Illustration by Courtney Thompson
The back tire of Caleb’s bike was softer than he would have liked. It had been a little underinflated on his last trip as well, a ride across the Manhattan Bridge several days ago to water Ally’s plants. Ally was an architect enrolled at Cooper Union. They had met at a bar near the college and things had moved somewhat quickly since then. That was back when bars were still open, before she had fled the city to ride out the pandemic at her parents’ place. He was the first person she had asked when her plants needed watering, and so he had gone and done it. There was a tire pump in his closet upstairs, but Caleb was already running a bit late. He put on his helmet and took off towards Bushwick.
This was still early into quarantine, just a few weeks past “two weeks to stop the spread.” Things were beginning to feel indefinite. People were out in the streets, walking to and from the remaining take-out spots, or simply walking to feel free, but they were few and far between. Though it was not yet mandated, many of them wore masks. Caleb had a surgical mask somewhere in his backpack but didn’t like wearing it unless he thought he would be judged for not wearing it. If he were standing in the hours-long line at the local liquor store, say. He was already wearing a helmet as a token of civic genuflection; it felt like the addition of the mask would only serve to validate people’s fears. Which wasn’t true, of course, since both the CDC and the state government were sending blasts out every day advising people to stay home, and to take real precautions if for some reason they needed to leave it. Things were serious and he knew it and Caleb was afraid. But he was also young and vain, resentful of responsibility, and the purpose of the trip he was on now was already morally depraved. Going maskless in the street was just another reminder that he was doing wrong; he shouldn’t be going to begin with. So he kept it in his backpack.
Turning left off Wilson Avenue, he came upon the address hidden in his messages. He dismounted the bike and texted Taylor, I’m out front. A few people passed by in their masks. The UPS truck trundled down the street dropping off packages with the delivery men wearing gloves and masks. Inside, god-and-death-fearing people, good people, would open the boxes with gloves and wash the contents within, breaking down the cardboard (which recent reports said can support a viral strain for up to eight days) and returning it to the streets in their recycling bins.
Caleb checked his texts barehanded. He had received three from Ally within the past half hour—his amour fou, his whatchamacallit. From top to bottom they read: What do you mean by misguided compassion? Or “as a friend” (wtf)?? I don’t feel that way about you at all. I’ve been feeling so much lighter knowing I have you in my life as someone I can count on in these crazy days. And then, Why didn’t you say any of this on our call? I suddenly feel like we’re having two different conversations. I felt you holding back even then but it’s okay to keep things light in times when we aren’t able to articulate our feelings as they happen. I’m trying to be patient with you. Now you say this stuff and I’m suddenly unsure about everything you just told me. And lastly, I know you were gonna bike to Prospect Park but can you please call me when you get back.
They were long texts for such a sunny day. Caleb sighed and said a dirty word under his breath. Naturally, this would be happening now. On his fraught and frowned-upon journey. On the day Bernie dropped out, for Christ’s sake. It was divine retribution and it was a sign that he should abandon all of his depraved, sordid ways and seek the penance of her virtual embrace. He should stop what he was doing right there and then. She knew, by some clairvoyance, that he was out being rotten—or no, he had alerted her to this himself in the wording of his previous, halfhearted messages. And now everything was being taken the wrong way. Or perhaps seen for exactly what it was, Caleb thought, leading her on as he had.
A notification appeared from Taylor: My American hero! He says he’s on his way down. Caleb put the phone away and walked up to the door. A man descended the stairs with something in hand, opened the door just a crack and said, “You’re Taylor’s friend?” Caleb nodded, and the man passed him a tiny plastic baggie. Caleb stuck it in the front pocket of his jeans. “Send my love,” the man said. And then he closed the door.
Caleb stepped back to his bike and took out his phone again. He first sent the message, Acquired, omw, to Taylor, before turning back over to Ally’s texts so he could attempt to address that situation. That quagmire. All his own fault, of course. He typed quickly: I in no way meant to make you so anxious, I’m sorry my words didn’t come off right. I only meant that being so far apart has naturally reduced things to a kind of more friendly version of what we were headed for. And I feel like it calls into question how serious things can be right now. I’m planning to spend as much time out in the sun as I can today, but I’ll give you a call when I can. Then he mounted his bike and rode off.
What else was there to do? What can anyone do when they are told, from five-hundred miles away, that they are loved—that for the first time in her life she is falling in love; meanwhile, the two of them might never see one another again. Who knew how bad things were going to get? A month in and they were already apocalyptic. People were losing their minds. And she was declaring it to the heavens like he was supposed to believe her. It was obviously a symptom of instability and fear. Letting her down easy, the right thing to do, was a situation so delicate he could not even look at it directly.
Of course, he could always just lie to her. He knew all the words to assuage her anxiety. In a time of complete panic, uncertainty, and danger such as this, it was better to lie outright, to maintain the cruel promise of hope, than put an end to something harmless. Something that was not quite real to begin with. The least he could do was allow Ally her fantasies in this dark moment for America and all. But no, he thought, he had to make his wording ambiguous, implicative of some greater letdown which would now reign over her thoughts until she got him on the phone again. At which point he would walk it all back, frightened of the chasms in her mind, and reinforce her hopes for a shared future together in this futureless void. He would see her face on the screen and know that he was incapable of breaking her heart.
Caleb turned back onto Wilson and retraced his original route. He could take Greene Street all the way to Prospect Heights. He had given Taylor the word to put on their running shoes and come meet him. He knew that they would not be late. Three weeks had passed like a prison sentence without so much as a visitor to the apartment. He had laid in the squalor of his room, waiting to ride out the incubation period and for them to do the same, to make sure neither could infect the other even if both were asymptomatic, as so many young people seemed to be. The days had thinned out like coffee brewed once over. There was nothing but texts and calls and the occasional torrented movie, his blasé check-ins with Ally. Caleb was a creative, meaning that he had been unemployed since even before the outbreak, which had expanded his condition to global proportions. He fancied himself a writer, and in his backpack, along with some borrowed books, was a film camera, which he somehow felt worthy of using to capture the unspeakable changes taking place before him now. Languid uncertainty had defined his days since graduation. Now it seemed to have infected everything else, almost osmotically, since the epidemic had begun. He was at home in this toxic environment, his schedule already clear.
So it was terrifically auspicious that these texts should reach him today, the one day his plans to break quarantine, to try and be free, were finally coming through. Not during the weeks of waiting or additional days of delays to let a storm system pass, but right now, as he was on his way to see them. He had, no doubt, stirred the whole thing up himself, maniacally leaving little nuggets of doubt cached away in his devotionals to Ally. Her frightened intuition needed something to gnaw on, and he had attended to it like a pet.
Caleb swung onto Broadway towards Greene. He heard the sounds of a siren behind him, a wail which had grown familiar in recent days, and he swerved right at an intersection to mount the curb. The sidewalk ramp was collapsing, like so much of Broadway. Caleb ended up slamming his back wheel against the side of a small pothole. He bounced and continued on, checking the tire in the reflection of the storefronts lining the avenue. In his desire to get there he found himself riding recklessly, endangering all those around him. He swung onto Greene at the light and began pedaling harder, trying to put some distance between himself and the block he lived on now that he had circled back. Most of the streets had no bike lanes in this part of Brooklyn. Caleb was familiar with the route though, and the lanes were nearly emptied of cars since PAUSE had been put in place. Few things were actually denied these days, just discouraged, but people took it to heart. People were scared of the world around them, scared of one another, and they were willing to make sacrifices to keep themselves and others safe. That Cuomo had withheld on some form of martial law was a sign of faith in his citizens, that they wouldn’t be so stupid and so selfish as to go out on a joyride, the way he was doing now.
Caleb had made it several blocks down Greene, running reds when he was sure the coast was clear. This allowed him to keep ahead of the few cars that were on the road with him because they had to stop at nearly every block. For one-lane streets like this, sharing the road wasn’t easy. Cars could either stay safely behind him or try to speed ahead, locking themselves in a game of tortoise and hare, since he would just pass them again at the next intersection. Caleb liked to say that he could get anywhere in Brooklyn faster on a bike than by Ubering, and what he really meant by this was that he was a selfish, valor-less prick. Another UPS truck was stopped halfway down the upcoming block. Caleb raised himself off of his seat to try and accelerate around it before the car behind him got there, but the car also accelerated. With a loud engine thrum, it signaled it was prepared to run him over just to rid the world of so caustic a biker as he. Caleb swerved and caught himself behind the delivery truck, rolling over some very fine shards of glass as he stopped. It was just like a fable, or a cautionary tale of some kind. The tire was flat within the next half mile.
Caleb got off his bike and again said some things blasphemous to the all-seeing Eye and absent Hand which spins the world. If Divinity ever descended the rungs of plague and pestilence to single out specific wrongdoing, this was surely Its admonishment. Or perhaps it was an act of mercy, a last chance for Caleb to abandon his sinful ways and seek the road to righteousness. Which probably looked something like taking the bike and walking it the seven blocks home, having a cold shower, and calling Ally. Caleb leaned his bike against the fence of a public housing project and took out his phone. He checked the route to Grand Army Plaza and found that it was closer than he thought it would be. Not nearly as close as the walk back to his apartment, of course. Then he dialed Taylor’s number.
“Hey,” they answered, “I was just heading out. What’s up?”
“You’re going to love this,” he said, “My bike just got a flat.”
“Oh no. That fucking sucks, where are you?”
“I’m at Greene and Marcy. Probably about forty-five minutes away, walking.”
“Oh, God, okay. Well, it was probably going to take me that long anyway to run to the top of the park. What do you want to do about the bike?”
“Why don’t I lock it up here, and I’ll walk the rest of the way?” Caleb found himself saying.
“Are you sure? I get if it’s too far.”
“No, yeah that’s fine. I’ve been so cooped up. I really don’t care how far I have to walk.”
“Okay,” Taylor’s voice sounded hesitant, “You really don’t have to come all this way for me.”
“No, I have all this stuff to give you,” he assured them, “It’s really not a big deal. I just wanted to tell you that I was going to be a bit later than I thought.”
So Caleb began to walk, with his headphones in to give his thoughts an upbeat tempo. Let’s all go to hell if the music is good. Better, it can come up to us.
Despite this hiccup, this omen, he had made his decision to continue without hesitation or delay, to the point that he had absolved his partner in crime of their own uncertainty. In fact, the call had gone so smoothly that he wasn’t even sure at what moment the course of action had been set. If he had any reservations about carrying out such shameful deeds, they hadn’t surfaced. The whole thing had felt completely natural, even in the face of such obvious condemnation from the universe. Everything around him was telling him to go back inside, wash his hands, and practice penitence. As he walked, Caleb entertained the idea that he was learning something about himself: his indifference to inflicting pain on the people he cared about, or on the world at large. Did he really put Taylor above all that, for the sake of the favor he was doing them and the pleasures he anticipated in return? Or did he simply want to provoke God’s anger, call His bluff on the wrath Caleb felt he was due? These were questions he turned over almost cheerfully while walking, as though they were a problem that belonged to someone else.
Prospect Park was gorgeous on the late spring day, and people were not social-distancing enough. Red signs had been placed prominently throughout the running paths and deer trails—YOU SHOULD BE THIS FAR APART—with arrows the wingspan of a great crane. But runners were circling the park in little groups, hopefully all peers who had been cloistering together. Bikers raced each other around the outer circle of pavement, indifferent to the rules as usual. In the grass triangle before the archway, several people warmed up with windmills, testing their own arms’ length. Caleb had arrived earlier than expected and now sat against a light pole, at what he hoped was a safe enough distance from the impositions all around him. He had texted Taylor his whereabouts and planned to spend the intervening time thinking about what he would do when they showed up, and what the right thing to do would be. He still had his headphones in. A playlist full of pop songs passed their sentiments along in breezy eighth notes, working their way to a joyful refrain. It was good music to feel guilty to, and the day was sunny and bright.
He took his headphones out when he saw Taylor turning the bend, waving while sprinting to him. They were wearing a runner’s top and sweatpants, and since the last time the two of them had blown a dime bag and passed a day in bed, they seemed only more becoming. They ran up to the grass with the easy bounce of someone just warming up.
“A familiar face!”
“It’s good to see you,” Caleb replied, he hoped not sadly.
“Can I hug you?” Taylor asked. But they were already closer than the arrows on the sign had advised. Caleb took them in his arms and they embraced longer than they ever had in public or anywhere outside of bed. All around, movement continued unceasingly. The world was indifferent to them in their sickness and health. They could live out their desires as clandestinely as they felt they had to and the impulse to hide was for their sake alone. Life was a choose-your-own-adventure dressed up as a cautionary tale, and Caleb felt the weight leave his shoulders and he kissed them, right there and then.
“I brought you all your presents,” he told them, hoisting his backpack off the grass.
“You know it’s like an hour walk back to my place, right?” Taylor said. And like that the decision had been made, and the two were walking together through the park, heading south, conspicuously close.
Taylor was a teacher. They taught a fifth grade special ed class at a charter school, which had seemed daunting and impossible even before the pandemic. They had to teach two subjects now, advising on math as well as ELA. The majority of each class was devoted to troubleshooting technical errors on whatever video-conferencing program the school used, to make twelve young students lag less over the feed. Caleb had no idea what prefix the students used to address their teacher, or if one was needed at all these days. Taylor taught sex ed in addition to everything else, which meant that the students would learn stuff about gender and protection and love that he had never learned growing up. It was probably a lesson free from shame or judgment—at least, that was the world he experienced, whenever he snuck off to Taylor’s place in Flatbush. A chance to be his damned self. Best of all, they didn’t love him.
Coming up for air after their first time in a month, Caleb took the opportunity to check his phone while Taylor ordered them dinner. Outside, the sun was setting slowly.
I got a flat tire, he texted Ally, ignoring the string of new messages which had appeared in the chat since he had last dared to look.
Oh God, she replied almost immediately, are you alright? Where did it happen?
At the south end of the park, he typed, I’m fine. I just have to walk it back.
The response soon came: Text me when you’re home, please. God, what a terrible day. I’m so sorry this happened to you. As if she were somehow responsible. Caleb accepted his lover’s sympathy the way the body absorbs a foreign pathogen. He let the phone drop, attempted to return to the present, then found himself picking it up a second later.
Of course. I’m sorry I’ve been out of touch. Thank you for your patience with me. Then he threw the phone across the bed, where it landed on a pile of his stripped-off clothes. Taylor re-entered the bedroom, carrying a large, ginger cat named Pebbles, who had once slept on his head a few months ago.
“Everything okay?” They asked.
Caleb nodded to be purely unconvincing. His partner said nothing, allowing the lie to permeate. “How have you stayed so sane?” he said eventually. Taylor shrugged. They let Pebbles to the ground.
“I have two cats. I teach twelve kids. Losing my mind is not an option.” They climbed into bed and began readjusting the sheets. “How have you stayed sane?”
“I don’t know,” Caleb found himself saying, “I’m not so sure I have. I don’t have anything holding me down.”
“What kind of talk is that?” His partner caressed his shoulders and held him close, “You have your freedom? That’s something, isn’t it?”
The next morning, Caleb awoke to the sound of video conferencing, the students signing in on their school-sponsored Chromebooks from the collective location of everyone’s bed. Taylor held the laptop up on their knees, keeping him out of frame and repeating key phrases in the math lesson. For forty minutes he lay supine, pretending he didn’t exist. He had slept poorly because of the drugs they had taken the night before, celebratory dosages toasting their unsanctioned proximity. Now, Caleb pressed the pillow over his head like a lid, and let his thoughts come to a boil. By the time Taylor finished up the lesson plan, carried off without a single indication of their debauchery or its comedown, he was nearly vibrating with anxiety. It was a free period now; they wouldn’t have to teach again until the afternoon. As the two made love, Caleb imagined bodies contorting.
After, they went to grab breakfast at the last deli within the vicinity that still served hot food. As he reached for his backpack on the way out the door, Taylor said, “You’re going already?”
“I feel like I should,” he replied, “These days it’s so wrong to be away from home.” That morning, during the class, he had checked his messages as if waiting for a lightning bolt to strike him. There had been twelve new notifications from Ally, most of them joyous and rambling, discussing the Seder she had participated in the night before, the power of ritual and belief over the shaken sensibility. Then, that morning, a single new message, sent just before the nine o’clock class: hi. The hi was his lightning bolt.
So now he was slinging on the backpack loaded with books, the ones he had selected himself. Taylor worked at a bookstore during summer break. They let him borrow anything that was on their shelf, which was a privilege he knew was rare and precious. It was the reason Caleb had made plans to see them in the first place—or the reason he had given; to return some books he’d borrowed just before everything had come undone. He now had even more than he’d returned.
“Okay,” Taylor shrugged, as Caleb swung the straps around his shoulders, “I’d like it if you stuck around.”
“I know,” he said, “I wish I wasn’t so anxious about it.”
At the deli, Taylor wouldn’t accept reimbursement for the sandwich, because they still had a job and he didn’t. Walking out, they handed him a tin-foil puck and said, “You don’t want to come back for breakfast? Just to hit the bong one more time?”
“That’s sweet of you,” Caleb said, and he knew how easy it was to say the next thing, to simply tell them yes. “I’m just kinda worried about my bike. I don’t know how securely I locked it last night.”
“Oh right! I wasn’t even thinking about that,” Taylor replied, and they kissed him on the street. “I’ll see you soon, then.”
And the young man walked home. There was supposed to be a storm passing through in the afternoon, scattered showers all day, but even that hadn’t borne out. As he walked up Rogers Avenue, past the bus stop where men and women waited with covered skin, he felt alone in the world, like an angel of death passing endless marked doors. He did himself the pittance of texting Ally back: Good morning 🙂 omw to grab my bike where I locked it up last night. I can call you now or when I get home. What a yarn. Now he didn’t even have to rush back. The bike could be as far away as he wanted it to be. He would pass through empty streets, his thoughts turning over and over. He would tell her he had stopped in for a meal at some godforsaken deli walking it back last night and had given up there, leaving it locked so he could eat and walk. You can’t eat and hold a bike at the same time, at least not a bike with a deflated tire. Wasn’t that the perfect alibi? Did it even matter?
Her text back: Good morning darling. Totally understand, just call me when you make it home.
Caleb pocketed his phone and realized as he did that he had gotten away with it. The lie he had set up for himself was waiting to spring and it was now so much easier to say than the truth ever could be. He would look into the eye of his lens and tell it straight to the image of her face. There had been no divine intervention, no great karmic rebuttal to raze the quiet morning, mild and grey. He had never felt worse in his life.