The Blondes by Emily Schultz Page B

with Kovacs. Which meant the only person involved in my dilemma whom I hadn’t phoned was Karl.
    Immigration is nuts—they’re locking it down, babe , Larissa informed me.
    Ever since Larissa married Jay two and a half years before, she had developed a habit of talking to everyone as if they were her nearest and dearest, adding
love, dear
, and
baby
to each sentence that fell from her lips. I suppose it wasn’t so different from her teenage pothead days, when every sentence had a tacked-on
man
. But
babe
meant something very different to me right then, and the word did not comfort me. I knew that Larissa had undergone a “procedure” of her own when she was young—but that was
before
. Before Jay. Before-before. It’s hard to ask advice about such things from a happily married young mother at any time, but especially in the middle of an international pandemic.
    Still, I was working up my courage to tell her about you, but as I hesitated, my attention drifted back to the news. Ted on the bridge seemed to have disappeared from the broadcast. I watched anchor Amanda bobbing her stiff flaxen head at another man in the studio, a sober expression fastened on her pert face.
    Someone behind the desk on TV joked dryly, “And, Amanda, you’ll be getting rid of
your
goldilocks?”
    “I can see a stylist waiting in the wings right now. To all the ladies out there, remember: it’s just hair. I’m Amanda Cristobel,” the anchor closed half-heartedly.
    You’re wondering how I can recite all this from memory, aren’t you? Don’t forget—this is what I
do
. The language of television is my work. It’s my language. And that moment was also a singular one. Everything changed in that moment. Larissa told me to turn on the TV—and nothing has been the same since.
    The chat window on my computer chimed. Isn’t it strange how we live in a world where inanimate things beep and burp at us, asking for our attention like a crying baby? Larissa had to get off the computer, she typed. Her son, Devang, had just asked her where his mother was. She’d told him she was his mother, and he’d said he hated her. He only loved his mother who had hair. She typed LOL but not really! I knew this was the kind of thing she would cry about later at a party when she’d had too much to drink.
    She promised to phone me in a couple days, and we both signed off with Xs and Os. After she had logged off, I looked at the updates friends and peers and near-strangers had posted online for everyone to see. One group tended to be earnest and aghast, buzzing about the plague and posting links to petitions and news groups, but just as frequently people were carrying on discussions about their cats, favourite foods, season premieres of television shows, alcoholic beverages, where they were going that night or with whom. The meaningless pitter-patter flickered steadily past like tickertape.
    I took out my map of New York. The attacks had been building in the past two days. The epidemic, though still nameless, had been announced the previous day when I’d been walking around with my earbuds in, listening to music, writing emails I had no intention of sending.
    Now I found there were a few images I couldn’t get out of my head.
    One was of Dr. Kovacs exiting the bar. She’d teetered slightly and veered out of my sightline. The next day I had sent her a veiled apology masquerading as a follow-up about how our talk had motivated me, but it remained unanswered on her end. Maybe that’s why the image came to me. But I quickly dismissed it: I was just being paranoid.
    The other image was of a woman I’d seen in Central Park. After buying my flight home at a wireless café, I’d gone to sit on the hill and watch the joggers, the women who run with SUV strollers, pushing them like they’re made of paper, their chests jiggling in sports bras and tankinis. A woman who wasn’t attired for jogging came around the corner. I remember she was ordinary looking,