually clean up, but the citizenry has devolved.

There were rats aplenty, sunning in the park, waiting for a junkie Pied Piper to finish tuning his guitar. It reminded me of a story an old timer told me about seeing Gram Parsons perform at Max’s Kansas City in the ‘70s. Parsons was so ripped he dropped his guitar and teetered on his stool till a spectator handed it to him.

Meet ‘Mark’

I headed to Brooklyn to visit my very old friend, who has surfaced to plead for more masks. I will justify my patience by explaining that he and I grew up together and I will save y’all the trouble of trying to figure out who he is by honoring him with the pseudonym, Mark.

It was my first trip underground since a homeless guy was pounded into a coma for sneezing on passengers in a rush hour No. 4.

Even with a mask and goggles, the rush of air when a train enters the station is intimidating. Particles of soot, pigeon waste, and scraps of litter swirl furiously as you hover by the track. Even after avoiding subways for so long, the primitive urge to secure a seat at any cost reboots in seconds.

I saw fewer masks, generally of higher quality than on my last trip. Only middle-class folks wore the type I sell. I don’t know if poor people understand the differences: Mine are cheaper if you use them properly. To make people feel better, the media pretend that a t-shirt over your nose and mouth can make a big difference. It’s true to the extent that the gullible feel much safer—till they keel over from the tiny virions that bounded through the cotton.

When I reached Mark’s loft, an altogether new woman opened the door and left before I could take her measure. The place was cleaner, but smelled like melted plastic. If you don’t know what that stench can indicate, I’ll leave it at that.

I brought only a few gloves and goggles because I’m certain he sold the masks I gave him, or traded them for things that won’t help him survive H5N1. Let’s hope a flu hiatus will give him the chance to rebuild his life. Again.

Typically, Mark kicked back and started lecturing me about profiting from fear and warning that I’d better come up with a more secure income stream. Our real estate mogul’s revived arrogance was kind of reassuring, the comfort of an old, familiar pain.

Then he asked me for money.

I generally like to imagine that I’m patient. Still, I’m delighted to report how vividly I told Mark what a dung-slinger he is. I haven’t yelled like that in years. I thought he might belt me, as he used to do when we were kids. (He’s bigger and older—no longer the advantages they once were.) I bet I could pound him.

Civilization prevailed. He insisted the aroma was from skunk. He knows I favor the libertarian line on marijuana (which in no way invites him to con me out of money for it).

We wound up getting wrecked, drinking a lot of beer, watching Butterfield 8. Elizabeth Taylor is one of his better habits.

I feel guilty when the birds chirp so innocently at dawn. (Yawn.)

Day 35: The Solitude of Sickness

My girlfriend is truly ill. Nina has barely spoken since I got home 16 hours ago.

Since I’ve never seen her under the weather, I don’t know how she usually deals with it. So far, I’d guess she starts out in denial and then nukes her symptoms in hopes that no one will ever notice she was sick. It’s scary and unnatural. Where I come from, we welcome loving tribute; no matter what ails us, ice cream has healing properties.

To Nina, mere witnesses are unacceptable, verboten.

MASKS UPON MASKS, BUT NOT MINEShe’s been vomiting and crying and behaving strangely. Her stomach is a mess. She won’t answer telephone calls from anyone but her employer. Her best friend ‘Growly’ texted me to get Nina to call her back. Debussy and thumping sounds emanate from the bedroom, as if she were trying to dance. It’s been a while. I hope she doesn’t hurt herself.

Every cough sounds deeper.

Nina pulls together heroically for the criminal bank. I can hear her saying how much she misses the office. I picture the smile she fakes for good measure. Apart from the nice blonde executive from Tennessee, Nina had barely met her desk when the flu struck. Sometimes her voice grows inaudible, as if she’s saying something confidential. As if I care about their marketing schemes. I’m hardly the target audience.

The boss wants her to show up Monday and she’s desperate to oblige. I doubt smallpox could keep her home, but she looks bad: She’s both red and pale. Her little dark orbs are inflamed. I tried googling her visible symptoms, got nowhere.

She refuses to discuss her malady. I don’t believe she has bird flu. Where could she have caught it?

Her symptoms seem like a kind of virulent hay fever—headache, fever, runny nose, cough, dizziness, fatigue, even stomach upset. I’m just a mask-vending typist, not a doctor. She may have something.

A doctor would probably advise her to head for an emergency room, which I still consider dangerous exposure. I haven’t been asked.

She won’t call a doctor. Her eyes tightened at my suggestion.

Instead she asked me to sleep in the living room, ostensibly to spare me from exposure to her symptoms. It’s absurd. Everything in this apartment smells of disinfectant. She’s polished every fomite.

Has Nina caught the American plague of presentism? Fewer than half of our workers get sick pay; the rest can’t afford to stay home. Not even a third get time off to care for ailing children. Part-timers and contractors fear they’ll be fired if they don’t show up. So people crawl to work, where they can infect their bosses.

A senator pointed out during the swine flu pandemic that only five nations in the world lacked mandatory sick leave: Lesotho, Liberia, Papua-New Guinea, Swaziland, and the U.S.

The deeper you look into the work chain, the worse it gets: Fewer than one-fourth of the lowest-paid workers get sick pay; maybe one-sixth of restaurant workers get it. What do you think happens to viruses in those kitchens?

Some so-called libertarians blame illegal immigrants for spreading bird flu. But there’s no native immunity for Americans. U.S. passports are fomites, slathered in germs and viruses. Just like paper money, which can harbor influenza virions for hours, even days. (Up to 2 ½ weeks if coated in mucus, according to Swiss bankers.)

Did I mention that Nina is wearing a mask inside? It’s not one of the (better) masks I sell, but a run-of-the-mill N95 like those reporters wear on-camera so they can look like common folks. What is she trying to tell me?

Day 36: Only the Silence is Pregnant

I’ve received some arresting emails about Nina’s condition. Some suggest she’s pregnant. The first notes came from American women, who worry that I am a dimwit. This may scare them because they come here for advice.

How would I know if Nina’s breasts are tender? The question pains me.

Several women who sound like Europeans and another from Hong Kong were more critical of Nina but reached the same conclusion. I googled and googled and came up with nothing more definite than general symptoms: Headaches, fatigue, fever, grouchiness, stomach upset, a sudden aversion to coffee, and a reluctance to communicate with the man who might have caused it.

IT'S COLD AROUND HEREI can’t believe she could be pregnant. It’s the worst condition one can acquire in a pandemic. I’ve never impregnated anyone. This is unthinkable.

She could have bird flu. Or several hundred other serious conditions. I was betting on hay fever but I think I lost.

Your humble profiteer thus spent his morning sneezing on an old futon coated with cat hair amid piles of boxes in the living room. At least Nina wasn’t typing nearby. She didn’t log in until her bank called late in the morning. I’d like to think she was being considerate about my sleeping near her iMac, but I think she was too sick to get up.

I’m quarantined within a quarantine. My home shrinks by the day. Am I living an Edgar Allan Poe story? I await the pendulum.

Nina looks feverish. That room smells bad. I tried to think of ways to slip a thermometer into her. Thank you for your thoughts and wishes.

Day 37: My Life—for the Birds

Did you know birds used to hunt people? Scientists at Ohio State have assembled compelling evidence that scratches and holes in the skull of an immortal little girl were caused by local raptors the size of our bald eagles. (Is that what happens to ‘reformers’ in D.C.?)

The ape-like Taung child was a very significant 3½-year-old. Her discovery in a South African cave back in 1924 was the first indication that Homo sapiens had evolved in Africa. The impressions on her skull were thought to have been made by ferocious cats. Turns out they match marks on comparably sized monkeys devoured by birds of prey.

A CHILD WITH MUCH TO TEACH US ABOUT BIRDS (Locutus Borg)It’s comforting to see feline innocence affirmed.

Some cats can’t get off the hook so easily. Mine got loose in the kitchen today, tore open a big bag of granola. Sneeky doesn’t even like cereal. When I told him that wasn’t very nice, he looked at me and shrugged: “Nice rhymes with mice, dude.”

Maybe he missed me, was tired of being cooped up with my cranky girlfriend. He’d gotten accustomed to a kind of rotating exposure to whichever of us was sleeping in his room. Since I’m no longer welcome, Sneeky busted out to surprise me with a breakfast avalanche of human kibbles.

My own happy family.

Nina wouldn’t let me enter the bedroom to return him. She wants him to stay out here from now on. This exposes Sneeky to my decontamination zone—and robs him of the window he loves.

The doctor we need here may be an old Austrian. Paging Sigmund!

I should make clear that Nina has many of the apparent symptoms of pregnancy with one big difference. She has indeed gained weight and has turned chunky, cranky, dizzy, sleepy, and barfy. (Which dwarves did I forget?) Her stomach is horribly loose, though.

The Web says she either has some virus or is indeed pregnant. I tried to feed her rice and applesauce and toast (yes, we have no bananas), but she snarled like a prehistoric feline. She won’t even take Imodium.

You’d think I made her sick. She seems to.

I wish she would talk to me. I am striving mightily not to express myself. Sneeky knows I’m losing my mind. I hope he doesn’t lose respect for me.

Day 38: Love in the Time of Bird Flu

My shadowy correspondent from the East Village has written a long and thoughtful email to help me grasp why Nina would be so distressed: She has a new job unsuited for instant motherhood and she thinks she hates the presumptive father. Made me feel rather sorry for Nina myself.

We’ve never even talked about children or abortion or pregnancy. Nina’s eyes double in size when she details her dreams of promotion, travel, exploits.

LOVE LIKE BARBICIDEWhat should a man say? What say should a man have? Doesn’t she have to talk to me?

What should I do? I’m feeling grumpy and dumpy, too. Maybe I should be having the kid.

NOTE: I replied to two emails from the correspondent in question and I even filled out the form to get cleared for acceptance/delivery (as ‘Maskman’), but her account still bars my email. She might wish to look into this.

Finally, I did snoop to see if Nina has searched for information about any revealing medical symptoms. I wanted to see if she shares my concern or has a better theory.

She evidently erases data when she signs off. I feel like a rat for looking: It’s her computer and she uses it to plug into the bank’s internal network. There’s nothing quite like failing at doing something you knew was wrong anyway.

I rub my stubble and wonder if I should have sniffed her keyboard when I had the opportunity. There’s a truism that keyboards are filthier than toilet seats. Not this one: Nina regularly scrubs it with the disinfectant I sell. Is she making fun of me?

I wonder, wonder who wrote the book of love in the time of bird flu.