I locked the door behind me and heaved a sigh as I finally set the groceries onto the counter. Between the nightmare Nicole had conjured living rent-free in my brain and Parker's insistence on getting within coughing distance, I was now a twitchy, addled mess, on top of being physically pooped-out from the shoulder-strain and all-around drained from the whole pandemic-shopping-trip experience. Hell of a way to spend a Saturday, I griped to myself. I put on coffee, got the groceries squared away, and sank into the recliner with another long sigh - not even 1:30 and I already felt like I needed a nap.

Well, at least that was (mostly) it. I had a freezer full of meat and mixed veggies, a pantry full of assorted rice and soup mixes, cereal, and coffee, and probably enough of my other essentials (luckily, I'd already been stocked up on toilet paper.) I wouldn't exactly be eating well for the next couple months, but I'd lived on much worse in college. I'd need to do runs to the corner store for milk, fruit, and other non-freezer perishables, and I'd still have to make periodic trips to the laundromat, but I should get through this without having to leave the house otherwise...

It'd certainly slash my fuel expenses. Bryce had dragged his feet on it, with much insistence that in-person customer care was our key competitive advantage and hand-wringing about BPAs not getting done, but once it was clear that A. the state health department was Not Funning Around, and B. a lot of our clients (mostly white-collar office environments) were going work-from-home for the time being, he relented. Come Monday, my commute would stretch from my bedroom to the coffeemaker and back, possibly with a stopover in the bathroom.

On which note, I hit the bathroom to wash my hands. Couldn't hurt to be careful; God knew how many other people'd had their fingers all over the credit-card terminal at Safeway. But it nagged at the back of my mind that I'd been in much closer contact with Parker than anybody at the store. Damn it, why did I just stand there letting him into my personal space? Either of us could be carriers; the responsible thing would've been to back off and explain to him why this was a bad idea, so why hadn't I done that? It wasn't as if I likedbeing up-close and personal with other people, let alone my annoying neighbor...

But, well, doing that would be hard.^° Much easier to just stand there silently waiting for other people to get their own act together and behave the way they ought to, for once, without my having to get involved. Easier to wish that I could trust people to do the right thing, and to gripe about the fact that I couldn't, than to actually entrust myself to them...

^° (In the modern sense of "mildly uncomfortable and awkward and you worry that you'd look like a pedantic twit.")

Hell, it's enough of a challenge entrusting myself to me these days. There were so many things I had to keep track of - did my face mask fit right, or was the elastic all stretched-out? Was I stocked up on hand sanitizer? When did I last wash my hands? How close were all the people around me? - that it seemed almost inevitable I'd ultimately fail. Who could keep track of it all, 24/7? How long could I really expect to keep making my saving throw against disease? How likely was it that in a week, a month, a year, I'd still see myself in the mirror...?

Shaking my head, I glanced at my reflection. There I was, the same me I'd known my whole adult life...more or less. The face looking back at me was definitely more "nearly thirty" than "mid-twenties" these days, the bags under my eyes were more noticeable, and the facial hair'd had to go for a mask to fit properly around my mouth and nose...but still, me as I knew myself: not notably handsome, or in particularly great shape, or possessed of any remarkable features beyond the one eye that always looked bigger than the other through the thicker lens in my glasses (hereditary vision issues, thanks, Grandpa...)

It was framed by a thatchy mess of dark brown hair that I'd really intended to get cut, as we entered the warmer months, but had put off until, suddenly, all the barber shops were closed on account of plague. I wondered, off-hand, how badly I'd botch it if I tried to do the job myself...probably better not. I didn't exactly have any hot dates lined up in the near future, but Bryce would be sure to make some stupid remark about it if I showed up on the morning Zoom call looking like a toddler who got ahold of the scissors. Still, it was already down to my jawline, and getting to be kind of a pain to manage.

Okay, so this wasn't much to write home about. But it was me, dammit...! This was my own body, the self I'd known my entire life - how could I not get attached to it? How could I not want to save it from being fundamentally altered by some strange disease? How could I ever consider just...just...

"You ever wonder if it wouldn't be simpler to just...get it over with?"

I could see myself wince in the mirror, and I felt a shudder running up and down my spine at the thought. It was weird and uncomfortable enough to hear Nicole talk about it in the context of her own life, but did I ever wonder about it? Of course not; not seriously...

...

...There's this thing your brain does, when you're in a position of having to take care to act safely, where it runs a sort of parallel thread of cogitation on what'd happen if you didn't. It's the part of you that, when you're standing at the edge of a cliff admiring the view spreading out before you, can't help but think about leaping out into that expanse, soaring out into space, being embraced by the sky as the wind rushes all around you...

...and it's the part of you that doesn't think about how the ground factors into the equation. But the ground is still there, and the rest of your brain knows that. You'd never actually jump, and your own instincts keep you safely back a few yards from the edge, just in case; but once the thought enters your mind, trying to get rid of it is like trying not to think about pink elephants, and all you can do is ignore it and focus on doing the sane thing instead.

I don't know if anybody knows why the brain does this. The best I've got for a theory is that it's because you're so focused on doing the sane thing - like it's just a sort of equal-and-opposite reaction to the attention devoted to that. Is it just that your brain has to model what you're trying to avoid in order to work out how to avoid it, and sometimes that bleeds over into your conscious mind...?

Well, that's all it was, in any case: one of those Newtonian counter-urges, unasked-for, annoying, and irrational. Okay, sure, it would be nice not having to bother with all this; and it wasn't like I was one of those neurotically-macho posturing types, too insecure about their manhood to even consider the possibility without retreating into defensive rationalization; to be honest, I'd never felt like that was the core of my identity, it was just what I was. So maybe, from an outside perspective, it was semi-understandable that Nicole might not see a problem with projecting her own viewpoint onto me...

But if you thought about it rationally? It'd take a lot of getting used to what'd be - at a minimum - some fairly fundamental changes to my body and sense of self; it'd add a pile of new complications to my life even once I had adjusted; the matter of altered instincts raised philosophical questions I wasn't very comfortable with; it'd put me into a very different social context when I already wasn't great at dealing with people; and...

...And, well, you just didn't do that. You didn't go radically and permanently altering yourself for the sake of short-term convenience; that wasn't normal. It wasn't sane. Okay, maybe if someone saw in this a chance to be what they'd always wanted, it might be understandable;^° but for the rest of us!?

^° (But, let's be clear, irresponsible towards everyone to whom they might spread their infection.)

Shaking my head, I shoved it all to the back of my mind and went to pour myself some coffee. Brooding wouldn't make it make any more sense; the best I could do was to just ignore it and focus on the sane things, like mellowing out with afternoon coffee, deciding what to make for dinner (tuna casserole - cheap, easy, and made almost entirely with dry or canned goods; it'd likely be a staple for me until this whole thing was over,) and murdering things with imaginary heavy ordnance.

I settled in at my desk and spent a couple minutes catching up on e-mail and forums as I nursed my coffee. A message from my sister asking if I wanted to get together once lockdown ended, chatter about movies I had no plans to see and TV shows I didn't watch, and so on. Nothing new to report, I thought to myself. No great surprise there; I wasn't exactly going to great lengths to keep in touch these days.

The electronic-music forum I frequented had a thread for shows that'd been cancelled or pushed back, but those kinds of acts didn't really come through my area much. I felt mildly irked by the cats on the banner, which was itself annoying; I had nothing against cats, but I'd started reflexively associating them with the pandemic for obvious if not really sensible reasons, and it irritated me to have my thought process hijacked like this...

As I slipped on my headphones and prepared to drop out of the world and chill with brooding ambient industrial and heavy weaponry for the next couple hours, I caught movement out of the corner of my eye. Out the window, perched atop the rickety wooden fence 'round my "back yard,"^° there was a cat. Not one of Nicole's; the neighborhood had a substantial population of strays, to the point that the animal-services department had begun trapping and bringing them in for The Operation and...well, I wasn't sure if they were adopted out or released back. All I knew was, we never seemed to have any fewer of them.

^° (At least, that was what the landlord called the 7' x 18' patch of scraggly sod ringing the bare concrete micro-patio.)

It was a good-looking specimen, for a stray: well-fed but not fat, with a full coat of sleek black fur, and no scars or injuries. I couldn't tell its sex from this angle, but it carried itself with the same irritating air of detached poise and casual dignity that all cats strive to convey, in between spastic freakouts. It noticed me looking at it and very pointedly didn't look at me; after a minute of this, it contrived to indicate that it was leaving, but purely of its own accord and not because it cared what I thought, leapt over the fence, and padded off.

Typical, I thought to myself. That was always the way with them, carrying on like they're above it all, in need of nothing and no one, and all places are alike to them...until they're cozying up to whoever mans the can-opener. I wondered what they thought they were accomplishing by it; the whole facade falls apart the minute they're exposed to catnip, a laser pointer, or even their own tail. The whole world knows they're absurd little critters - so why all the pretense?

I shrugged it off and plunged into FPS mayhem, but I felt strangely out-of-sorts. I glanced at my work laptop, propped up against the wall in the corner, charging. It was weird to think that, for the next few months, I'd hardly even leave this room except to run errands or make dinner. It wasn't as if I liked commuting an hour-plus each way, I was totally fine working from home, it was just...a little weird, was all.

But it'd be fine; I didn't really need to get out that much. I didn't have anyplace to be or anyone I was desperate to hang out with, and the less I had to be around people, the fewer opportunities they'd have to annoy me. I had stuff to keep me busy here, projects to work on around the house, and I could get anything I needed by mail-order; plus, it was only a couple months. I'd be Just. Fine.

During a lull in the action, I glanced back at the fence. Are cats happy with their lives? I wondered, out of nowhere.

...Am I happy...?