56 Days

by Catherine Ryan Howard

  Maura, the sixth floor’s self-appointed chief enforcement officer.

  “No visitors!” she barks.

  Ciara pushes Oliver inside. “I think that’s just from midnight tonight, Maura.”

  “Oh, so he’ll be leaving before then, will he?”

  “Well, actually . . . he’s, ah, moving in. So we’ll be one household now. It’s fine.” Ciara fixes a smile to her face. “You don’t need to worry.”

  Maura’s eyes narrow further still. “He’s got nothing with him.”

  “His stuff is coming later. Tomorrow.”

  “There isn’t room enough in there for two.”

  “We’ll manage.”

  “And I suppose Niall knows about all this, does he?”

  “He does indeed.” Ciara raises a hand to wave and starts to pull her door closed with the other one. “Have a good evening now, Maura. Let me know if you need anything.” She shuts the door.

  When she turns, she sees him standing in the middle of the living room—the everything room—looking around with great interest, and she silently curses Maura for interfering, for messing up her carefully choreographed plans.

  She wanted to see him see this place for the first time. She wanted to be able to gauge his reaction.

  “So I live here now?” he asks, grinning.

  “That was my delightful neighbor, Maura. If we were in East Germany, she’d have the Stasi on speed dial.”

  “And Niall?”

  “That’s my landlord.”

  Oliver pretends to wipe this brow. “Phew.”

  “I mean, he is also my ex-husband—”

  “Right, right.”

  “—and the father of my secret child.”

  “Oh, I assumed.”

  “That I had a child or that he was the father?”

  “Both, I think.”

  “But he lets me live here rent-free so long as I keep sleeping with him, so . . .”

  “Good deal.”

  “You know,” Ciara says, “this joke isn’t that funny when you know what Niall looks like.”

  “And what does Niall look like?”

  “His age. Which is about eighty-five, I’d say.”

  Oliver laughs.

  They’ve already had the exes talk. She told him that she only has one even worth mentioning: Jack. Met in college, started as friends, stayed together for eighteen months after graduation. When things went south, he told her the problem was that she didn’t want a nice guy, but the actual problem was that he wasn’t one.

  Oliver said there’d been a girl that he’d met at his university. For a long time, he thought she was the girl. But then she’d gone to work abroad for a year. They’d carried on long-distance, or so she’d led him to believe—but the day she came back she told him she’d met someone else and that was that.

  If you discount short-lived flings with roommates (and they both do), neither of them has ever officially lived with anybody. Neither of them has any faith in dating apps; they’ve already traded their best horror stories. Both also claim to be crap at flirting—at everything, really, associated with convincing other people to be with you above anyone else—but yet it’s been three weeks and here they are.

  “So,” she says. “Would you like a tour? I should warn you it could take as long as ten whole seconds.”

  “I like it,” he says, looking around. “It’s . . .”

  “Claustrophobic?”

  She doesn’t find it claustrophobic. Not really. Or at least she hasn’t until now. But this is the first time she’s ever had a visitor in here, and it’s him, all six feet of him, and all she can think about is how claustrophobic it must be making him feel and how different it must look to where he lives, and she wants him to know that she knows that, that she isn’t naive, that she isn’t stupid.

  And that bed. That bloody bed. She’s almost certain he’s too long for it. She could nearly plot this whole evening out with certainty now: it’ll be nice, and he’ll stay, but from now on they’ll resume their routine of staying at his bigger and better place.

  And she won’t object.

  “I was going to say compact,” he says. “And it’s well designed, really. You don’t see windows this size on other blocks this age.” He sets the bag and bottle on the dining table and lifts his hands. “The, ah, bathroom?”

  She points. “Just in there.”

  He goes, and she takes the bag and the bottle and carries them into the kitchen.

  The bathroom is on the other side of the wall behind her now. As she unpacks the food she listens to the gush of water from the tap. It goes on for ages: he’s doing it properly. When he returns, he brings the lemony scent of her antibacterial handwash with him.

  “Where do you sleep?” he asks.

  She points. “That’s the bed, there.”

  “It comes down from the wall?” He looks childishly excited about this fact.

  “Trust me, the novelty wears off in about five minutes.”

  “Everything’s so neat. Where’s all your, you know, stuff?”

  She explains she came to Dublin from Cork with one large suitcase and her laptop bag. One of her friends was supposed to come up in his father’s van with the rest, but . . . essential travel only. There were a few bits and pieces already here—pots and pans, an iron and ironing board, that kind of thing—and whatever she needed that she didn’t have she picked up at Primark before they closed. Until things go back to normal her stuff will be sitting in boxes in the garage of her parents’ house.

  “But actually, I kinda like it this way,” she says. “I might not even bother bringing up that much of it.”

  He’s stopped at some fancy deli near his place and got them a ready-made meal for two that only needs to be heated up in the oven. The foil tray looks like it’s filled with lasagna but the label says bobotie. Ciara has no idea what that is. The price is on there too and she can’t help but think about how much more food the same amount of money could buy in a supermarket if you were just willing to cook it yourself. There’s also a plastic bowl of bistro salad and two individual tartes au citron. The wine has won a gold sticker from somebody.

  She steals a glance at him.

  He’s bent at the waist, head to the side, reading the spines of her books.

  She sets the oven to the temperature the bobotie’s label dictates. It’ll take ages to heat up; maybe she should’ve done this before he arrived. She puts the wine bottle on the counter and wipes it with an antibacterial wipe. She does the same with the food cartons. She throws the wipe in the trash can and washes her hands. She takes the wine glasses out and pours two glasses before putting the bottle in the fridge.

  Then she washes her hands again.

  The new normal, which is in absolutely no way normal at all.

  She doesn’t actually believe that the bottle or cartons present a danger, but he believes it. He told her he heard something about it on the radio during the week and she’s since read a couple of articles online. The shops are so busy now that all the stuff on the shelves was probably just put there, and customers pick stuff up and put it back, and one of them might well have coughed on it . . .

  Better to be safe than sorry, Oliver says. He has asthma. That’s an underlying condition. He doesn’t want to risk getting this thing, and she certainly doesn’t want to be the one to give it to him.

  She carries the two glasses (five steps) to him and says, “Here,” handing his over. As he takes it, he slips his free arm around her waist and gently pulls her close.

  “Are you okay?” he asks.

  She breathes him in. “Better now.”

  “Were you watching?”

  She nods.

  The announcement came less than two hours ago. The Taoiseach has said he doesn’t want to use the word lockdown but that’s
effectively what it is. For the next two weeks, starting at midnight tonight, everyone is to stay at home. You can leave to buy food or to “briefly” exercise within a two-kilometer radius of your residence, but unless you’re an essential worker, that’s it. No visits to other homes, no arranging to meet people you don’t live with—even outside.

  Ciara knows she should be processing the bubbling panic in the pit of her stomach that something really, really bad is happening, but she’s too busy with the tight worry in her chest over what this will mean for them, for her and Oliver.

  She senses that he has the same question she does but isn’t asking it.

  She lets a beat pass, then another.

  Then she decides that she just can’t stand to wait anymore and asks, “What are we going to do?”

  When he shrugs, her stomach drops.

  Are they not on the same page here? Has she been reading this all wrong?

  Panicked, she begins to backtrack, to downplay, words tumbling out of her mouth before she can think about them.

  “I mean, it’s less than two kilometers from here to your place, so . . . We could go for socially distanced walks . . . ? Maybe? I know we’re not technically supposed to but that should be okay, right?” He’s frowning; she rushes on. “And is it really that bad if I go to yours and you come to mine? Neither of us is going to work. Neither of us is seeing anyone else.” She instantly regrets this choice of words and the fact that they’ve sent a flash of heat to her cheeks. She’s only assuming he’s not seeing anyone else. “If we’re only in contact with each other, we can’t spread it. Or catch it, even . . . Right?” She desperately wishes she hadn’t ended that sounding so nakedly dripping with hope.

  Here is her worst fear realized: despite how well all this has been going, she’s only ever one stupid move away from ruining absolutely everything.

  He backs away from her and for one horrible moment she thinks that now he thinks she might be contagious, that she’s just inadvertently revealed to him that she’s a careless person, that her handwashing and social-distancing aren’t medical grade.

  But then he takes her hand and leads them both to the couch.

  They sit down and she takes a gulp of her wine to stop herself from vomiting out any more words.

  “The thing is . . .” He’s still holding her hand; he squeezes it. “The thing is, Ciara . . .”

  God, just come out with it.

  Is he dumping her? Is that what this is?

  Can he dump her, when they’re barely together?

  “I don’t really want to break the rules. They’re there for a reason.”

  Her limbs feel suddenly heavy with resignation. It’s as if she’s deflating on the inside, like the burst balloon inside a hardened shell of papier-mâché. All she wants to do now is kick off her shoes and fall back against the couch and drink the rest of the wine all by herself.

  She wants him to leave.

  She wants him to stay.

  The truth is, however well this may seem like it’s going, they don’t know each other, not really. This situation is revealing that, up close and in harsh lighting.

  They don’t know what the other one does in times like this. Are they the kind of person who wears a mask before it’s mandatory and disinfects their phones and wipes their groceries down, or are they drinking cans in the park with friends on a sunny Saturday and sneering at anyone who tut-tuts as they pass?

  In between favorite movies and what they studied in college and where they hope to go this summer, they forgot to ask each other what kind of person are you in a global pandemic?

  “What if . . . ?” he starts.

  She turns to him, seized by the hope that all is not lost but trying not to show it. But he’s looking unsure, or maybe too embarrassed to say whatever’s on his mind.

  “What?” she prompts.

  “I don’t know if . . .” He inhales deeply, slowly, and then everything after that comes out in a tumbling rush. “Well, I have two bedrooms, don’t I? We’d be okay if we were in the same household. We wouldn’t have to worry about the rules. And as it is, when I’m not working, I’m with you, so it wouldn’t really be that big of a change, would it?” He swallows. “And it doesn’t have to be like, an actual thing. It’s just a temporary arrangement. Two weeks. And we can play it by ear. Just take one day at a time. And if it doesn’t work out, you still have here, so . . .”

  He stops and looks at her hopefully.

  She wants to smile and say yes but first, she wants to make sure.

  “What are you saying, exactly?”

  “What I’m saying is . . .” He squeezes her hand again. “Ciara, why don’t you move in with me?”

  53 Days Ago

  “And so unnecessary,” Ciara says. “Like, just serve good drinks and be nice to people and stop with all the shite. But that kinda thing—that’s a secret. And secrets are about denying people things. The truth, yes, but also the experience, the knowledge . . . You’re just trying to keep them out of the cool gang. You’re trying to decide who gets in the cool gang, and that’s just . . .” She stops, apparently having lost her train of thought. “It’s not secrets I like. It’s discovering things that are new to me but actually were always there. Secrets are a different thing. They’re destructive.”

  Secrets are destructive.

  The words flip a switch.

  Oliver had been happily riding a wave of warm, fizzy drunk thanks to those things Ciara had recommended, but now he feels that shift into an uncomfortable heat.

  A sheen of cold sweat at his temples, a flush on his cheeks.

  The sudden surety that he’s made a terrible mistake.

  He chose this bar because it was deep inside the hotel and unlikely to be frequented by passersby; the clientele was mostly travelers from other places who would soon go back there. But now its distance from the outside, its lack of fresh air, makes his chest constrict with panic.

  He can feel her eyes on him.

  A single bead of sweat is threatening to depart from his right temple, the one she can see.

  “I know what you mean,” he says absently.

  This was supposed to be a fact-finding mission. He’d decided to meet up with her, glean as much information as he could, and then use it to determine once and for all whether she was something he needed to worry about.

  That’s what he’d told himself he was doing, anyway. He’d refused to dwell on how much he’d been looking forward to doing it.

  To begin with, everything had gone to plan. He hadn’t bothered booking tickets to that documentary; there was no point risking this kind of contact just to sit beside her silently in the dark for the night. They needed to talk. He was intending to “realize” he’d got the start time of the film wrong and suggest they go for a drink while they were waiting, but then she’d brought up cocktails and given him an easy in.

  She evidently wasn’t time-conscious and didn’t notice they were drinking themselves late and, better yet, didn’t care when she discovered this. It had all been working out.

  So much so that he’d forgotten what it was supposed to be.

  Getting to be normal always did that to him. The pretending could be potent. And he liked her, liked being around her, liked the way she made him feel.

  Which was bad, because he couldn’t afford to feel good.

  That was always when bad things started to happen.

  “Sorry,” he says, shifting his body away from her and out of the booth. “I need another bathroom break.”

  She frowns a little. “Three times in one night?”

  “I’ve broken the seal.”

  “I actually have to go, too. I’ll go when you get back.”

  “I can wait?”

  He can’t. He feels shivery and feverish and a little bit sick.

  He has let this ev
ening get away from him.

  “I can wait longer,” she says, waving a hand. “Go on.”

  He hurries down the carpeted stairs, keeping one hand on the gold railing. The steps feel soft and unsteady beneath his feet, like they’re unmoored and floating. The main doors are directly opposite the last one, but so are the doorman and a couple pulling suitcases out of a cab. Oliver makes an abrupt left turn into a tunnel of polished marble and heads for the automatic sliding glass doors at the far end, slipping down a couple of the marble steps, willing the electronic sensor to hurry up, to let him out—

  The doors separate with an excruciating slowness and he turns sideways to push through them and out onto a dark, deserted street.

  It has the look of a place mostly made up of the worst sides of other places: loading bays, back doors, trash cans. Directly opposite is a tanning salon squeezed in between a gym and a medical supply shop, the kinds of stores that cover up their windows instead of using them for display. The only person he can see anywhere nearby is a Deliveroo cyclist stopped at a distant corner, her face lit by the blue light of her phone.

  The night air feels cold and sharp as he leans against a wall and gulps it down.

  He’s so sick of all this, of being this. He wishes he could just settle for his lot in life, make some kind of peace with it. Because every time he’s tried to build a sarcophagus over the past, it’s cracked before he’s even finished it.

  So why does he keep torturing himself by trying?

  He freezes at the whoosh of the automatic doors sliding open for a second time, thinking Ciara has followed him outside, but it’s a different woman who emerges into the dark.

  She’s older, and skinny in that tight, severe way, with a long blond ponytail swishing halfway down her back. She’s wearing very thin, very high heels and carrying a leather purse like a large envelope under one arm.

  It occurs to him that he is a six-foot sweaty man standing in the shadows on a dark deserted street at the exact same moment she turns and sees him and her features jerk with fright.