Strange Times

I finished the edits of MURDER INK during my Chicago stay.  I felt very insulated from the weather and the world.  I only went out twice during the week I was there.  The apartment is quite large.  There were four of us when I was growing up there.  The rooms are separated by a long hall, so even staying inside that much didn’t make me feel cooped up.  It a brick building well insulated from the outside, so I didn’t even notice the rain until I looked out at the back porch and saw the it was shiny.

It was easy not to think about this whole virus thing that much.  I only have broadcast TV, so there was no endless news coming from CNN.  Plus, I didn’t have the TV on that much.  Of course things were just starting to hit the fan, but there was also quite a bit of reassuring information from people who had the virus and confirmed what they’re saying about most people having something very mild.

I knew things had changed on my way to the airport.  I use a car service and since I was leaving during rush hour allowed an hour and a half to get to the airport.  We got there in forty minutes.  The place where we get on the Dan Ryan Expressway is usually so jammed it can take forty minutes just to get on the Expressway.

There was no line of Ubers or Lyfts waiting to pick up passengers.  No line to check in.  No line to go through security.  The throng of people walking toward the gates was much less congested.
The plane had lots of empty seats, though still had a plenty of passengers.

I had an aisle seat and the person who had the window arrived wearing a mask.  She actually had the kind they say work, but they have to be fitted just so.  Hers wasn’t and the woman in front of me told her she had to pinch it around her nose.  It still looked loose enough for germs to jump in even after she made an adjustment.  Since I couldn’t see much of her face, it was only a guess that she was probably around twenty.  She wore stylish exerci se pants and a hoodie.  Only later did I notice she had on plastic gloves.  She gave off the aura of a princess from the west side of L.A. or maybe Lincoln Park in Chicago. She clearly wasn’t sick and wasn’t too clear on precautions because she took off her shoes even after the flight attendant had mentioned how not clean the floor was.

The seat between us was empty, but she quickly commandeered it with her camouflage backpack and later her head hidden by the hood of her hoodie.  By the end, she was almost in my lap.  The woman who had reprimanded the girl about her mask was an angry traveler.  First she looked back at me and scowled, then she reclined her seat with endless attempts to make it go back further.  She was traveling with two older kids who were glued to their phones.  One reason she might have been a little perturbed was her husband was in the first class section.  He came back to visit.

LAX was quieter than usual and when my son picked me up, he had brought wipes and gloved and I half expected him to spray me with bleach.  Then today I heard that I’m being viewed as dangerous because I traveled.  I might add that there was not one sneeze or cough on the plane and Chicago isn’t China.

There’s been a lot of stocking up while I was gone.  We’re set with little cones of popcorn and icing covered circus cookies.  There are sausages of all kinds which means a lot of me the vegetarian.  The vegetable drawer had been taken over with blocks of cheese and the aforementioned sausages.  I had to fight for space for my vegetable purchases.

We went to Trader Joes.  It was raining and there was no feeling of being insulated from the weather here.  It was late and the store was empty of water, frozen fruit and vegetables, rice and potatoes.  But the crazed shoppers left the lettuce, green onions, Persian cucumbers, avocados and broccoli that  I wanted. I was shopping for now and I guess they were shopping for the future.

It’s a strange time.