It’ll be good to have her back home, that’s all.
I stay in bed for a while checking my other notifications—YouTube, Twitter, WhatsApp. I clear through some emails saying I’ve got new patrons on Patreon, which sends a thrill of excitement through me, as it always does, and finally I haul my lazy ass up to take a shower before Charlotte gets back.
We can catch up on The Mandalorian this afternoon, maybe, if she doesn’t want to spend some time writing. Or we could watch a movie.
I wonder if she’ll have a bunch of stuff from her childhood bedroom we need to find the space for—old exercise books and homework projects we’ll have to shove in a box under the bed, or Beanie Babies.
Maybe she’d let me put the Beanie Babies on eBay, if they’re worth anything.
I can’t complain too much if she does want to keep them. It’s not like I don’t have my fair share of action figures and collectibles in the apartment. And the giant Charizard plushie . . .
I dread the day my parents get the same idea; I hope that by the time they do, I’ll at least live somewhere with enough space to store my entire collection of Neil Gaiman books, my old PlayStation, records from my vinyl phase that I can’t quite bear to get rid of.
It occurs to me now that when Charlotte thinks of us moving somewhere with more space one day, she thinks about it in the context of a guest bedroom, or a potential future nursery. Or a library.
Actually, I could definitely get on board with a home library.
Breakfast made, I’m sat on the sofa watching old episodes of Parks and Rec and daydreaming about the studio space I might have one day that isn’t just a dedicated few square feet of the living room, when my phone rings. It’s Charlotte, which is weird, and I answer with a knot in my stomach, visions of her car broken down on the side of a motorway or—
Come on, Ethan, take a breath and answer the phone.
Sliding my thumb across the screen to answer, I manage to not start with, “What’s wrong?” and instead say, “Hey, what’s up? Did you forget your key?”
“Ethan,” she says. Her voice wobbles. The catastrophizing part of my brain kicks into high gear for a second, thinking I was right, her car broke down, something is horribly wrong. She sounds upset, but it’s not just that—she’s agitated, angry. “Ethan, you have to get down here. He’s saying I’m not allowed in the building.”
“What? Who?”
“Mr. Harris,” she tells me, meaning the building’s live-in caretaker.
“He’s—Ethan, can you please come down here and talk to him? And wear a mask.”
Confused as hell, I can only hold the phone near my ear even after Charlotte’s hung up on me, before kicking myself into gear. I leave my plate of half-eaten bagel on the sofa and root through the set of drawers in the hallway. She thought it was ridiculous when I ordered a bunch of blue surgical masks online a couple of weeks ago, before they even started using the word pandemic in the news; now, I can’t help but feel a little smug. Anxiety: 1, Charlotte: 0.
I wash my hands and put the mask on, then snatch up my key and leave the apartment. There’s a scrap of paper on the floor someone’s pushed under the door, but I’ll check it later. I go down the single flight of stairs in just my socks, almost tripping over my own feet in my haste.
Mr. Harris is standing near the main doors to the building with his arms crossed, wearing white latex gloves and a mask like mine.
On the other side, with her bags on the floor and her hands bunched into fists on her hips, is Charlotte. My glasses steam up from the mask so I nudge them up on top of my head, where they balance on my thick blond-brown hair, and I squint at him instead; Charlotte’s head becomes a fuzzy patch of orange where her hair is a mess.
“What’s going on?”
“Ethan, tell him!” she yells, voice muffled by the door. She raises a hand to pound against the glass, leaving smudges on it. “He’s locked me out! He can’t do this!”
The caretaker sighs. It’s a long-suffering sigh, like this is a conversation he’s already had a thousand times. He turns to give me a frown and I can imagine his teeth grinding behind that mask.
“Ethan, please tell your girlfriend she can’t enter the building. You got the note, right?”
“What note?”
“Bloody hell, what was even the point of me . . . ?” He trails off with a sharp sigh, rubbing the back of his forearm against his brow.
“The whole building’s on lockdown. You remember I put a notice out when all this started that said if anybody in the building got sick, if we had a confirmed case, we had to lock down for everybody’s safety? Nobody in or out.”
“Yeah . . . ?”
“Confirmed case last night. Someone, not naming any names, caught it from her divorce lawyer, if you can believe it. She got a test done and it turned up positive. So we’re on lockdown. Nobody’s getting in, or out. Including your girlfriend.”
Oh shit.
I bump my glasses back down to see Charlotte’s face, still scrunched up in anger, her lips in a tight little pout. They steam up again just as she gives me a look that says, Ethan, I swear to God, if you don’t open this door right now, I’ll break it down myself.
For someone so small . . . what’s that Shakespeare quote again?
Charlotte has it printed on a tote bag. It’s very accurate right now.
“Come on, Mr. Harris,” I say, with a nervous laugh. My hand moves up like I’m going to step toward him and clap his arm, until I remember the six-foot rule and think better of it. “It’s us, you know we’re good. Charlotte lives here. Where’s she gonna go?”
“Where’s she been?”
“At her parents, but—”
“Well, she’s going to have to go back there.”
“But . . . ”
I wouldn’t exactly say I was friends with our caretaker, but we’re on good terms. His apartment is directly below ours, and apparently he’s glad to have us there, because the previous owners “might as well have been practicing tap dancing with all the noise they made.” He watches my YouTube videos, too, he told me a while ago. He said he likes having “a celebrity” in the building, and we always stop for a chat if we see him.
I don’t know why I think I’m going to convince him to let Charlotte in when he looks so determined, but for a second I really believe I can. We’ve never made any fuss. We’re good neighbors, good people, he even knows us by name.
And how can he say no?
Charlotte lives here, this is her home. Of course he has to let her inside.
“I can’t let her inside,” he tells me sternly. “Nobody in, nobody out, no exceptions. Well. Exceptions are by emergency only, and this doesn’t class as one.”
“What about food?”
“Get it delivered. I’m setting up a sanitizing station, make sure everything’s clean before it gets through.”