Nikolina

Published in 34th Parallel Reality Fiction (magazine) Issue 43 (see bottom of website for all issues):
www.34thparallel.net





The call came at six o'clock a.m. on the dot. It was the usual. Mother demanded to know when I would make my next visit, what I am eating that is natural and does not contain gluten, whom I’m dating and whether she has a psychiatric record, why I should invest, and if I have been taking my pain killers for a recent root canal. Mother had not let up in forty years.

"This is Nikolina Abramowitz. Your mother. Why haven't I heard from you?" she snapped in the phone.
"Ma, it hasn't even been thirty six hours. I'll be there today, sixish as promised" I said in a raspy early morning voice.
She didn't like "sixish". It wasn't exact enough for her obsessive tastes.
"Alright, six thirty five on the dot." I said sarcastically, trying to jab her.
I could hear it in the vibrations of her voice--she was about to ask me about my latest love interest but with underlying disdain. I changed the subject to the unseasonably warm weather.
"Seventy degrees in February, can you believe it?"


I had done it. I was successful in deterring her from judging Tiffany, my latest romanic interest. Her usual comment to me on our daily phone calls was that Tiffany was a psychotic taker and "complete treachery" and that her name sounded like a porn actress. I then pretended that the phone conveniently disconnected. Like a well-run machine, mother's subsequent calls that morning rang a jarring tone one after another. I ignored them.


Our meeting soon approached. I visited every other day. If I were a few minutes late, she would scold me but with loving intent . She would obsessively worry if I were late. I was her only son, her only child and the prize of her now fading existence. Better not take the chance on letting her down. I was used to it. I breathed a heavy sigh as I pushed on the gas pedal foreseeing the fight with rush hour traffic and mother's endless questioning. The cars beeped and sputtered along the road. Exhausted from the day's work, their noises became a lullaby that nearly cradled me to sleep.
"Move your ass!" shouted a driver behind me, waking me up from a fifteen second nap and back to the reality of the road and mother.


I passed my high school, now completely remodeled, and imaged that balmy night when I stood by the front door, posing for the senior prom while wearing a location detection anklet. Mother demanded it despite my father's objections. She threatened to leave him that night if I didn't wear the detector. But Dad soon grew weary of her outlandish threats, dramatic outbursts and demands, and found another more compliant wife several years later. Mother never forgave him for it.


Mother had moved in the cellar five years ago. She liked its cocoon-like atmosphere, reminding her of her childhood home, and the feeling of security in case of a thunderstorm, blizzard or tsumani. It was like a bomb shelter. She felt safe from the barrage of unsavory people she had known throughout the years and could quietly retreat into her world of black and white classic films and dark romance novels.


I fought through the maze of overgrown vines and weed-like vegetation that covered the cellar door. "Ma! I yelled. "I'm here. And can't you get the gardener to trim these weeds?" Mother didn't answer. Usually the door was opened slightly, a sign that she was expecting me. I knocked. No answer.


The living room and adjoining kitchen stood motionless. On a typical day, it hissed with a pot of some concoction on the stove, buzzed with the low sound of the TV or oldies music from the radio in the bedroom. This time, silence.
"Ma! Come out, come out from wherever you are. Is this a joke?" my voiced echoed into the stillness. No sound except for my heavy breathing. I sprinted through the rooms feeling my insides beginning to sink deeper and deeper. She was nowhere. Not in the closets, not under the beds, not on the roof. The TV in the bedroom was muted as Ingrid Bergman glowed on the screen in "Gaslight". In the kitchen a plate of a half eaten velveeta sandwich lay next to a glass of soda water and some kosher pickles. It was a picture frozen in the moment, as if in the middle of eating mother was beamed up through the roof by an alien space ship. I stepped outside, called her phone and noticed the gentleness of her voice on the recording. "Leave a message, dear." Her voice lingered in my head.


The neighbors had no information and had not seen her. Mr. Pinsky next door last saw her a few days ago tossing seeds to and talking to a couple squirrels. "Now don't gobble them up, you'll get a stomach ache" he overheard her say to the furry neighbors. She then retreated back to the cellar. Relatives both distant and close had not seen her. Tenants in the upstairs house heard nothing unusual-- just the same comings and goings and a slight creaking of the floor boards.


The police detectives weren't much help. They questioned over and over reminding me of mother. Their sluggish investigation staggered from one idea to another like an elderly women with a walker and without any clear results. Dad naturally had few leads. He spoke to me with a subtle artificial concern. He had blocked mother's phone calls months ago after she left nasty messages condemning him for not taking an active role in my life and for the emotional torment he inflicted. "Drama queen. She put you ahead of everyone else, and in the process alienated her family with nastiness," Dad revealed.
Then there was Tiffany who lived up to mother's expectations by offering only a modicum of emotional support after mother vanished.


I headed to every place I knew mother had frequented in recent years. Her favorite was a weekly "early bird" breakfast at Izzy's diner. I had not been to Izzy's since age seven. Entering the diner I was teleported to a time when I still held mother's hand and played with my matchbox cars on the counter while she nibbled on eggs and toast. Now, a women with dyed wiry hair in her twilight years sat in the same seat that mother did. She chatted with another woman about her hip replacement and reactions to pain killers.

The other woman repeated, "uh huh" innumerable times as if she had heard this story ad nauseum and just wanted to enjoy her eggs. I interrupted their engrossing conversation to ask about mother. They both gasped in shock at the disappearance and tried to console my emptiness and desperation. The woman with the wiry hair brushed a piece of lint off of my jacket, just the way mother did, and told me that women are capricious especially in their later years and that she'll turn up. "It may be a game," she concluded. I wasn't convinced of that. As I left I noticed a scarf mother used to wear on the coat rack. It smelled stale and musty without any hint of mother's drugstore perfume or the lemon air freshener she blasted in her bathroom. I grabbed it and questioned the ladies. It remained unclaimed.


The next day I noticed mother's gardener, Herb, sitting on the curb nearby slicing velveeta for a sandwich. He said he had not heard from mother, but he was expected to show up in the middle of the month. Today was the day, he said, chomping on the sandwich.
"Where did you get that velveeta? I asked as if accusing him. "My mother always eats velveeta!" He looked at me like a puzzled child for a few moments. "I eat it too!" he said as his boyish innocent look turned into an urchin. "What the hell are you driving at, Mac? Can't two people like the same sandwich?" he slammed the sandwich down and stormed off. I stood motionless staring at that half-eaten sandwich. For the first time, tears welled up in my eyes just like when I was a kid and fell off my bike.

I asked the detectives to question Herb. He was known a harmless man, but that "Mac" bit and the sandwich started to eat away at my conscience. Every day mother's image flooded my thoughts, then I felt it begin the wither into a cloudiness. This scared me. I still held hope in the investigation despite the bumbling detectives, like Clouseau in the movies.

I slept nightly on the aging couch at mother's. If she returned, I would be there and welcome her. In the silence of her underground world, I felt her presence. I felt her nagging, her obsession and her warm embrace that never surrendered throughout the years. Milestones of my past appeared before me: the awkward teen years, the post-college daze, the first heartbreak. And there was mother at my side. I remembered how she told me to wear my "rubbers" in the rain and how the neighboring teenagers laughed. I tasted her cooking, her awful frozen vegetable concoctions and smelled her kosher pickles in the air. I heard her telling me Tiffany is "trash and treachery". This time I believed her.


The house creaked and settled. Every sound brought me to hope thinking somehow she had returned. Something rustled in the weeds and leaves outside the window. "Ma?" I uttered. After a thorough inspection of he area, nothing turned up except a knocked over garden gnome. A squirrel must have done it. Sleeping was impossible at this point. I retreated into talking to myself in a calming manner. I sang songs that I remember from my childhood. I told myself that everything would be fine, but somehow I didn't believe it. I felt so very alone.


Days and nights blended into each other seamlessly. Nothing became clearer, only more shadowy. Work, traffic then night at mother's. It was time to prepare for the worst. I reclined on the couch as my face puffed up about to explode with tears. At that moment, Dad called. I hadn't heard from him since our conversation weeks earlier during my most frantic stage. Not even one call to his own tormented son. "The bastard," I muttered not wanting to answer the call. On the last ring, I answered.


"I saw your mother's car the other day parked a few houses down. I think it was hers."
"What do you mean, you think?" I was unwilling to believe anything from him and suddenly hated him, the heartless scoundrel. Mother had been right.
"I checked the plates..." he said coldly. "And what did the police find in the car?"
I expected the worst. Her body? Her left arm detached? Her head in a box? Dad had done it or his new wife. She had no other enemies. Maybe this was a ruse.
"Mercury poison."
I paused trying to absorb it all, feeling a sense of macabre relief. It had come to the end. At least it wasn't something painful or tortuous like severed limbs. But mercury...


Police swept the area with search lights and growling, sniffing dogs. At last they came upon a woman slumped over in her morning robe deep in a thicket in the woods. Her hair tangled with dirt and leaves and a letter to Dad in her hands. Her body wilted as she was lifted like a rubber pencil. Only the faintest glint of life was left in her.


A doctor with a hardened look tried to piece together the scenario. He claimed she was lucky. Mercury poisoning is slow acting, leading to confusion and weakness. She was lucky...he kept repeating. He must have said the word "lucky" fifteen times.
In a brightly lit, sterile room Mother lay still with a barrage of tubes and contraptions winding around her frail body. I held her leathery hand with its protruding veins in mine.
"Ma?" I said softly.
She didn't respond, just looked at me like she always did when irritated. She was about to say something, but wasn't ready.

 
"Why'd you do it? Did you want to take Dad down with you? Did something push you over the edge?"
She remained silent, breathing heavily. Then she began to form what I anticipated as a long confession, a speech that would move heaven and earth.

 
"You really need to visit more often" she said mustering up all her strength. "And answer the phone."

"Will do." I replied gently squeezing her hand.


Copyright 2017

The Oldie

Dewey Drake sat comfortably staring into the fire. It crackled and popped. The wooden beams of the cabin ceiling creaked. At last solitude. At least for a few minutes until his travel companion, Chad Conroy, came back from gathering kindling. Ah, silence. How he had craved it, and now it caressed him gently. No distractions, no nagging girlfriend, no business calls, no dinging of elevators to pester him.

Suddenly a song popped into his head.“We Built This City on Rock and Roll” by Jefferson Starship. The chorus pounded in his brain and it wouldn’t let up, “Marconi plays the mamba, listen to the radio, don't you remember? We built this city..built this city...”

He hadn’t heard the song for over twenty-five years. He first heard it over the loudspeaker during a pep rally at his middle school, Braintrump MS, Home of the Badgers.

At the time, he leaned over to his best buddy Chad and commented, “That song sucks.” Chad agreed. From that moment on the song, its lead singer Grace Slick, and its thrashing 1980s synthesizers faded into oblivion.

Dewey paced around the room as the song grew louder in his head. Now the percussion and synthesizers came to the forefront—like they were trapped in his frontal lobe. He hit his head, trying to disperse the sound. He clasped his hands around his ears. It became louder.

Chad opened the door followed by a swift frigid wind. He threw down a pack of branches into the fire.

“You all right?” he asked Dewey, sensing something was awry. “You look like you just got off a rollercoaster.”

“Weird,” said Dewey. I can’t get that song by Jefferson Starship out of my head.

“You’ve been drinking?” asked Chad.

“No, just sitting right here. Mind was blank. Then bam. It hit me.”

“Which song?” said Chad, pouring himself a Michelob light.

“We Built This City on Rock and Roll.”

“That’s tough,” said Chad, sinking into the cushions of an armchair. “Couldn’t you pick something more contemporary, less brashy?”

“I didn’t pick it. It bombarded me,” said Dewey as he plugged his ears and started singing “Happy Birthday to Me” to drown out The Starship.

Chad headed for bed. “Look, just listen to this.” He rummaged through his burlap satchel and pulled out a CD, The Best and Not So Best of the ‘60s. “If you listen to this, one of these tunes will take control of your brain.”

Dewey put on his earphones and began listening. He gazed at the rising embers while hearing Johnny Cash’s “Burning Ring of Fire,” “Wouldn’t It Be Nice” by the Beach Boys (the best) and “The Face from Outer Space” (the not so best) by Jeff Barry. He dozed off, hoping to absorb the melodies of the familiar and obscure, but awoke to the chorus of Jefferson Starship, “Marconi plays the mamba. Marconi plays the mamba. Don’t you remember?We built this city on rock and roll...” It was in a continual loop, a figure eight into infinity.

He got himself tipsy on hard lemonade; it didn’t change the outcome. Morning came and the song swelled in crescendos with the lyric, “Someone's always playing corporation games. Who cares, they're always changing corporation names,” He caught himself screaming, “Stop, leave me alone,” while showering. He shouted at Chad, “It must mean something. It’s a hidden message.”

Chad brainstormed several scenarios of meaning—an attack on Dewey’s corporate job? Nostalgia for middle school pep rallies? A career change as in construction and real estate or an urban planner who builds new cities? A secret desire to play electric guitar and wear tight pants?

“Ridiculous,” yelled Dewey as he slammed the door, got in his car and sped down an icy hill. He turned on the radio and there it was blaring loud as ever, “Don’t you remember…? We built this city on rock and roll...” He swerved to avoid a collision with a school bus.

Next stop was the emergency room. For his insurance to cover “an ‘80s song stuck in the brain,” he claimed it was an excruciating headache, like his head was in a vice.

Dr. Caligari examined his ears, prodded a tool up his nose and took x-rays of his head. Nothing. He referred Dewey to a specialist, a neuropsychiatric specialist. Dewey waited for the specialist and distracted himself by memorizing a Shakespearian sonnet, but soon music flowed from the speakers in the waiting room. “We built this city… built this city. Don’t you remember?”

“Why?” He begged the neuropsychiatric specialist for answers. “Why couldn’t it be something pleasurable like ‘Over the Rainbow’ or ‘Fly Me to the Moon?’”

“I can’t tell you that,” said the specialist as he reviewed Dewey’s brain scans. “Even those songs in a loop would drive anyone bonkers. In my own research, I found an article from GQ magazine, claiming that the song, “We Built This City” was declared, and I quote, ‘the most detested’ song in human history.”

“I’m aware of that,” said Dewey holding his head in place, as if it would roll off. “It’s a curse.”

The specialist’s face glowed eerily with white light from the brain scans. “You may be cursed. In that case, go to a spiritual advisor or hypnotist.”

Dewey didn’t practice organized religion and any thought of God or a higher source was now clouded by the chorus of “We Built This City on Rock and Roll.” Every impulse, every idea was a fight to be free from the least-liked pop-rock song in history.

Dewey chose the hypnotist.

She was an elderly woman, a cross between a hippie grandmother and a bargain-basement fortune teller. She gave him jasmine tea, helped him relax, and soon had him in a sleep-like state. Her voice was cool and cascading.

“Tell me your earliest memory,” she said as her voice floated above him. Dewey paused. He opened his mouth.

“Yes, tell me,” said the hypnotist.

“Marconi played the mamba...don’t you remember? We built this city,” said Dewey.

He opened his eyes, stared at her greying pupils. “Hopeless,” he said. He stood up, gave her thirty dollars and left.

The next few months were the toughest. Pedestrians spotted Dewey standing at the corner in front of a discount store reciting the lyrics over and over. He sang off-key. The saddest part, he was laid off from his corporate job. No one could tolerate his fixation. But he found a way around his predicament; instead of cursing the darkness, he tried to find light. As the song continued pulsating through his brain day in and day out, he paid close attention to the melody, the chord progressions, the instruments (which were mostly fake and synthesizers). He found something pleasant. It actually had merit. He started to harmonize with it, to find new rhythms, new tempos. He argued with others, “It doesn’t deserve to be the worst song. Just listen. Please!” But others just walked away, shaking their heads.

Then one Thursday morning in March, Dewey woke up to the sound of tapping rain on his window. He only heard the rain. Jefferson Starship’s masterpiece was silent. No thoughts, no nothing. The song was gone. He slapped his head to jump start his brain. Nothing but the sound of rain. This continued throughout the day, the week, the month. The year. He was free.

But every night as he closed his eyes, he tried to imagine the song with its repetitious notes and its hokey lyrics. He couldn’t remember even one note, not one word.

He missed it, like a lost penpal from a war zone.

“Come back, just once for old times,” he said. But there was no answer and all he wanted to do was cry.

Fitting the Mold

Last night didn’t go well. Jaxson sat at his bay window thinking of his next moves.
Two squirrels in the front yard chased each other up a telephone pole. “At least they look happy,” he said.

A month earlier he had met Geraldine in front of the Bourgeois Groundhog Cafe. He had the best pick-up line. He untied his bargain-basement running shoes and said, “I’d better tie my shoes because I’m falling for you.” He found the line on an earmarked page of A Hundred and One Pick-Up Lines Guaranteed to Charm, a book left in an empty box on his street with a sign attached, “Free Stuff.”

Geraldine was silent, smiled and bit into a burger holding the bun in her delicate hand.

They chatted. He was a data-entryist. Not much to tell, just the average twenty-two years of a nine to five prisoner, sterile cubicle, water cooler, glowing computer screen and tapping sounds on keyboards all day. She was a scientist at UCLA who researched mold and pond scum.

“You wouldn’t believe it. There are hundreds of varieties of mold,” she said.

“So fascinating,” said Jaxson. He couldn’t take his eyes off of her pale, soft and fairy-like hands.

That weekend she invited him to her laboratory in the basement of a psychiatric hospital on campus. She revealed a treasure of petri dishes full of colorful molds in bright greens, blues and violets with spindle-like outgrowths like strands of cotton candy.

“They grow together from spores and just burst with colors,” she said, jabbing the poor mold with her fingers.

“I wish I could give you a bouquet of mold and pond scum,” said Jaxson.

Every night following their first meeting he lay staring at the ceiling fan, seeing mold and pond scum in a kaleidoscope of spinning, floating colors above him. He dreamed of Geraldine and how she adjusted her wire rim glasses when they slid down her slender nose. He adored the cowboy boots that she wore with her white lab coat. And by the next meeting, he had tripped over his shoelaces for her. He was in love.

On Mondays they met outside her laboratory. She embraced him as the earthy smell of mold and pond scum permeated the air. Jaxson soon started advising his neighbors on the dangers of mold. He also described the beauty of mold in elaborate detail. He saw mold in every corner of his kitchen, even though there was none. He peppered his speech with terms like spores, filaments, mycelium, penicillin and fungus. He loved how fungus contained the word fun and how pond scum, called spirogyra, flipped and danced off his tongue. He even envisioned himself with Geraldine exchanging vows at the Central Botanical Gardens among little water channels draped with scum.

But by the following Sunday, she was called to a conference in Blackpool, England where she would mingle with the greatest minds in the field of mold, mycelium and scum.

She left. Her last text message read “Twilight.”

Jaxson spent the next two weeks gazing out the bay window at the front yard with its two squirrels; one scurried up the pole then looked down on the other, but the one on the ground flicked its bushy tail like a paint brush and hurried in the other direction. He noticed mold in his pepper-jack sandwich. It didn’t strike him as beautiful, and the sandwich tasted like damp and dirty trousers.

Within a week Jaxson wandered off to Le Pied de Cochon French bakery. He had another pick-up line from his book and approached a middle-aged woman with wiry strawberry blonde hair piled on her head like an ice-cream sundae.

“Are you French, because Eiffel for you,” said Jaxson

She giggled like a ten-year-old, “No, I’m from Wisconsin. Ever heard of our cheeses? Great in baked buns,” and offered him a seat next to her under a striped awning.

Her name was Maisy, a baker. She told Jaxson of her dream of opening a fast-food bakery. This idea confused Jaxson, but he nodded, agreed, and said, “Oh great,” “really awesome” and “indubitably” to everything she told him about baking and baked goods. He was so enamored with the conversation, he didn’t have a moment to tell her about his twenty-two-year career in data entry.

That weekend she arrived at his doorstep with a cake in the shape of his bust, complete with icing and intricate piping of all his facial features. She showed him a slide show of her creations, cakes with hot pink fondant and chocolate ganache. She laughed after he thought that choux pastry was related to a shoe. They fed each other shortcakes and within an hour, he had fallen for her.

For two weeks straight he scoured books on baking, binge-watched “The Fantabulous American Baking Game” and was up until three in the morning, dusted in flour, concocting the perfect three-tier cake. Maisy was amazed. They bonded like sticky dough to one another.

Then the day of the surprise arrived. Jaxson had created the perfect cake for his new love. He wrapped it in a decorative gold box with tiny pink hearts and carefully drove it to Maisy.

“For me? I can’t wait to see,” she said as she lifted the box. In it stood a cake that looked like a swamp creature with a giant bosom, topped with maraschino cherries.

“It’s your exquisite form. Just for you,” said Jaxson.

“But the whole cake is just breasts. That’s what you think of me?” she said, tearing up and darted out of the room.

She closed herself up in the bedroom and didn’t respond when Jaxson called for her over and over. He plopped down on the sofa, stared at the flames in the fireplace and ate the cake, first picking off the maraschino cherries. He let out a sigh, then a burp, begged Maisy again to come out, but she was silent. He fell asleep on the sofa with pink frosting and crumbs in his moustache.

Back at home the following day, he stared out the bay window and didn’t see the squirrels. He wanted to feed them the leftover Kaiser rolls that he baked earlier that week, but he let them go stale.

At last, Edwina. Edwina had short, spiky hair. She wasn’t much like his type--stubby and strong with a torso that boxers could use as a punching bag. He met her in aisle nine of the grocery store as she was reading the ingredients of dog treats.

“I’d buy that brand too, if I had a dog,” said Jaxson. She half-smiled at him, slightly taken aback by his friendliness. She had white tufts of animal hair on her black pants and dirt under her cracked nails. Jaxon admired how she didn’t care about her appearance. She was a genuine, solid, no-nonsense kind of woman.

They walked out into the blinding sunlight of the street and made chit chat. She was a dog trainer and groomer at “Love at First Sight Animal Rescue,” but she wanted to upgrade her training to wild animals, like wild monkeys, “Like those ones in the streets in Thailand,” she said. She didn’t ask about Jaxson’s job, and he didn’t care. He was all ears for Edwina.

For the next week, he called her every morning. She nicknamed him Jax. He dropped off special liver treats to the rescue, and impressed her with his new research on border collies, labradoodles, rat terriers and teacup chihuahuas. He watched her pry open the mouth of a pitbull named Pepito and brush his gums. “You need to make circular motions. Let me help,” Jaxson said.

“Please, don’t help,” said Edwina. “It takes a special touch.”

Jaxson didn’t listen and dropped by the next day with new brushes, chicken flavored toothpaste and gloves. “Let me help you. Circular motions” he said again. “Move aside.”

She didn’t budge. Her face reddened with emotion and she stood in front of him like a fire hydrant.

“You don’t know what you’re doing.”

“But I want to help,” he said, stepping away, slumping his shoulders. He looked like a giant shrimp.

“No.” She shook her head in disapproval, threw down the toothbrush and walked away into a dark corridor. Pepito licked his front paws then nudged toward Jaxon.

“Good boy,” Jaxson said, patting the dog on his head. “I was only trying to help.”

The episode with Edwina, from dawn till dusk lasted only a week. So much and so little. Looking out at the front yard, the squirrels were gone. They had buried their nuts. They were awaiting the winter.

Jaxson met no one in the few weeks. It was a record. Then twenty days after Edwina disappeared into the dark corridor, there was a knock at the door. Edwina stood there, stocky and stumpy with her spiked hair now dyed purple. At her side slobbered Pepito.

“Jax, I didn’t like how things ended. And I didn’t say goodbye,” she said.

“Okay, well,” said Jaxson. “Goodbye, Edwina.” He patted Pepito on the head, smiled and closed the door.

He stood staring at the door, glanced at the cracked face of his Timex watch, then opened the door again. Edwina and Pepito with his wagging tail were half-way down the street.

“But then again, I’ve got all the time in the world. I’ve got liver treats. You know how to train a pitbull to roll over? I do,” he hollered.

Edwina turned around, waved hello or goodbye.

“It’s probably hello. Or I’ll be back,” said Jaxson to himself.

Edwina and Pepito then disappeared into the vanishing point.

My Mask, My Love

Trick or treat. Smell my feet. Give me something good to eat. 

Harold spoke no words all evening as the sun set and the thin veil between the light and dark was now being lifted. He slipped on his rubbery mask of Hilary Clinton. 

Not many were out on the street. They warned the kiddos not to mingle in crowds and take candy from strangers because the virus, that relentless phantom, still lurked around every corner.

Harold headed for the door. No “See ya later,” no “Come with me, like ol’ times.” 

“Harold, you’d think you could pick a mask that’s more up-to-date. Hilary? It’s so 2016. “

“Don’t start,” he said with his hand clutching the doorknob. “It’s all I’ve got and you wouldn’t let me out all this time to get something more current.” His hand held the doorknob tightly, as if he was now in a love affair with it, with cold brass, and wouldn’t let go.”

“Well, if you’re going to go…go,” said Laverna as she unwrapped a mini-snickers bar from a bowl of unclaimed treats. 

He lifted Hilary’s plastic chin to get a breath of air. “You’re not going to say anymore about my mask?”

“What’s there to say?” Laverna bit into the snickers and stared at the TV set, sound turned off, black and white with Vincent Price and his piercing eyes in “The Tingler."

“You’re not going to say that I should be wearing a proper N95 mask? That my mask has open nostrils, that there’s a slit for the mouth? That my respiratory droplets will infect people and children? That they’ll infect me?” 

He waited for an answer. The only sound was the crinkling as Laverna unwrapped another snickers bar. She faced the TV screen with its electric white glimmer reflecting on my face, making her look like a ghost.