of law enforcement. Vigilantism. The inevitability of roving looters was an idea implanted in his brain by Hollywood, but he knew it had taken root in the collective imagination all the same. Maybe he ought to buy a gun.
Keelan kicked at the sheets until his feet poked out the end. He always woke up sweating these days, even though it was November. Anxiety made him overheat. It was insane for Julia to stay in New York City through the ARAMIS crisis. There was no way of isolating oneself in a metropolis of that size. And Julia and Dory had no car. They relied on public transportation to get everywhere.
He sat up and pulled off his shirt—a dress shirt, he realized, now soaked and wrinkled—and threw it on the floor into a pile of dirty laundry.
“I’ll go get her,” he said aloud, “and bring her here.” The cooler air of the room soothed him, lightening his mood. He felt as though he were shedding a layer of dead skin. “Both of them.”
With his new resolve, the structure of the day settled into an intelligible form. He needed to get supplies for the house, and some gas, some snacks, a map. He ought to leave before it got to be too late, although he needed to time his arrival to avoid rush hour in the city, which he’d heard had worsened since people began avoiding public transit. He got up and dressed quickly, in the first items he took out of the closet. It was the beginning of each day that was starting to become tenuous, shaky. Ever since classes had been cancelled, Keelan worried his mental energies were dissipating under the stress of the pandemic. He was watching too much television, thinking too much about the past. In short, he was feeling his age. He was not exactly frightened of losing his routine, but it was the type of small setback he wanted to get out in front of. He could feel deterioration lurking like a coded disease in his DNA. Maybe it was the kind of thing he could write about: The New Rituals of Normalcy in a Time of Crisis.
On his way downstairs, Keelan paused, startled by the sound of voices in the living room. He remembered his fleeting, treacherous thought about the potential necessity of buying a gun. Hollywood narratives. Perhaps history wasn’t bound to repeat—it was only the stories they told about it that they were doomed to re-enact. Human beings were always looking for a script.
But no, it was only the television.
“Power’s back on,” he noted, then cringed as a hint of an echo returned from the ceiling over the stairwell, like an affirmation of his solitude. On…on…on…
In the kitchen, he put on the coffee and poured himself a bowl of cereal. He thought he could get most of what he needed at the gas station down the road. Officially, he knew there were advisories in place against travelling to or from any city already in a state of emergency, or what the government had lately dubbed “pre-emergency.” But it was unclear to Keelan if these were being enforced. There had been nothing on the news so far about roadblocks into New York City. Then his eyes lit up. “Not yet,” he said aloud. “That’s why now is best. Get out ahead.”
He stood in the doorway of the kitchen, bowl in hand, calculating the length of the drive. The last time he had driven to the city was before Julia was born, when Annie was still working as an art dealer, though he had visited by train in the years that followed. He moved to the desk and checked the Amtrak website, but rail service had been suspended along all of the major corridors.
Glancing away from the computer, his eyes fell on the never-ending letter to Julia. He picked up his pen. There was always more to say.
Quickly—
Forgive an old man his self-pitying missives and his paltry grievances. The latest on television (you’d be revolted to know that I watch it compulsively, like any ordinary vain person, now that I expect to see myself on it) is that they fear a major power failure on the East Coast. Or so they claim. Now that I’ve seen how the news is made (out of people like me!), I am far from reassured by what I hear. Doubtless there are conspiracy theories springing up on either side, but I’m not quite savvy enough with the world wide