Jennifer has one of those flimsy white masks people use while mowing the lawn. When she exhales, her yellow framed glasses fog up. Our friend Todd and I are discussing the situation on Facetime. He’s wearing his black mask covering only the area around his eyes, like the Lone Ranger. He tells me surprisingly few get the joke. I’m staying in as much as possible. “You’re on the subway and somebody coughs. Boom, you’re dead.” “Wrong,” Todd says. odds of that guy hitting you with the bug are minimal.” “Greater than zero?” I ask. “Sure, but so are the odds you’ll win the lottery or get hit by lightning.” I’m thinking how terribly ironic it would be if I won the lottery and then got hit by lightning. “People are getting infected,” I say. “Not on the golf course,” he says. I get a text from my boss telling me I should work from home until further notice. Our small office, intimate enough to facilitate the easy spread of viruses, will be closed for at least a month. The virus has everyone spooked. I try to convince Jennifer to work from home as well. “It will be fun,” I say, moving my eyebrows, pretending to hold a cigar. “Listen Groucho, I’ve got back-to-back depositions scheduled tomorrow,” she says. “Got to be there.” “Postpone them.” “Until when?” Jennifer asks. “Next week will be worse. Who knows what a month will bring. So, no. I’ve got to be in the office. I’ll take the car, stay off the buses.” I’m used to her law practice coming first. It is after all the largest part of our income. But it continues to grate, like an itch I can’t reach. “Wear a mask,” I say. “I’ll observe the six-foot rule.” “Make it seven.” She nods, but I know she won’t. We live in a four-room first floor condo, perfect for a couple who doesn’t spend much time at home. There’s a window in the kitchen that best catches the morning light as it rises over the golf course. The window in the dining room fronts on the gray brick wall of the adjacent condo. What little light finds its way to this window looks unhealthy, a muddy residue. I set up shop on the small oak gateleg table that came from my grandmother, which sits now in front of that window. Jenn normally keeps a handful of houseplants on that table: a spider, a jade and something that looks like a lily. I replace the plants with my laptop and phone and pull up a folding chair. I filch from my wife’s desk a tiny pad of lined paper sent by the Partnership with Native Americans—she calls them Indigenous Peoples and says Indians are from India—and a ballpoint pen from her dresser. I put the pad of Indian paper and the pencil next to my cell phone. I start to call the office but realize no one is there. All six of us are working from home. I call Alex and am immediately shunted to his voice mail. I call his landline. His wife tells me he’s playing golf with Todd. Alex hasn’t played golf in fifteen years. Probably putt-putting in a love shack. I call Larry and get his voice mail. “Call me when you get this,” I say to the beep. I make a list of things I have to do. Other than calling on prospects and checking in with customers, I’m left with end of month paperwork. I find a box of chocolate chip cookies in one of the kitchen cabinets. I take out three and, with a glass of milk, return to my makeshift desk. I go back for three more. I use Google Hangouts to video chat with an important customer. It was clearly awkward for him to talk to a screen and I made it as short as possible. Behind him I notice his schnauzer chewing on a bedroom slipper. Work in progress, I say to myself. Jenn calls in around six thirty. The last deposition is going long. “Every time I ask a question, the defendant’s counsel—a real ass—objects and we go through a rigmarole to get our views on the record. He’s doing it on purpose. Trying to wear me down. Fat chance. Could be eight or later.” When I groan, she tells me to go ahead with dinner. I find a pizza in the freezer along with some non-meat meat and three half gallons of low-fat chocolate ice cream. I’m about to heat up the pizza then decide I’d rather order out Chinese. The guy on the phone says there’ll be an hour wait and they’re not delivering; I’ll have to pick it up. “Just like New Year’s Eve,” he says. He knows me; I’m a regular. It’s a five-block walk, but what the hell. I order veggie moo shoo. It’s not on the menu, but they make it for me and ring it up as moo shoo pork. On the way there I bump into an old friend. “Val, hi. You’re supposed to be at home hunkering down.” Val and I have known each other since kindergarten. She used to be married to Todd, in fact I fixed them up right after high school. That mess lasted twenty-two years. They still don’t speak to one another. Both of them were cheating with the same woman. I’ve never mentioned it to Val and she’s never mentioned it to me. “Going to get me some Chinese,” Val says. “Get in line,” I say. “That’s where I’m headed.” Hers is ready first, but she waits for me. “I hear eating alone leads to gastrointestinal problems,” she says. “Join me.” Val’s apartment is on the way, three flights up in a four story walkup. “You’ve redecorated since we’ve been here last,” I say. What a fiasco that was: Almost three years ago and billed as a winter solstice party. After drinks and hors d'oeuvres, Val and Todd asked each of us—there were eight including Peggy, the putative dual paramour—to consider what the measured return of the light meant to us. Peggy talked of freedom from societal norms. Jenn talked about the awakening of plants and animals and Val thought this was a time to review the past year and plan for the new one. Todd and I mentioned the Yankees versus the Dodgers After dinner Todd walked into the kitchen where he caught Peggy with her hand up Val’s dress. And it went precipitously downhill from there. We all begged off, leaving Todd and Val and Peggy to thrash things out. Within a month, Peggy had moved to San Francisco and Todd filed a petition for divorce. With Jenn’s help, Val cross petitioned. Now the console bar is gone. The wall between the kitchen and dining room is gone, replaced by an island with a second sink and a cooktop. New appliances, paint job. “Yeah, it needed a new look. Where’s Jenn? After explaining the depositions, I take a seat across from Val—not six feet, but at least four—eat my veggie moo shoo, Val eats her moo goo gai pan, and we both think wordlessly about having sex with one another. Do I actually know what’s in Val’s mind? No, but as she reached over and plucked an errant bean sprout from my cheek, there was a look I understood. My imagination? Hardly, but I decide discretion is the better part of Val, and go home. I go home! It’s not like we hadn’t done it before. When we were kids, seniors in high school. We agreed it was nothing personal, that it was just to have the experience with someone we trusted. There’s never been an encore, and it’s been twenty some years since we last spoke of it. Jenn is home when I arrive. She’s at the refrigerator, one hand on the handle. “Did you have dinner?” “No,” I lie. Given what Jenn knows and doesn’t know of Val’s history, I think it better if I don’t mention my dinner with her. “Went for a walk.” “I’ll order out Chinese. Okay?” “Great,” I say. “I’m starved.” “You fucked Val,” she says. “What? No, okay, I did have dinner with her. We bumped into each other on our way to get Chinese. Perfectly innocent. I didn’t want to tell you because I didn’t want you worrying about it. What made you say that?” “I called her to see how she was doing. She told me you had dinner together in her apartment. If you didn’t have sex with her, why would you lie to me about a simple thing like dinner with an old friend? And you’re so guilt ridden you’re ready to have a second fucking dinner. Creep.” I see her point, but—bottom line—nothing happened; we just had dinner and talked. I go over it again with Jenn. Passing on the sex issue for the moment, she focuses on the deceit. Why not just tell her I ran into Val and had dinner with her? “I’m guessing,” she says, “if Val had so much as licked her lips, you would have screwed her.” Deciding righteous indignation might be a good gambit, I stand up and shout, “You’re being hysterical. And you’re forgetting the virus. I’m not touching anyone.” And in the heat of the moment I add, “Val and I haven’t done it in more than twenty years.” I immediately see this as an error and try to suck the words back, attempting to inhale the sound waves before they reach Jenn’s ears. Jenn’s movements are more deliberate than mine. She turns in her chair—in slow motion it seems—to face me. “Did I hear you right?” It was something Val and I had thought would be better left unsaid. And for all these years I hadn’t mentioned it and I have no reason to believe Val did. But now there it is. “Statute of Limitations,” I yell. “Really, we were kids, high schoolers. Meant nothing to either of us. Ancient history.” “Of course,” Jenn says. “That’s why you’ve kept it a secret all these years. That was the elephant sitting next to the moo shoo in Val’s kitchen,” she says. “Now I understand why you lied to me.” I sometimes think about the wisdom of marrying a trial lawyer. “Nothing happened!” I yell. “I’ll take a lie detector test.” “You just did, buster. And you flunked it.” She gets up and walks in the dining room. “Where are my plants!” she screams. A golf ball shatters the kitchen window and whizzes past my head. There is a knock on the door. It’s Todd, wearing his mask and brightly checkered trousers. “The Lone Ranger?” Jennifer says. I spot Alex sitting on a golf cart sixty feet away. “Bad lie!” Todd shouts to him. “Sorry about the window. Just let me get this back on the fairway without a penalty stroke.” He straddles the ball, lining it up with gaping hole that was the kitchen window. “Square your shoulders over your hips!” Jennifer coaches. The ball ricochets off the refrigerator, bounces down the hall and into the bedroom. I turn to Jennifer. “I needed the table for my office, so I put the damn plants on the floor. They’re fine.” “On the floor! What are you, some kind of idiot? They’ll die over there.” She begins putting them back on the table, pushing my laptop to the edge. “Why don’t you make your office on the floor!” “What about your old boyfriend?” I say, looking for an angle. “Benny? What about him?” “Have you seen him lately?” “He’s a partner in the firm. I see him once in a while. But I haven’t slept with him since we broke up and I haven’t lied to you about having dinner with him. We have working lunches.” “First I’ve heard,” I say, attempting to claw back some high ground. “Any dinners?” “It’s possible, if we’re working late on a case.” “So it’s possible you had dinner with Benny and chose not to mention it, right?” “I sure as hell didn’t lie about it,” she says. I haven’t lived with a lawyer for four years without learning some things. “An act of omission,” I begin, “can be just as bad as an act of commission.” I turn and open my arms to the imaginary jury of houseplants. “You don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about,” Jenn says. Todd comes out of the bedroom, brandishing his golf ball. “Benny was right. You have an incredible night shirt. Talk about a birdie shot!” “Anyone hungry?” I say. Todd opens the door to go out. Val is standing there but pushes past him and walks into the kitchen. “Hey slugger,” she says. “You forgot your fortune cookie.”