Wednesday, April 22, 2020

One of the elevators at the office is broken. As I wait for another on our floor, it rings out a two-note motif. The doors don’t open. I hear a calm voice from inside repeat “The elevator is descending. The elevator is descending.” I take a different one down to the lobby. The broken elevator is behaving the same way there, as if it were present and waiting for us behind its closed doors. Two people get on the one that I had ridden, heading to underground parking. More wait for the next. Other than families, no more than two people ride in elevators together. I head into the supermarket for some quick shopping: an afternoon snack of yogurt with nuts and a clementine, plus cheese and peppers and a pack of foil baking pans. The pans that I had gotten yesterday were too big for my toaster oven. I get the next smaller size. The non-foods aisle still overflows with packs of toilet paper. The bright red dots near the checkout lines that had marked where people should stand have either worn off or been removed. Vague strips of white tape act as spacers now. Two large men stand equidistant from the first register. I ask who is the last in line. Each growls “He is,” and glares at the other. I get in a different line. More people are outdoors this evening as I walk home. I pass several pairs of runners. Four boys sit on a ledge outside a grocery store eating ice cream. The athletic woman lies on her yoga mat on the cement in the space outside her apartment complex. I don’t understand the exercises that she is doing with her legs, or how they are possible. When I get home, I try to fit the baking pans in the toaster oven. These, too, are too large. I put them aside for a relative who bakes, assuming we’ll get together if the virus ever lets up. I measure the inside of the toaster oven: thirty centimeters wide by twenty deep. Too tired for inventive cooking, I microwave some cheese in a pita, wash a pepper and an apple, and sit down to see what’s online.