“You scared?” she asked.

“Scared of what?”

“You know,” she said, “being this close.”

“Why, because of the virus?”

“Yes, because of the virus.”

“A little bit.”

Christie had just had her fingernails done up and we had been huddling in my car. The sun was — where was the sun? We didn’t know, we couldn’t see it, but there was light coming from a distance, and she used whatever light there was available to look at her nails. I hadn’t seen her in two months. I’d been overseas, and th...