How to Fall in Love During a Pandemic
Heather Holland Wheaton
The first time you meet him is when you both grab the last package of the toilet paper on the shelves of Duane Reade at the same time—an eight pack of Scott’s Comfort Plus.
He’s wearing running shorts and an Elizabeth Warren t-shirt soaked with sweat. It hugs his pecs. His hair is also sweaty and dark and thick.
You’re about to react in the usual meek, submissive way you do around handsome men and let him have the toilet paper, then you remember there’s a crisis at hand and you’ve just been sent home from your job for an indefinite period because a deadly virus is ripping through New York City and you might not be able to leave your apartment for weeks and you only have enough toilet paper at home for five, maybe six wipes because you’ve always been a one-roll-at-a-time kinda gal.
“I touched it first.” As you say this, you realize how juvenile it sounds. It’s also not true.
“I think it was a tie.” His voice is low and lush. It makes you tingle as if his lips are right up against your ear. He smiles and there’re dimples under his five o’clock shadow. “Why don’t we split it?” he says. “You take four and I take four. Fair enough?”
It does seem fair, but using his dimples is not and you’re fueled by survival. “Women use more toilet paper than men,” you say, pushing your glasses up higher on your nose. “How ‘bout I get five and you get three?”
“Deal.” Another smile. The dimples again.
You follow him to the register. He insists on paying for the whole pack. He’s also buying Grape nuts, Gatorade and a dozen eggs.
You purchase Pop Tarts, two Share Size bags of peanut M&M’s and a liter of Diet Pepsi that you try to slip into your Target tote bag before he notices.
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You meet him the second time in Food Emporium as you both reach for the last carton of unsweetened almond milk.
You don’t recognize him right away because he’s wearing a mask. An N95. You wonder where he got one of those. It hides his smile and dimples, but emphasizes his eyes that you notice are the color of the Hudson River on a rainy day.
The mask you’re wearing was labeled Fashion Mask on its cellophane packaging. It was the only one available at the hardware store—or anywhere else. After six washings, it fits your face like a pair of panties from Lot Less. You ordered a proper cloth mask online—handmade by a dyslexic costume designer using scraps of fabric from an off-off-off Broadway production of Pale Horse, Pale Rider—The Musical that’d failed miserably in 2019. Proceeds will buy pizza for New York health care workers. The mask hasn’t arrived yet.
You need the almond milk for the kale smoothies you’ve been making. You’re trying to eat healthier, but you really make them because the bright green photographs so well. You’ve been taking lots of photos to fill up the hours you normally spend working. Photos of smoothies in various stages of sipping, the sad philodendra in your kitchen window, your feet.
These photographs are not taken with your phone. They’re taken with the Leica your aunt Eloise gave you for your birthday two years ago. Aunt Eloise lives in a nursing home in LA, eats nothing but applesauce and thinks Olivia de Havilland is the president of the United States. She also loves ordering online.
Last year, she sent you a box of toothpicks. The kind with the frilly cellophane around the top.
The Leica is the most expensive thing anyone has ever given you. For two years you’ve been afraid to take it out of the box, but this pandemic that’s made you so cautious about germs has made you fast and loose with things like expensive cameras. So what if you don’t know how to use it? So what if you take lousy photos? You could die tomorrow!
You still haven’t taken it out of your apartment yet. Mostly because of your reliance on the setting charts in the book Photography for Complete Idiots.
“Oh, it’s you,” he says. His thick eyebrows jump like electrocuted caterpillars “How’s your toilet paper supply?”
“It’s fine,” you say, growing red under your cheap mask. “Turns out my bodega has practically a whole wall of it over the beer cooler. I guess I owe you. Here,” you say and hand him the carton. You hear him say thank you as you walk away.
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The third time you meet is when he beats you to be the first on line for a Covid test at CityMD. You don’t recognize him because all you see is the back of his head. And his broad, sculpted shoulders. He’s also six feet away and the mask made from the Pale Horse, Pale Rider—The Musical costume scraps arrived and wearing it makes your glasses steam up so you’ve stopped wearing them in public.
CityMD won’t open for another hour, you’re glad you grabbed coffee on the way. He turns around at the sound of you cracking open the lid of the cup.
“We have to stop meeting this way,” he says in that creamy voice.
You’re so stunned that you forget to pull down your mask before taking a sip of coffee. The cup’s contents rivers down your mask and all over the Leica hanging on a very secure strap around your neck. It’s the first time you’ve taken it out with you—at last somewhat confident about f-stops, shutter speeds and ISO’s.
“Shit.” You yank up your t-shirt—exposing the five pounds of doughy flesh you’ve gained since the beginning of lockdown—and begin wiping off the camera.
“I’m so sorry.” He opens the backpack slung over his shoulder, takes out a pack of Clorox Wipes and hands you one. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”
You carefully wipe the coffee off the camera, making sure to get under the dials and in the crevices of the lens, thankful that you’ve switched from ‘light and sweet’ to ‘black, no sugar.’ You turn the camera on, take a dozen or so photos, looking at the images on the monitor—that happen to be of him—and hope that the camera is unharmed. It seems to be. You then go about cleaning the coffee off your mask and stained tee.
“Are you a photographer?” he asks and hands you a brand new, packaged N95 from his backpack. You take it, hands almost trembling with awe and gratitude.
“Thank you,” you say. “Thank you, thank you.” You carefully open the package and place the mask over your nose and mouth and feel completely sealed, safe and suddenly part of an elite hygienic group. “No,” you say, your lips now free to move, no longer hampered by the scratchy wool of a failed theater production. “I’m the manager of the gift shop at Grant’s Tomb.”
You wait for it as you stuff the sullied Pale Horse, Pale Rider mask into your purse. You wait for the line everyone always says whenever you declare your place of employment. The line that makes everyone who utters it thinks they’re a goddamn comedian.
Who’s buried in Grant’s Tomb?
You absolutely hate it and always politely ha-ha afterwards then smugly add that actually nobody is buried there. Grant and his wife Julia are above ground in mausoleums, they’re entombed not buried.
But instead, he says—in his lush baritone that’s barely above a whisper—a voice that if it were New York in the Before Times with screeching cabs, honking buses and its cacophony of ‘fuck yous’ and ‘outta my ways’ would be inaudible, but this is Pandemic pin-drop-quiet New York and you easily hear: “Let us have peace.”
Your heart tattoos like a drum in your chest. He just quoted Grant—the exact quote that’s carved in granite high above the Tomb’s entrance. You are officially smitten.
“It must be fascinating to work in a historical landmark,” he says.
You nod. You don’t actually work in or for Grant’s Tomb. You work in the visitor center for a third party entity called VenGuard that operates gift shops around the world. The people who run it probably don’t know anything about “Let us have peace” or even “Who’s buried in Grant’s Tomb?” They’re located somewhere in China. Or maybe Indiana. Maybe both. You can never get a straight answer. You don’t even know if you have a job to go back to when the lockdown is over.
“What about you?” you ask to change the subject. “What do you do?”
“I’m a podcaster.”
“I love podcasts,” you say. You don’t say that since the start of the lockdown, you constantly listen to podcasts as you reorganize your sock drawer, take photos of your smoothies and knead your sourdough bread—just to hear the sound of other peoples’ voices. “What’s the name of it?”
He tells you and because he’s now six feet away again and at that particular moment the one remaining delivery truck in all of Manhattan beep-beep-beeps backwards into the parking space right next to you and you think he says Mass Appeal with Luke Ratner.
“Haven’t heard of it,” you say. “I’ll check it out.”
“It’s a very niche pod.”
You think it’s odd that something called Mass Appeal would be niche, but also think it’s adorable that he called it a ‘pod.’ Very industry insider.
By the time CityMD opens, the two of you have swapped numbers and have made a date for Zoom cocktails the following evening.
It is the most wonderful day ever.
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The day goes completely south after that.
First off, you look up his podcast the moment you get home and it turns out the name of it is actually Math Appeal.
You hate math. It makes your left eye twitch. The only way you deal with numbers at all is with fingers or a calculator.
You put on the most recent episode “Feeling Lucky and Probability” and understand absolutely zilch—but his voice makes you tingle and he cracks little jokes about paradox, variants and statistical capabilities. You don’t know they’re actually jokes, of course, until he laughs afterwards. When he does, you laugh too.
You continue to listen while you look at the photos you took today—specifically the ones you took of him—on your laptop. This is when you find out that all the photos taken after the coffee spill are in black and white.
You grab the Leica, check the settings, take some more photos that appear in color on the monitor, dump them onto your laptop only to find they’re also black and white.
That’s when your mother calls and tells you Aunt Eloise died this morning.
“Oh,” you say. “Shit. Covid?”
“Yes,” says your mother. “It’s spreading through the whole home, but I’m sure that her dementia didn’t help matters. Hope I don’t get it. Dementia, I mean. I hope I don’t get Covid either. But I’m more afraid of dementia. I try to keep my mind active. I still do the Times crossword puzzles every day. Even the Sunday, although I don’t always finish it.”
“Will there be a memorial service?”
“A virtual one,” says your mother. “Everything is virtual these days. My book club is virtual. We’re reading Where the Crawdads Sing right now. Not my first choice, but it’s quite good.”
“When is it?”
“First Tuesday of the month.”
“No, Aunt Louise’s memorial service.”
“I don’t know yet. I have to arrange everything since she never bothered to have kids. Plus the funeral homes are backed up. So many people dying. I’ll keep you posted.”
“Thanks,” you say and hang up.
You go to the kitchen cabinet and find the box of cellophane toothpicks, spill the box out on the counter and take black and white photos of them with the Leica.
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You buy two bottles of a wine called Love Noir for your Zoom date with Luke. You also put on your knock-off Diane von Furstenberg wrap dress that makes your boobs look good and full make-up for the first time since March.
The date starts out well. You and Luke sip your drinks and chitchat about lockdown activities and your Covid tests (you’re both negative!). Then he proposes a toast.
“To chance encounters,” he says and taps his glass, (looks like Scotch that you imagine is very expensive) against the computer screen. You do the same with your wine glass and take a healthy swallow.
“To feeling lucky and probability,” you say and finish your glass of Love Noir and pour a second one. You know you’re drinking too fast, but it’s not like you have to make your way home. You are home and it’s really loosening you up.
“I take it you listened to my pod.”
“I did.”
“And you hate math,” he says.
You were going to be more tactful. At least try to be. “Numbers are not my friends,” you say and take another gulp. Suddenly your lips feel rubbery and your head feels float-y, but nice. “I liked it. You jokes seem really funny. I wish I understood them.”
“I told you it was niche,” he says. “You either love math or run from it screaming. It’s very black and white.”
“My camera only takes photos in black and white now.”
“Was it the coffee?”
“Probably,” you slur/laugh. “I think it was the exact moment my aunt Louise died.”
A lump bubbles into your throat. You begin to cry. Not misty ladylike tears. You blubber, bawl and wail. You sob a stream of consciousness about what’s making you cry. Not just Aunt Eloise and the Leica—the pandemic, your pathetic philodendra, the uncertainty of your job, the fact that you’ve never been able to do a chin-up. It all tumbles out and the tears feel good—as good as the wine—even though it’s insanely embarrassing to have happen in under twenty minutes of your first date.
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You wake up the next morning in front of your laptop wearing your knock-off Diane von Furstenberg dress. You don’t remember much of what happened after crying. You vaguely remember Luke consoling you and saying he wished he could give you a hug. But you probably dreamt it. More likely, he clicked out mid-rant and you were too drunk to notice.
You get up, stand at the kitchen sink and drink cup after cup of water until you feel like you’re going to burst. You imagine your brain has dehydrated to the size of pea. Then your phone pings.
It’s a text from Luke. You know it’s going to say something like ‘I don’t think this will work out’ or ‘Please don’t acknowledge me if we see each other at Duane Reade’ or something worse that’ll make you feel even crappier than you already do. You read it anyway.
“Hey U. Hope UR feeling better. Really wished I was more help. U up 4 a walk-n-talk L8R?”
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A walk–n-talk is exactly what it sounds like. You walk and you talk.
Just before sunset, you and Luke walk to Bethesda Fountain in Central Park and talk about everything except math and your wine-induced meltdown. Then you sit on a bench six feet apart and talk some more. You talk and talk until the sky grows dark and the rats scurry out of their burrows looking for food that's not as plentiful as it used to be.
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You go on two more walk-n-talks that first week and always end up on the same bench in Central Park. Eventually, you will both refer to it as ‘our bench’—even though a small bass plaque on the bench declares it’s dedicated to Estelle Fisher. On Saturday night, he shares his screen on Zoom and you watch The Umbrella Academy together and eat Chinese food.
When you’re not doing that, he records his pod in his closet turned studio. You binge past episodes—still not understanding anything—and continue snapping photos with the damaged Leica. Turns out, everything looks richer in black and white, more important, more historical.
You also say good-bye to Aunt Eloise on Zoom. There’s just family, all of her friends are dead or on the verge.
Your mother calls afterwards. “That’s it,” she says. “I outlived all my siblings.”
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You and Luke go on all these socially distant/socially acceptable dates. You share life stories, you make plans for the future (you’ll go to Spain!), you get bi-weekly Covid tests together. He begins calling you ‘Snooks.’ You call him ‘Pookie.’
You’re coming together at hyper speed because neither of you has that much to focus on except each other. And not getting the virus. It’s blissful. However after three months you still haven’t kissed.
One kiss and you could end up permanently side-by-side like Julia and Ulysses Grant.
You talk about kissing of course. You even try it wearing your N95’s (absolutely stupid idea). You research the risks. You debate the pros and cons. You ache for each other. You yearn. He quotes statistics and tries to work out a mathematical formula:
Let x = the desire to kiss
Let y = the possibility of death
Is x > y?
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At the end of July, as the two of you leave CityMD with your latest negative test results, Luke stops mid-sidewalk and says, “I think we should do it. Now. If you’re comfortable.”
“Yes!” you say. “But no tongues. That would really be pushing our luck.”
“Agreed. Mouths closed. Just a quick peck.”
“Maybe put hand sanitizer on our lips before and after?”
“That seems too much like drinking bleach. So no.”
You go to your bench in Central Park by Bethesda Fountain. There’s a family of ducks paddling around the lake. The mother is quacking like a drill sergeant to keep up, swim faster.
You sit down next to each other, legs touching. You’re both wearing shorts and the flesh-to-flesh contact is electric. You feel the pent-up passion rushing from your toes to every part of your body.
I could die from this, you think. This literally could be the kiss of death.
You both remove your N95’s and turn your heads to face one another. You feel his breath and try not to think about it. You look into each other’s eyes, tilt your heads and bring your lips together.
They lock like magnets and become one being, one organic entity–more powerful than either you or Luke will ever be. They slowly open and your tongues touch and play like puppies after a long nap and you cannot stop them for a full ninety seconds. You both moan—out of helplessness as well as pleasure—until finally the puppies retreat, your lips demagnetize and you pull apart, breathless.
A crowd has gathered. Well, a crowd by Pandemic New York standards. Ten people, six feet apart staring at you and Luke on the bench, your lips shiny with each other’s saliva. They’re all masked of course, but you can see it in their eyes. They are horrified.
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Heather Holland Wheaton
Heather is one of those New Yorkers who enjoyed the lockdown. So many annoying people skipped town, leaving behind a core group who adored the city and wanted to stand by it. The lockdown also gave her time to write and plenty of fresh fodder. One of her pieces of Pandemic Fiction (as she calls it), “I Wrote My Name on the Back of the Sky,” was published in Shooter Literary Magazine and was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. That apparently doesn’t mean much unless you win. Her work has also appeared in Slipstream, The Morning News, Black Heart Magazine, PIM, and Every Day Fiction.
Heather is the author of three short story collections, You Are Here, Eight Million Stories in a New York Minute, and Wet Paint. A fourth tome, Heartwarming Holiday Stories, is coming soon.
www.heatherhollandwheaton.com