The Quarantine Review, Issue 11

Sheeza Sarfraz, J.J. Dupuis

• Publisher: Dundurn Press
• Year: 2022
• ISBN:
  9781459751019
• Topic: Literatura
• Subtopic: Colecciones literarias norteamericanas

The eleventh issue of a digital journal created to alleviate the malaise of social distancing with exceptional writing and artwork. The Quarantine Review celebrates literature and art, connecting readers through reflections on the human condition — our lived experiences, afflictions, and dreams. Through The Quarantine Review, Dupuis and Sarfraz give voice to the swirling emotions inside each of us, to create a circuit of empathy between the reader, the work itself, and the wider world beyond the walls of this journal. The eleventh issue features the work of Carolyn Bennett, Terri Favro, Susan Glickman, Catherine Graham, Jennifer Hosein, Mike Lee, Zoe Grace Marquedant, Aila Omar, Janette Platan, Deepa Rajagopalan, Greg Rhyno, Ian Roy, and Heather J. Wood.

FICTION

Be My Zero-Sum

Carolyn Bennett

Michelle had begun to keep track. Three of them were open: Ralph’s, O Sole Mio, and Juniper. Devastating Darling was gone. The two Polish bakeries were gone. The local designer clothing store was gone. The law office had relocated. The corner grocer still displayed fruits and vegetables under battered awnings. She counted three “For Lease” signs in storefront windows, her tally assuaging the grimness. Numbers had always been her refuge. She pulled out her phone and checked the time. It was time.

She saw him sitting at a table on the O Sole Mio curbside patio across the street, wearing the blue bomber jacket and red mask he said he would wear. He didn’t have much hair, she noted. But who was she to be critical, she who carried an extra fifteen pounds from too many pandemic cookies and chips? She who couldn’t fit into her work skirts anymore, opting to focus on the upper body with bright blouses and cardigan sets in fuchsia, or teal, looking vibrant on team Zoom calls to belie her angst. She looked up at the apartment flats above the shuttered stores and considered her pocket of Toronto, with its dirty mansions, low-rise walk-ups, multimillion dollar single family homes. The streets now seemed like a movie set with its pedestrians background actors: a scattering of nannies pushing double strollers, well-heeled fashionably chic adolescents, earbuds in and talking into the air, florescent-vested construction workers entering and exiting houses under renovation, all of them extras for the stars who lived inside. If anyone did live inside. Who were these stars that the rest orbited around like space junk?

She had drifted onto the street and was startled when a car abruptly stopped in front of her, the driver honking the horn emphatically. She scuttled across, her head down.

“Michelle?”

She raised her head to see his red mask, eyes and forehead. “Alex?”

He leaned over the patio’s makeshift railing. “Are you okay?”

“Yes. Sorry.”

“That happened to me. I was crossing the street, my mind was a million miles away, when an SUV nudged me. At a crosswalk. The nerve. Osso bucco is on special.”

She didn’t have the osso bucco. The thought of eating veal shank made her nauseous. Instead, she had a seafood salad, crustaceans being lower on the food chain and therefore more tolerable. Besides, she didn’t have to wield a knife and slice through flesh quite like if she had the veal. Her mother had coached her on the fineries of the table. ‘Don’t have steak on a first date. He’ll expect you to put out.”

She leaned back in her chair and smiled, more to herself than Alex. This was the first time in six or seven dates she had stuck around for coffee and dessert. Her last date, with Howard, an Expos baseball fan, only lasted one beer. Howard broke into a monologue about the 1985 team and veered only to lament Gary Carter’s trade to the Mets. The picture on his Tinder profile was also circa 1985, false and misleading advertising, because he must have been her father’s age.

“One of my favourite courses was Russian literature. Turgenev. Fathers and Sons. Is marriage a prejudice or a crime?” Alex sipped cappuccino.

Michelle’s grin weakened. “Is this a trick question?”

“It’s a discussion the characters have in the book. About the nature of love, and if it’s a construct or a truth.” He bit into a biscotti and wiped his mouth.

She let out a giggle. “I’d like to think so. That it’s one of those.”

Michelle had given up on having a type. Many of her friends still had a list of attributes a potential heterosexual mate must possess: between six feet and six foot three, full head of hair, lean and powerful physique, a minimum of a six-figure salary in a professional occupation, or be a successful entrepreneur or independently wealthy, an outdoorsman with a stylish yet classic wardrobe, strong hands from an appropriate amount of manual labour, nurturing yet independent, adoring without expectation. Alex, on the other hand, looked like a man in an ad for debt counselling—thinning hair, sloping shoulders, pencil-necked, a round face, doleful grey eyes. She was no prize either, as her mother liked to point out, goading her to “take a look in the mirror and get real” anytime she commented on the attractiveness of a male celebrity or an Uber Eats delivery guy. Michelle had come to terms with her unremarkable physical traits, perhaps prematurely. At thirty-three, she was still able to reproduce, still had the urge to draw a mate. She could always go the route of a cousin who had in vitro fertilization and produced a healthy baby boy, but the thought of sifting through a catalogue to select a donor, or however they did it, depressed her more than dating. She used cosmetics to enhance her features. Lipstick and rouge disguised her natural pallor. Mascara accentuated the flatness of her small blue eyes. Her hair, the colour of mud, straight and chin length, she tucked behind her ears.

She took a sip of coffee. “Do you do yoga?”

“Yoga?” He coughed on the biscotti in his mouth. She handed him a drink of water and he sipped it, choking on that as well. “No,” he gasped, “I walk.” The coughing subsided and he cleared his throat. He leaned forward and placed his hands on the table, his fingers long and pale. “What about you? Do you walk?”

“As a matter of fact, I do. In the park.” “Splendid. I must say, I am somewhat of a flâneur.”

“Oh yes,” she said, not understanding the term.

“To be incognito and in the centre of things at the same time, that’s the urban condition. I’m undecided whether I still want that now, considering COVID-19, a.k.a. The Great Inconvenience.”

She nodded to appear in agreement. She wasn’t used to deep thinking on a first date. He aroused her though, aroused her mind in ways that were unfamiliar. She let the conversation ebb and drift back momentarily. Mystery, her mother advised, kept men on their toes. She gave dramatic pause, then asked, “Alex, why are you in software sales?”

His face reddened. He brought his fingers to his lips.

“Should you be touching your face?” Michelle immediately regretted the comment. “I’m sorry, I’m only saying this because that’s an avenue for virus transmission.”

Sitting in the hard November shadow of surrounding low-rise commercial buildings, the sky mottled purple, pink and orange, Michelle wanted Alex to put his arm around her. First, he would have to sit beside her and not across from her, but was that permissible?

He leaned back. “I don’t know. Money. It’s always money. I wish I was passionate about what I do. Do you believe in what you do?”

“Why would I need to believe in what I do? I work an IT support desk. I believe I’m relaying information, if that’s what you mean. Don’t you believe in selling software?” She found herself gazing at his left cheek. “Businesses need software. People need software. More than ever.”

He had smooth, fine looking skin to match what he had left of his smooth, fine looking hair. She wanted to touch his face to see if it was able to produce stubble. Could Alex be transgendered? Did that matter?

“What I do is of no importance. How does it stir the human spirit? What beauty or glory does it illuminate?”

She sensed his melancholy. She enjoyed it. It was so rare. Still, she needed to distract him, like the online employee therapy courses now mandated by her workplace taught, so he wouldn’t slip in to a depressive state. “Alex, look at the sunset.”

He looked up and let his jaw drop. His face expressed wonder. “I’m so glad you said something. Because I’ve wanted to say the same thing. Look at the sunset.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“I didn’t want to get my hopes up.”

Michelle stirred in her chair. He had hopes. “Hey, do you want to go for a nightcap at Ralph’s?”

She lay in bed on her side, the streetlight glowed around the edge of the drapes. She brushed stray hair from her eyes and shifted onto her other side. She ran her hand over the unoccupied half of the bed. The pillow beside her hinted of body odour masked by Old Spice. She reached over and switched on the bedside light, an old wooden anchor lamp from her childhood. On the pillowcase she noticed a short fine hair.

She had heard him roll quietly out of bed and put on his jacket in the dark. Before he closed the apartment door softly behind him, he sat at the kitchen table for a few minutes. She didn’t speak, just listened to a kitchen chair creaking as he shifted his weight.

Michelle rose from the bed and went over to the sink for a glass of water. Two craft beers later, they had climbed the stairs of her walk-up, face coverings on. He had insisted on seeing Michelle to her door, even though that was not her usual policy on a first date. He bumped his elbow to hers in a bid goodnight. She was the one to lean in, to press her masked face again his. She wrapped her arms around his neck. They stood on the landing, entwined. The last serious relationship, serious meaning the last man she slept with, was nearly four years ago. The last man let her down in a text, telling her the relationship had run its course and that he was “going in a different direction.”

She put the glass to her lips, and saw what looked like a note on the table. She found her eyeglasses, put them on, and read:

There is no prejudice in our union because we are equals. If we have committed a crime, it is only a crime of conscience for someone else to judge. Merci, Michelle. Thank you. I’ll call you tomorrow.

She didn’t know whether to feel insulted by the gratitude for a favour, or elated by the cryptic sentiment. So much of what transpired between them was out of character for her. She let him in to her apartment, going against the advice of Toronto Public Health, which strongly recommended those whom you do not live with be kept at a six-metre distance, and not invited to visit indoors. They pressed their masked faces together and groped one another. She kept her mask on, while through triple layers of fabric, he kissed her eyes and forehead and neck. He moved his hands beneath her sweater, grabbing and squeezing her stores of fat. He murmured and she let him feel her breasts over the brassiere she wore, a black push-up. She always wore that brassiere when on dates, just in case she needed to appear alluring. No one had ever seen it. She ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• In This Issue
• Contributors
• Editor's Note
• POETRY: Silence | Catherine Graham
• FICTION: Horse | Greg Rhyno
• POETRY: Country | Jennifer Hosein
• POETRY: After Kamloops, there is | Janette Platana
• FICTION: Have You Ever Been Lonely? | Ian Roy
• POETRY: Hush | Catherine Graham
• POETRY: Venmo Receipts | Zoe Grace Marquedant
• FICTION: Aunt Kazzie’s Chest | Heather J. Wood
• CREATIVE NON-FICTION: Welcome Back, Fellow Traveller of Earth | Terri Favro
• POETRY: Burial Rights During a Pandemic | Aila Omar
• FICTION: Be My Zero Sum | Carolyn Bennett
• POETRY: What We Want | Deepa Rajagopalan
• CREATIVE NON-FICTION: Pencils: An Appreciation | Susan Glickman
• FICTION: Mirror | Mike Lee