Rebecca Handler

o n e w o m a n p a r t y

pandemic

Nuanced Nuisance

by

“I am not waiting another fucking half hour for you.” A woman is sitting on a step, in front of the ATM. She is wearing workout clothes, a paper mask, and holding her phone in front of her face. Her screaming is so loud I can hear her from across the street, up one floor, through a closed window. “You need to get home, feed him, and then get your fucking ass over here.”

After a brief pause she continues, “I said feed him! Then get over here!” 

Feed who? A child? The dog? An elderly person? Now I am stressed. Someone needs to get fed, and someone else is in big trouble. 

I am reminded of the time I screamed at my husband (then boyfriend) after waiting for him in a car in Harvard Square. That was more than 20 years ago, and I remember I waited exactly 45 minutes. 

Today it is unsafe to be outside. The air quality is poor due to wildfires and the pandemic rages on. Schools remain closed. Nonetheless, today’s top news story is the death of a famous socialite. The article mentions the deceased’s nephew who was kidnapped in the 70’s and held for ransom. The family paid after the boy’s severed ear was sent to an Italian newspaper. I touch my yellow beaded earring given to me by a friend who Kondo-ed her jewelry collection. As a child, I was scared of being kidnapped. My dad told me not to worry, that we weren’t wealthy enough to warrant a kidnapping. Still I slept with a knife under my pillow for several weeks. It occurs to me I could have cut my own ear.  

The screaming woman has calmed down slightly. She is on the phone with someone else complaining about the first person. “Can you fucking believe that shit? I KNOW.”

This morning I awoke with my nightgown twisted around me like a broken corset. I rolled over and wrote the words Nuanced Nuisance on the pad of lined paper I keep next to my bed. Then the cat came over and sniffed my face. “I don’t know what it means,” I said to the cat while scraping some black gunk out of his eye corners. “I must have had a dream.” 

Now I look out the window and the woman is gone. Did she get picked up, or did she storm away on foot? I hope everyone got fed. This is the time of unresolved everything. 

Funny Things Don’t Happen Anymore

by

I thought the era of funny things was over. This is the age of fear, sorrow, and fed-up-ness. This is a pandemic.

I was walking home up the hill, just past the yard with the artichoke plant, across from the hoarder’s house. My neighborhood is pin-droppingly quiet which is why, at this particular moment, my cloth mask was hanging from my wrist and not strapped to my face. I was alone. 

A black car drove past, then turned around and pulled over beside me. 

The window opened and a man called out, “Is your name Denise, by any chance?” He had a bushy moustache and thick black glasses. He was smiling at me. 

“No,” I said, and kept walking.

“You’re not Denise?”

I paused. I hadn’t slept well in several nights. Could my name be Denise? Had we all been renamed?

“No,” I repeated, moving my bag to my other shoulder. 

The man asked if I used to live near SF State. He seemed happy and hopeful. 

“Nope.”

“Really?” He stared at me and shook his head. “You are the spitting image of Denise.”

I shrugged my shoulders. “I hope she’s a nice person.” 

He laughed. “Oh, she’s the best,” he said reassuringly. “I haven’t seen her in twenty years though. Funny thing, because I’ve been thinking about her recently and then – I drove by you, and I swear – ” As his voice trailed off, he kept staring at me, head cocked.

I put down my bag. “Maybe that’s why you thought you saw her?” I was no longer in a rush to get home. This was my first spontaneous chitchat with a stranger in five months, and it had nothing to do with the virus.  

He asked what I meant. I explained that when someone is on my mind, particularly someone I miss, I see them everywhere. For example, in every older man who smokes a cigar, for a split second I see my dad. 

Moustache ran his hand across the steering wheel and looked wistful. “Denise had a great sense of humor. Really funny girl. I always wondered what happened to her.”

“I hope you find her someday,” I said, meaning it.

“Thanks. You too. I mean – ” He laughed and shook his head before driving away.

Back at home, I told my husband about the encounter. He questioned the plausibility of Moustache’s story while adding I look different from twenty years ago, which I found both rude and beside-the-point. But everyone’s sensitive right now. It’s a pandemic. 

Maybe this isn’t a funny story after all. Denise is nowhere to be found, and my husband thinks I look like an old lady. Maybe it would have been funnier if I had told the man that, yes, I was Denise, and hopped in the car with him. We would have had a lot to catch up on.