A Very Covid Christmas E-Book

Dan Distefano

• Herausgeber: Spines
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Beschreibung

In this second book by Dan DiStefano, the former TV writer gives an amusing, heart-felt, and often sad view of what life was like up close and personal during the first year of the Covid epidemic. It is a comic record of how he and his staff at the nursing home got through that very difficult year.

Leseprobe

Dan Distefano

A Very Covid Christmas

All rights reserved

Copyright © 2023 by Dan Distefano

No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

Published by BooxAi

ISBN: 978-965-578-719-1

A VERY COVID CHRISTMAS

DAN DISTEFANO

IT HAD BEEN A LONG TIME…

…over a decade, since Ned Russo returned to his hometown of Providence, Rhode Island, for the Christmas Holidays. Usually, he would go back to visit the people he had loved for his lifetime after Labor Day. That was when the summer crush of beach vacationers was over. Indian Summer would have set in. The days were still warm, but at night, a sweater was necessary to warn of the coming cold.

Ned was always excited about his yearly trip back east. It was a way of reconnecting with his past. For ten days or so, he would travel back in time and become that kid from a working-class neighborhood. He still knew all the people from his childhood and they fondly remembered him. On all those trips back to his homeland, he tried to visit them all.

The neighborhood where he grew up and the people he knew hardly changed in the years since Ned had moved away. Hearing the New England accents and experiencing the exaggerated mannerisms of his Italian relatives was like a time machine that transported Ned back to his youth. And, of course, there was the food. All his adult life, he bragged the pizza they made in Providence was the best outside of Naples.

Ned would always finish his annual trip to Rhode Island with a few days at his brother Mike’s beach house on Martha’s Vineyard. He would fish, eat lobster, sit on the beach, and watch the sun set in the West.

But not this year. Covid had seen to that.

With the coming of Covid, almost everything changed for Ned. Within a matter of weeks of its arrival, his world was out of balance.

As the months passed by, his life seemed to go from bad to worse. But in the late Fall of that first Covid year, what some people might call a small miracle, changed everything for Ned. He was able to put aside his confused and depressed feelings and get into the Christmas spirit.

CHRISTMAS MORNING

The air was damp and had a chill to it when the Uber driver pulled up and dropped Ned off in front of his cousin Teresa’s house. But Ned didn’t feel the cold. He was as excited as a kid who rushed from his bed to see all the toys Santa had left for him under the tree. And on that Christmas morning, Ned wasn’t disappointed. From the very first moment, he knew his cousin Teresa had gone all out to make the trip to his hometown special for him.

There, in the cold of a New England winter morning, was the warmest of greetings. A six-foot plastic palm tree twinkling with colorful lights. On it, a sign that read:

‘Welcome Home Ned’

Ned smiled under his surgical mask. He knew this Christmas Day was going to be a reclamation of his spirit. Christmas with his back east family would be the first real social event Ned would attend since the start of Covid…which, by now, seemed eons ago. After months of sadness and feeling alone, Ned was looking forward to the joy and companionship of the people he loved.

Almost thirty years before, Ned left Providence to accept a position as a Nursing Home Administrator in LA. Within a year of living on the West Coast, he fell in love with the whole California lifestyle. It fit right into his laid-back but engaging personality. He set down roots, got married and had a daughter. LA became Ned’s new home. The years went by. They were kind to Ned. Now, in his fifties, he had a full head of salt and pepper hair, a sparkling smile, and a waistline pretty much the same as it was when he played second base for the University of Rhode Island.

HERE COMES SANTA CLAUS

Ned’s heart was filled with the happiest of feelings as he stood looking at that illuminated plastic tree. Suddenly, the front door to his cousin’s house opened and his older brother Mike came rushing out to greet him.

“Hey, look what Santa dropped off!” Mike loudly proclaimed as he pulled down his mask and called out to his younger brother.

Ned and his brother were as close as two peas in a pod. Mike was the more boisterous of the two. He was an attorney who practiced family law. Unlike Ned, who ventured across the country to find his way in the world, Mike never strayed far from Providence.

Mike looked his brother over. Ned was wearing the Christmas gift he had bought for himself, a camel hair blazer and cranberry turtle neck sweater. Ned had topped off the outfit with a bright red Santa stocking cap. He thought the hat would complement his fire engine red-framed glasses. Mike was never a clothes horse and was wearing scruffy jeans and a flannel shirt.

Mike ran up and gave his brother a bear hug. He hadn’t seen Ned in over a year.

“I thought you lived in LA. Where’s your tan?” Mike jokingly asked.

“It’s December. LA’s not Miami. We actually have winter,” Ned responded as he pulled down his blue surgical mask and uncovered his face.

“Winter! In LA? You’ve become such a pussy since you moved out there,” Mike said, teasing Ned, then he added, “I love the jacket and the sweater. I even get the Santa hat…but where did you get those glasses?” His older brother always found a way to zing Ned about something, but Ned knew it was always in jest.

“They’re not glasses, they’re Pradas,” Ned jokingly responded.

“Oh, excuse me. I thought Prada only made girl’s clothes,” Mike said jabbing his brother one more time as he led him into Teresa’s house.

When Ned opened the front door, a cheer rose up from the twenty or so people who were gathered in the living room. Ned was so surprised and happy, tears of overwhelmed joy welled up in his eyes. He had no idea Teresa had planned such a celebration for him.

There were hugs and kisses, handshakes, and elbow bumps from his family and old friends, some he hadn’t seen in years. The old ladies at the gathering all kissed Ned, leaving smudges of their dark red lipstick on Ned’s cheeks. The whole gathering treated Ned like a soldier returning home from a long deployment.

The plastic palm on the front yard was just the beginning of what Teresa did to make it special for her favorite cousin. She had decorated the inside of her house to look like a Hallmark Christmas Card.

In a corner of the living room was a big Christmas tree covered with silver tinsel and tiny, twinkling white lights. Beneath the tree were gifts, all colorfully wrapped and tied with red velvet bows. The fireplace had a crackling fire in it that warmed the room and the pine fronds that Teresa placed on the mantle made the whole house smell like Christmas. Ned loved it.

There were punchbowls full of spiked eggnog, and trays of Italian cookies set out on all the tables. Even though most of the guests were wearing masks, Ned couldn’t be happier. On this Christmas Day, he was getting exactly what he was hoping for: a trip as far away from Covid as he could get.

But in Teresa’s manufactured escape from the reality of Ned’s pandemic world, fate found a way of reminding him that he couldn’t get completely away from all of the unpleasantness he left back on the West Coast.

While Ned was sipping eggnog with an old high school buddy, as they reminisced about mutual friends and the girl they both had dated, who was now living in Florida, a toy drone, the Christmas present Ned ordered for Mike’s boys, came flying across the living room and smacked Ned in the face. The collision broke his red-framed Pradas, and jostled Ned enough so his full cup of eggnog splashed all over his newly acquired camel jacket and cashmere sweater. When Ned realized the totality of what had happened, he laughed at the irony of the moment. The drone strike was, metaphorically, the period at the end of the sentence of his entire shitty year.

THERE’S NO PLACE LIKE HOME FOR THE HOLIDAYS

After the chaos of the initial drone disaster, with everyone at the party asking Ned if he was hurt; his cousin Teresa tending to his injury…which had become a sizable red blotch circling his now injured eye; the subsequent drama that followed the discovery of his bruise; the apologies to Ned for his encounter with the drone from Mike and his wife, Sarah; the public scolding of the young boys for flying that damn thing in the living room; the promise by Mike to replace Ned’s broken glasses; the attempted cleaning of the eggnog drenched blazer and sweater with club soda by an insistent old Italian lady…after all that had subsided…

…Ned was alone, slouched in a green leather club chair in Teresa’s wood-paneled den. He had pulled his mask down around his neck. He was examining the damage to his expensive cashmere sweater and camel hair blazer, which he hoped were not permanently stained (the club soda didn’t help). He pushed a bag of frozen peas against the right side of his face. He took the broken Pradas out of the vest pocket of his jacket and looked at them. He wondered if they were cursed. It was the second time they had been damaged that year.

Perry Como’s recording of ‘There’s No Place Like Home for the Holidays’ was playing in the background and he could hear the laughing and chatting of the other guests coming from the living room. Teresa’s black lab, Sam, sauntered into the den. In keeping with the spirit of the season, the dog was wearing reindeer antlers. Sam came up to Ned.

“Too much Christmas for you?” Ned asked the dog.

Ned removed the frozen peas from his face and put the damaged Pradas back in the jacket’s vest pocket. As if Sam was trying to answer, his tail began to wag and he put his head on Ned’s leg. A moment later, Teresa and Mike came into the den to check on Ned. She was carrying a very large three-olive martini. Teresa pulled her Nativity-scene surgical mask down around her neck.

“How’s the face?” she asked her cousin.

“I’ll live,” Ned responded.

Teresa was edging up on fifty, but didn’t look it. She had a welcoming personality and was the cheerleader for the whole family. She had no other siblings, so Ned had always been sort of her big brother. Over the years, they always kept in close touch.

“Whatever possessed you to buy that thing anyway?” Mike asked his brother.

“Every kid in LA has one. They fly’em all over the place,” Ned responded.

“This is Rhode Island, not California. Nobody goes outside until April. Now they’re gonna fly that damn thing all around my house. If they break a window, you’re paying for it,” Mike jokingly insisted.

Teresa handed Ned the martini. “Still like them dry?” she asked.

“Medicine for my injury. You’re a lifesaver,” Ned responded.

“Is he bothering you?” Teresa asked Ned, referencing to Sam. She turned her attention to the dog.

“Sam, get out of here.”

The dog’s tail sank between his legs.

“He’s fine,” Ned responded.

Sam’s tail began to wag again. Ned took a sip of the drink.

“Ah, that’s wonderful,” Ned said, tasting the martini. Then he added, “Couldn’t you find any Christmas music that was recorded in this century?” Ned jokingly asked about the music coming from the other room.

“Don’t you like Perry Como?” Teresa asked.

“I think Leon Redbone or Pink Martini would be more in keeping with the current century,” Ned commented.

“Who the hell is Pink Martini?” Mike asked.

“You need to get out more,” Ned said to his brother. Then, he turned to his cousin, “My mother used to play Perry Como every Christmas. I always hated it.”

“It wasn’t Christmas at your house without Perry. Rose gave it to me when you two dragged her to California,” Teresa said.

“And you kept it?” Ned surprisingly asked.

He took another sip of the drink and pulled an olive off the toothpick that was flavoring the martini with his teeth. He gave a second olive to Sam, who seemed to enjoy it.

“Let’s see the eye,” Teresa asked.

Ned turned his head toward his cousin.

“This helped,” Ned said, indicating the drink. “The pain’s gone. What do you think?” he asked.

She studied Ned’s injury, “I think you’re going to end up with a shiner.”

“It’ll be an improvement,” Mike said, jibing his brother.

“Life isn’t bad enough in LA. I had to come back here to get a black eye,” Ned chuckled.

“Think of the great story you’ll be able to tell all your Hollywood friends,” Mike commented.

“I haven’t seen any of my friends from Hollywood or any place else in months,” Ned lamented.

The toy drone that hit Ned earlier flew into the den and hovered. The drone frightened Sam. The dog quickly hid behind Ned’s chair. Bobby and David, both about ten, were not wearing masks as they followed the flying toy into the room. Bobby, was holding the controls and piloting the small craft.

“I want you to turn that thing off,” Teresa ordered.

Sam poked his head out from behind Ned’s chair and barked as if agreeing with Teresa.

“Land that thing…now!” Mike ordered.

“You already hit Ned with it. I don’t want anybody else to get hurt. Where’s your masks?” Teresa asked.

“In my pocket,” David said.

“That’s useful,” Ned muttered.

“Where’s yours?” Teresa asked Bobby.

“Mom’s got it,” he said, but Bobby paid little attention to what Teresa or his father said. He piloted the craft out of the room. The two boys chased after it. Sam came out from behind the chair and returned his head onto Ned’s leg.

“I think he likes you,” Teresa said to Ned.

“No, I think he wants to lick the eggnog off my jacket,” Ned responded.

The flying toy and the two boys passed by Uncle Tony as he was coming into the den. Tony was an older man, deep in his seventies. He was wearing a plaid flannel shirt and mismatched 60’s era tie. Not only was he a bad dresser, but he had a cranky personality. He had just arrived at the Christmas gathering and was not wearing a mask.

“I heard you got hit by a toy airplane. I came to see the damage,” Tony said to Ned.

“Hey, Uncle Tony,” Ned happily exclaimed.

“Mike,” Tony said, greeting his nephew. “I put the lasagna in the oven,” Tony said to Teresa. Then he turned to Ned, “How’s California?”

“Warmer than Rhode Island,” Ned answered.

“Uncle Tony, we talked about this. Where’s your mask?” Teresa asked him.

“No, you talked about it. I wasn’t listening,” Tony responded.

“You’re impossible,” she said.

“You do know we’re in the middle of a pandemic?” Ned asked the old man.

“Uncle Tony thinks it’s over,” Mike said to his brother.

“I heard now that they have a vaccine, no one has to worry,” Uncle Tony said.

“I got my first shot this month. Have you been vaccinated?” Ned asked his uncle.

“No, the guys at the VFW say the shot makes you sterile,” Tony responded.

“That’s baloney,” Ned said.

Tony pointed to Ned’s injury, “How’s the face?”

“Teresa’s medicine is helping,” Ned answered showing the martini to his uncle.

Tony turned to Teresa, “Why don’t you put a steak on his eye?”

“Steak’s too expensive. That's why he got the peas,” she responded.

“The peas will never work,” Tony said. Then he spoke to Ned.

“I talked to your mother yesterday, she’s still mad at you for leaving her alone in that prison.”

“She’s living in one of the nicest board and cares in Santa Monica,” Ned responded.

“Not according to your mother,” then Tony turned to Mike. “And you, her oldest son, Rose said you never call.”

“I call her every day,” Mike answered.

“She won’t remember five minutes after you hang up,” Ned said to his brother. Then he added, “She’ll say why don’t you come and visit me when I’m standing right in front of her. One by one, she’s losing all her marbles. I tried to explain about the virus and why I can’t come to see her as much now, but she doesn’t get it.”

“We can’t even have funerals here anymore. It’s terrible,” Teresa commented.

“It’s the same in California,” Ned added.

“People die and they just bury them,” she said.

“It’s better to bury people in the spring, anyway. I hate going to the cemetery in the winter I always end up with a cold,” Tony said to Teresa. Then he spoke to Ned, “So, your wife throws you out…”

Mike snickered.

“That was five years ago. And she didn’t throw me out!” Ned responded.

“Everybody in California gets divorced. Right?” Mike sarcastically said to his brother.

“That’s right. We’re still good friends,” Ned responded.

“Sure. That’s why you ended up here and we got stuck with you,” Tony remarked.

Mike snickered again.

“Uncle Tony!” Teresa snapped at the old man. Then she turned to Ned, “Don’t listen to him. We’re glad you’re here. We wished you’d come every Christmas.”

“I see he’s still as charming as ever,” Ned said to Teresa, brushing off the old man’s comment.

“You know he doesn’t mean it that way,” she said, trying to smooth out Tony’s faux pas. Then she turned to the old man, her tone demanding an apology, “Did you, Uncle Tony!”

“What? I jus’ call’em as I see’m,” Tony groaned.

Ned took another sip of the martini and then returned the bag of peas to his face.

“Don’t worry about it, Teresa, Uncle Tony, in his own way, is why I came back here.”

“See,” Tony said to Teresa.

Ned continued, “I needed to see my people, including you, Uncle Tony. This has been the strangest year of my life. The first couple of months were normal, but by March my whole world turned into a giant disaster.”

JUST A DREAM

Ned and Katie, his ex-wife, were finishing dinner at Roy’s Restaurant. It was one of their favorite eateries in Pasadena.

Katie was just fifty, slim, with short, blond hair and green eyes. Ned, from the first day he ever laid eyes on her, believed she was the most beautiful woman in the world. Even though they had been divorced for some time now, they couldn’t go but a week or so without seeing each other. They were the perfect odd couple; they loved each other, but just couldn’t live together.

They were finished with the main course and were ready for Ned’s favorite part of every meal…dessert. It arrived on a large plate covered with a dark glass dome.

“Good grief! Is that what I ordered?” Ned asked.

“Yes. Ready?” their young waitress answered. She dramatically removed the glass dome.

“Ta-da,” she sang.

A cloud of white smoke, from a piece of dry ice at the base of the dessert, rose from the plate. As the cloud evaporated, a sculpture of vertical chocolate buttresses became visible. The thin sheets of chocolate were attached to the plate and came together atop a round cake that was covered with a gleaming red raspberry frosting. The presentation looked more like an art project than something to eat.

“This is the first smoking dessert I’ve ever seen. It’s not on fire, is it?” Ned facetiously asked.

“That’s the dry ice,” the waitress said.

“He knows. He’s just being obnoxious. I need to get a picture of this,” Katie said. She took out her phone and took a picture of the dessert. The waitress left.

“I can’t believe you took a picture of food? The youngest nurses at the hospital do that,” Ned commented.

“I’m sending it to Amelia,” Katie answered.

“Why? Don’t you think our daughter has ever seen a cake before?” Ned asked.

“Not like this,” Katie responded.

After they finished eating the exotic dessert, Ned paid the bill and they left the restaurant. They walked out onto Colorado Boulevard. The street was thick with traffic.

“What did you think of that dessert…honestly?” Katie asked.

“It looked good, but it was basically a well-dressed Hershey bar and a raspberry Twinkie. I don’t know if it was worth twenty bucks,” Ned said.

“I warned you. You could have had the key lime pie for eight,” Katie responded.

The light changed. Traffic stopped and Ned and Katie walked across Colorado Boulevard and down Molina Avenue. As they passed by the Pasadena Playhouse, Katie stopped and looked up at the marquee.

“Coming in April, Ann Richards, the feistiest governor of the Lone Star State. Wanna go?” she asked.

“Okay, sounds like fun. I’ll get tickets,” Ned responded.

Suddenly, the sound of a happy marimba disturbed Ned. He looked around for the source of the music. Then, as he stood there, in front of the Pasadena Playhouse, he realized he was in a dream.

“Shit!” he said.

Ned opened his eyes. He was in his bed, alone. He became coherent enough to reach over to his nightstand and turn off the marimba alarm coming from his cellphone. It was five-thirty, Ned’s day had begun. He turned on his side and looked at the pillow where Katie’s head used to rest all during their marriage. Since their divorce, Ned missed her, especially every morning. They had a ritual, Katie used to get up with him, even though she could have slept in another hour or so. He would shower and get ready for work. She would make them strong coffee and heat up pastry for their breakfast. They would plan their day or what they could do on the weekend. Some days, they would end up back in bed. That was a fond memory for him.

Ned gazed at the ceiling for a minute or so before he used the remote and clicked on the TV. He always watched CNN or MSNBC. He started his day with the latest bad news about Covid. The virus had fully descended on California. For Ned, all the days since the government lockdown seemed to blur together in some strange, lonely sameness. Ned laid there in bed, listening to the news, staring at the ceiling a few more minutes.

“And on this April morning, the numbers of the dead continue to climb,” the talking head reporter announced through Ned’s television.

Ned was numbed by all the depressing news. But it was like driving by an accident, he just had to look. Besides, he was bathing in all kinds of Covid information. As an administrator of a nursing home, he knew full well Covid-19 was the modern Black Death. The daily email reports from the CDC and the updates from Public Health and Department of Health Services kept him well informed of the grim statistics.

Ned decided to endure just one more depressing segment before he started his day. On CNN, Ned watched a young male reporter give the latest bad news from the reporter’s kitchen. Reporting from home was the current trend for all the talking heads. The net result of reporters talking from their homes just made Ned feel more isolated and alone. They were all living in a restricted world…just like he was.

“Weren’t you a sports guy, before?” Ned muttered to the reporter on the TV. Then he remembered, “Oh, yeah, there are no more sports,” he said sadly.

The reporter held a fat, juicy hamburger up to the camera.

“Take a look at this all-American staple…the burger. Better think twice before you put one of these in your mouth. The next one you bite into just may give you Covid-19.”

The visuals on Ned’s TV switched from the reporter in his kitchen to the interior of a meatpacking plant. The camera followed what seemed like endless sides of beef on a conveyor. Scores of butchers chopping them up as they moved along. The butchered beef was then fed into a giant machine that turned what used to be a cow into hamburger patties that came out the other end. The reporter continued…

“This is the biggest hamburger packing plant in America, Bovine Processing. Its located just outside Mud Butte, South Dakota. Plant officials have just admitted to another sixty-eight new Covid-19 cases. That brings the total number of infected workers at Bovine to over five hundred. Scientists at the CDC are trying to determine if there’s more than hamburger patties coming out of Bovine. They’re testing to see if the infected workers could have possibly spread the virus to that last burger you ate. There’s growing suspicion by health officials that every burger that came out of Bovine may be infected.”

The reporter reappeared in his kitchen. He looked at the burger he was holding,

“I’m going to miss you.” He tossed the burger into a trash container.

Ned looked over to his bedside table and the remains of the burger and fries he had for his dinner last night. He burped, groaned, and clicked off the TV.

TAKE ME OUT TO THE BALL GAME

Ned decided that he had enough bad news for the day. He got up, showered, dried off, and brushed his teeth. He pulled on a pair of jeans that were designated as part of his Covid-19 uniforms.

Covid had pushed Ned to create five outfits, one for every day of the workweek. When all this virus business ended, Ned vowed, the jeans, shirts, socks, shoes, even the skivvies were going to be burned.

He finished getting ready to face his day. He was leaving a little earlier than normal for work. He had an appointment at Dodger Stadium to have his nose swabbed to check for the virus. Ned worried that if the swab came back POSITIVE, he would be forced to join the ranks of the quarantined. Even if he had no symptoms, he would stay trapped, shut up in his house, unable to go out unless he suddenly couldn’t breathe or if he lost his sense of smell. The rumors on the internet promised if either of these two signs became apparent that he had the virus and it had turned deadly. Either one would demand a trip to an overcrowded emergency room and maybe, if his condition worsened, a stay in an ICU on a ventilator.

Ned realized shortness of breath was easy to recognize, you struggle to breathe! The smell test was a bit more complicated. So, he took a page from his Italian heritage playbook. Ned decided to keep a large bowl of garlic next to his front door. His grandmother kept strings of garlic hanging in her kitchen. She did it to keep evil spirits out of the house. Ned did it to test his ability to smell every time he left and entered his house.

Ready to go, Ned grabbed his briefcase as he was leaving. He stuck is head next to the bowl of garlic, lifted his new red-framed Prada glasses up off his nose and snorted the garlic as if it were cocaine.

“Still works,” he muttered.

He was more than happy his nasal passages could still identify the pungent-smelling plant. It was proof-positive, he believed, he was still virus-free.

Ned went out through the breezeway and into his garage. He put on his shoes, which, he decided, at the outbreak of the pandemic, were not allowed in the house. He pressed the button that opened the garage door. It was a bright, sunny California day. There was a box of latex hospital gloves on the roof of his car, Ned kept them there so he wouldn’t forget to put them on every time he got in his vehicle. He pulled on a pair of gloves, took the box they came in, and threw it on the passenger seat. He slid in behind the wheel of his Ford SUV. The last part of Ned’s Covid-19 driving preparation was taking the N-95 mask, that was hanging from his rearview mirror, and putting it over his face. He removed his glasses, tweaked the mask tight against the bridge of his nose and put his glasses back on. One breath later, his glasses fogged. Ned groaned. He hated wearing a damn mask. No matter the tweaking or the placement, his glasses would fog. He moved the glasses down his nose far enough so the fog would disappear and he could see sort of clearly. He started the car and turned his head. The Pradas fell off his face and down into that impossibly narrow space between the seat and the center console. Ned stuck his hand down into that tight opening. He tried to find his glasses. But his hand wouldn’t fit. So, he moved his electric seat back a bit, hoping to give his hand more room. As the seat backed up, he heard that awful crunch,

“Please, no,” he prayed.

Ned’s hand retrieved the glasses. One of the arms of his new red-framed glasses had been severed clean off. Ned sat there for a minute, pissed off and frustrated. He tried to put the glasses back on his nose, but with one arm amputated, the glasses fell off to the side.

“Shit! Shit! Shit! When is this going to end?”

He let out a pained sigh as he stuck his amputated eyewear in the visor above his head.

Ned checked his watch. He had plenty of time to make it to Dodger Stadium and get tested before he got to work. His stomach growled. He hadn’t had breakfast and was hungry. He decided to treat himself to soothe the frustration he felt. The email the virus testing company sent him had instructions that he was not to eat before being swabbed. But he could have coffee. A hot cup of joe, he hoped, would help save what had started out to be a horrible day.

Ned lived on the west side of Pasadena. The area was nestled at the base of some serious hills. He left his house and drove down by the Rose Bowl. It was a warm morning, so there should have been dozens of joggers, walkers, and moms pushing strollers around the stadium, but this was the new reality, the Covid reality, there was no one. The vibrant life Ned had come to love about Pasadena was gone.

On the street in front of him, four coyotes were walking down the middle of the road. Ned slowed way down. The coyotes seemed unimpressed they were being followed by Ned’s car. This is like a sci-fi movie, Ned thought, where all the people have been carried away by space aliens and the cities have been taken over by the animals because the aliens hadn’t figured out how to cook them yet.

“What are you guys doing out at this time?” he said to the coyotes, “Shouldn’t you be home sleeping in your dens by now?”

One of the coyotes stopped, turned and looked at Ned. Enough time had passed since the lockdown started, that the normal fear this predator had of humans was gone. The coyote walked over to a sign that read: PLEASE LEASH YOU DOG and pissed on it.

When Ned could safely get around the pack, he drove up the hill from the Rose Bowl to Colorado Boulevard. It was just as devoid of life. It used to be the heart of Pasadena. He was hoping he could get a takeout coffee from the Starbucks he frequented. But it was now closed. Dead was a better word to describe it. Before the virus, this street used to be the mecca for tourists and locals alike. Now, it was abandoned. The pink lines painted down the middle of that street were the only reminder that a few months before there were almost a million people crowding its sidewalks. They came from all over the country to see the Rose Parade and watch the floats and the marching bands. Ned wondered if the following January there would even be a Rose Parade, or would it be called off like this year’s March Madness, or the start of the baseball season. Even without his glasses, Ned could see all the restaurants were boarded up or papered over. Some had handmade signs in the windows proclaiming the restaurant was still alive, sort of, it had limited curb-side take-out. All the boutique shops along this famous boulevard had signs in their windows apologizing for being closed and promising to re-open as soon as the quarantine lifted.

Ned drove by Roy’s restaurant. It had gone toes up. He thought about his dream and realized Roy’s was the last place he saw Katie. There was a sign on the entrance announcing the restaurant was for lease. His stomach growled.

“The hell with it,” he said.

He gave up on the coffee and headed to Dodger Stadium.

Ned took the 134 west to the 5 south and got off at Stadium Way. He drove about a half mile and became the last car in the queue that stretched as far as he could see.

“Holy shit,” he proclaimed, “I’ll be here all day.”

Ned toyed with idea of just blowing the testing off and going to work. Then the thought occurred to him that if he was positive and went to work and spread the virus and half the residents of Central City Convalescent Hospital died…Ned turned off the engine and decided to gut it out.

The line of cars ahead of him eked slowly along. It snaked down and went around a curve. Beyond the curve, off to Ned’s right, in a large open parking area, he could see rows of cars funneled between orange street cones. There were cops and firefighters and people in hazmat suits. The cops directed the cars to the people in hazmat suits, who administered the Covid test. There were more orange cones and hazmat people directing the post-swabbed out of the area.

As Ned patiently waited his turn, a giant pickup pulled in right behind his car. The truck was painted flat black, had darkened windows and oversized tires. The truck’s black grill had a ferocious look, like the face of an evil Transformer that, at any time, could come to life and proceed to chew up everything in its path. The driver of this mechanical beast didn’t seem to care about practicing safe vehicle social distancing, he inched the truck as close as it could get to the back of Ned’s car. Realizing the truck was practically in his back seat. Ned commented into his rearview mirror,

“There’s always one of you in every crowd.”

A long blast of an airhorn came out of the giant, angry-looking truck, the noise startled Ned. The queue had moved about half a car length and Ned hadn’t kept up. There was a second airhorn blast from the truck.

“All right, all right,” Ned said aloud.

Feeling the pressure, Ned pulled his car right up behind the car in front of him.

“That’s as far as I can go,” Ned said again into the rearview mirror.

The giant black truck squeezed within an inch or so behind Ned. The line of cars moved a little further, but again Ned was slow to react. The truck’s driver wasted no time showing his displeasure with another long horn blast.

“Hey, asshole. Where do you expect me to go?” Ned shouted turning his head around to the truck.

The long line of vehicles continued to inch slowly along. At some point, Ned saw a man on foot. The man was wearing a mask and moving from car to car toward him. Ned watched as the man would go up to the passenger’s window of each vehicle and say something to the driver. Then he would move on to the next car. Soon he reached Ned’s car. The man gestured for Ned to roll down his window. He was wearing an LA Fire Department jacket and spoke to Ned through his N-95 mask.

“Do you have the paperwork they sent to you?”

Ned took a letter out of the passenger side visor and handed it to the firefighter.

“Ned Russo?” the firefighter asked.

“Yeah.”

“You have I.D.?”

Ned was ready and handed the firefighter his driver’s license. The firefighter noticed Ned’s hospital badge clipped onto Ned’s shirt.

“You work in a hospital?” he asked as he returned the paperwork to Ned.

“Yeah. I’m the administrator of Central City Convalescent Hospital,” Ned answered.

“I want you to pull out of this line. Go down, turn right at those cones down there, See them? And get in that line,” the firefighter flatly instructed.

“Ok,” Ned responded.

This guy was giving Ned a way to get out of the long queue and he wasn’t about to question it. He realized his car needed room to get out of the line.

“I’m wedged in, can you get the truck behind me to back up a few feet so I can pull out?” Ned asked the firefighter.

The firefighter saw that Ned was indeed unable to move his car.

“Sure,” he responded.

The firefighter walked to the giant truck behind Ned’s car. He saw that the truck had room to back up. He gestured for the driver to roll down the passenger side window. Ned watched the firefighter through his rearview mirror. He could see words were exchanged and then that more words were exchanged. The second time with the firefighter gesturing for the truck to move back. Finally, the firefighter pulled down his mask and shouted at the driver of the giant truck.

“Now move this goddamn truck back or I’m going to have you arrested!”

“Fuck you!” The unmasked driver of the truck shouted as he got out of his vehicle.

The driver was a middle-aged white guy. He had a serious beer belly, large untrimmed beard, and dirty T-shirt. Both Ned, and the firefighter, couldn’t help but notice the truck driver also had a large holstered pistol strapped to his waist.

“Holy shit!” Ned exclaimed.

The driver of the truck stood in the middle of the road and ranted at the firefighter,

“Why the fuck should I back up and let this guy cut ahead of me? Because you say so? Who the hell is he anyway? I have just as much right to cut ahead as he does. I’m a first responder. I’m a plumber, without me you can’t flush your goddamn toilet!”

Suddenly, everything changed. The firefighter took a two-way radio out of his pocket.

“I need assistance!” the firefighter said.

He turned to the gathering of police, firefighters and the hazmat crew swabbing noses in the open area off the side of the road. He raised his hand to show his location.

“Send LAPD over here, NOW! There’s a guy with a gun,” he nervously added as he started to run away from the large truck and its driver toward the cops.

“You can call any goddamn-body you want,” the truck driver angrily screamed, “I got second amendment rights! I ain’t movin’ to let this asshole cut ahead of the line. This whole Covid thing is bullshit anyway. It ain’t nothin’ but fake news. The only reason I’m here is my stupid boss told me I had to!”

The trucker shouted at the firefighter, who was now running away at full speed.

Ned suddenly realized that this drama was spinning out of control. He wondered, with the situation escalating from pandemic to possible warzone, if the better course of action might be for him to get out of his car and make a run for the cops and the hazmat people like the firefighter. But as he was opening his car door, the car in front of him moved ahead a few feet. Ned saw an opening. He quickly gave up on the foot-fleeing tactic and started his car.

“Come on…come on,” Ned yelled at the car in front of him, “All I need is another couple of feet, come on!”