The Quarantine Chronicles: Day 4

Sara’s building was on a checkpoint road; they were every ten blocks or so, always on even numbered streets. Mostly two-way streets. I probably could have talked my way through, but I knew the doorman at the rear so I went around, why risk it? It appeared that they already had a couple in the checkpoint holding booth waiting for a pickup. I didn’t want to join. Entering from the other street, Davis, the doorman, buzzed me in. He told me about how the cops just pulled a couple of “fatigues” out of the building. I was only half listening, my pulsing sensing I was near her again.

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Sara listened to every word I was telling her about the previous evening as we sat on the rooftop of her building. She stared blankly, sharing in my bewilderment of how we’d gotten so far off course in such a relatively short span of time. People with oaths to serve and protect turned to thugs; self-respecting neighbors turned to selling their bodies; lovers risking imprisonment to see each other- banished to rooftops alone. Sara’s roommates were strict law-abiding citizens, they wouldn’t allow anyone in the apartment. So, we end up here; a Gotham city picnic twenty-seven floors in the air, complete with chairs, blankets and wine. At least the sun was strong today, I hadn’t remembered it being this strong for at least a couple of months. Not since this pandemic started and definitely not before that during the bleak winter. The romantic in me resisted the urge to believe that the sun was shining because I was with her, because she was in my arms. However, I must admit the smell of boiler exhaust and old tar was almost indistinguishable, dwarfed by the smell of her shampoo mixing with the aroma of the Malbec. From where we lay, and looking upwards, there was no international crisis. From our vantage point and up, it was Spring. “So was she good?” Sara’s response when I had finished my story about the previous night. I rolled my eyes. It was her defense mechanism to always assume the guy’s a piece of shit so then you’ll never be surprised when he is. Unique to her mechanism, she wouldn’t judge him for it, instead finding the logic in whatever selfish and cruel act was done. She could ‘understand’ why he cheated. “I can’t imagine wanting anything other than this.” I reassured her. Sara sat up slowly, pulling her knees to her chest. “Perhaps you should.” She said looking at me. I braced myself. There were times when Sara looked directly into my soul. She would confront whatever raging demon had tunneled out of its’ cell and through the maze of my subconscious to ravage the outside world. She’d walk right up to it, lay a simple hand on its’ chest and it would shrink back to where it came from. Then there were times, like these, where she would just look at me and I knew I wasn’t going to like what she had to say. I sighed loudly and sat up as well. "Just listen to me,” She started knowing we’d been through this dance before, “hear me out, and believe me. I wish things were different and this is not a reflection of what I want… but I care about you too much to not want what’s best for you-“ “then you wan-“ “Please let me talk… wouldn’t it be easier for you to be with the mother of your children? Wouldn’t it be better for your kids? It would be what’s best for you. They would be happier and that’s what’s most important.” She’d said children because Brittany had another child from a different relationship. She believed, nobly so, that I held the responsibility of caring for both. I thought it about it for a second. I tried to ignore the nagging feeling of being turned down. Tried to bottle up the annoyance of having had this conversation already. I disregarded the aching in my chest and pushed passed it to try to understand what was being said. “Well that depends on your philosophy,” I finally answered, after the emotional rejoinder subsided and logic was allowed to resurface, “do you believe that children can be happy if their parents are miserable?” Sara thought about it for a moment. The sun kissed her cheek as she gazed out to nothing in particular. “No, I don’t believe so,” she said with an air of deflation, sensing correctly that this was devastating to her case. “Then, that settles that,” I said, eager to move on. “But you could be happy with her,” she said with renewed vigor. My ego took another body blow to the liver. It was difficult to reconcile someone actively trying to convince me not to be with them, while concurrently telling me that they cared about me. It would seem the two were at cross purposes. I started to reply but I looked her in the eyes. She wasn’t trying to piss me off, even though that’s what she was doing. She was desperately trying to do the right thing; she knew we had both fallen. Once you’ve gone over the edge like we had, there were only two options: fly or hit the sharp rocks below. We could both fly if we held onto each other but in her mind, the flying wouldn’t be enjoyable if she felt that she’d left someone else to meet their fate on the rocks. She imagined that there was still a branch I could grasp onto. Perhaps back out of this decision, to climb back up the cliff to the kids and her idea of some previous happy life I’d once lived. She would relish in seeing me happy up there, as she fell into the agony of the ground below. I saw in her eyes nothing but sympathy and care. A desire to do what was right. What was right for a woman whom she’d never met. What was right for the kids, regardless of what it could cost her; regardless of the hurt that she would endure. “If we could be happy, we would have been. We are different people, we want different things, who she is and who I am are not meant to be together for too long.” I said taking a seat in one of the chairs near the parapet. She looked away. “I’m sure she would change for you,” Sara said. “Ha. Why are you so sure?” I asked She opened her mouth but paused without a sound. She didn’t want to answer. “Because I would. Because how could she be happy losing you?” She finally answered without making eye contact. Torn between what she wanted and what she thought was right, what she’d failed to understand is that the ship had already sailed with Brittany. I pulled her onto me. She straddled me effortlessly and put her arms around my neck. Still not making eye contact but gazing down, she looked as if she felt guilty for falling for me. I put my finger under her chin and guided her head up until her eyes locked unto mine. “I can be with you or I can be alone…. Or I can be with Ana de Armes” I added as a joke, Sara rolled her eyes, “But there is no scenario in which I end up with Brittany. Is that clear enough for you?” Sara nodded. “So we don’t have to have this conversation anymore?” I confirmed. She shook her head slightly. We both let go; in an instant I could feel us starting to fly. I put my hands on the small of her back and pulled her in closer. We lay in each other arms in silence for a long time. We wore each other like a warm overcoat until finally, she spoke. “What about your father?” Sara asked moving from one concern to the next. The world didn’t deserve a heart like hers. She got off of me and made her way to her glass of wine. I inhaled deeply thinking about it. I sat on one of the chairs we’d brought up and looked over the parapet wall to the vacant streets below. I saw a military convoy turn the corner and pull up to the check point. I figured they’d show up sooner or later if what Davis said was true. When they exited however, their uniforms didn’t look like the traditional National Guard or Military. I turned my attention back to the question. “The Governor of Louisiana is panicking. They discovered eighty thousand new cases over the weekend. Last weekend they had only found ten thousand.” “That’s quick.” “It’s not really. They didn’t start testing in earnest until last week. They probably have hundred-fifty thousand undiscovered cases in New Orleans alone. The more they test, the more they’ll find and people will be convinced it’s spreading. It’s not. It’s been there all along.” “You know I want you to see your father before it’s too late. You’ll regret it if you don’t.” “I’ll regret it if I do and end up killing him faster.” I said with a shrug. Sara sat in the other chair pulling it closer to me. “London –“ She started, I cut her off immediately trying dreadfully hard to change the subject. “You know, I’ve started to notice how unimaginative people are in these times,” I interjected, hoping the randomness of the statement would peak her interest long enough to distract her from talking about my father, “Social media is a rotation of scantily clad women in surgical masks telling you to join their ‘fans only’ account because the strip clubs are closed; you got the home workout videos from the fitness nuts; memes or jokes about being locked in together with someone who’s irritating you. Oh and of course the ever clever tick tock dances about how to how apply hand sanitizer.” Sara laughed. We shared a similar viewpoint to the social media lemmings. “I used to think people didn’t have time to be creative,” I concluded, “now I realize they just aren’t.” She smiled again. Her eyes squinted at the corners when she did, and her dimples looked deep enough to hold puddles on a rainy day. “Wonder what they are going to do when the companies fold, and the ‘stay-at-home’ checks stop coming in?” “They are going to give another stimulus package, didn’t you hear?” Sara said. “I’ll believe that when the check clears.” “They were talking about it all day.” She replied optimistically. “I’m sure they were, but it’d be a miracle if it makes it pass the House of Representatives and even then, it will certainly die on the Senate floor. They did it once, but they underestimated how long this thing would last. Lightening would have to strike twice for them to do it again.” Beneath us you could hear faint arguing. I peeked over the edge. Seemed the Police and the fatigues weren’t getting along. They kept pointing at the pen where the two men were being held. I guess those boys took exception to that, not surprising. I had just looked away when a shot rang out. I twisted my head back over. It was clear that the police were shocked by it. Their reaction time was a millisecond behind the military’s. That fraction of a second showed, however, as three of the policemen dropped immediately and the rest took cover. By the time the police returned fire, the military had already closed in on them by ten yards. At yard eleven, the first enlisted man was winged, and the military began to also take cover. The insanity of the situation was so outrageous it didn’t register as real to me. I looked to Sara to verify that what I was seeing was the truth. I saw her bent over the parapet, her shirt riding up showing her upper hip and side. She looked back at me, perhaps to gauge my reaction to the gun fight below. Yet, when our eyes locked there was something else, some odd understanding of what was happening. Not just downstairs, but on a grander scale. A sense that we shared in that moment of the whole thing crumbling down around us; the practical assumption that any moment we had together could well be one of, if not our last. No words were spoken over the pops and bursts of gunfire below. I unbuttoned her pants and she stood still as I reached my hand in. Her wetness confirmed. We ripped each other’s clothes off, pulled her to the blanket and entered her deeply, her moan mixing with the machine gun artillery echoing between the brick and steel buildings of the block below. Then it stopped. “Surrender,” I could vaguely hear someone yell as I continued to slide inside of her. ‘Surrender,’ my body yelled at hers. “Surrender now!” the voice yelled again from below. ‘Surrender!’ My body yelled from within, plunging deeper inside of her. “Surrender!” Surrender! Sara came hard. Her body and legs shaking, she gripped me trying to bite her lips shut. The blanket was soaked. When I dared to peek back over the edge, the police were lined up and zip tied. A scene you didn’t see every day. I sat back down on the roof, my back to the parapet wall and looked at Sara’s perfect legs glistening in the sunlight. In New York, hope and despair lived on the same street. We cleaned up the roof as the military cleaned up the mess below. How could this have ever happened I wondered? What could have gone this wrong? “I gotta go, love,” Sara said, interrupting my thoughts. “Have to get ready for later.” We had a don’t ask, don’t tell policy. If either of us had asked, we would’ve answered honestly, but mostly I didn’t ask because I knew that the answer would likely upset me. “You can’t get arrested anymore, Sara.” I simply said. Referencing her misdemeanors for protesting without a permit and public disruption from her rallies and whatnot. “Why?” “Due to the ‘state of emergency,’ judges have the right to stop their court proceedings for the sake of public safety. It’s a nice loophole which basically means you can get arrested for jaywalking and wait for a hearing that will never come because the courts are shut down.“ She put together what I was saying. “Overcrowding of holding cells means you will likely get sick,” I continued matter of factly, “ they won’t give you proper medical care because you haven’t been tested, which obviously you won’t be because you’re in jail. How would they justify using the tests on you?“ “So basically, I’d die in jail,” she said drawing the reasonable conclusion. “Basically.” She nodded, I could tell she wasn’t deterred. “I tell you that to say this: Whatever it is you think you’re doing; whatever good it is, doesn’t mean anything in there.” Sara winked at me as she disappeared into the staircase. I shook my head; she was likely to kill me before the virus did.