Speaking Terms

Dearest Rachel –

I have to admit, this particular cold, and the measures Daniel and I have taken about it, feel like life under the Covid lockdowns. I haven’t been to the office since Monday – especially since Dad reported to me that Mom was dealing with a similar level of illness as I was on Tuesday. Like me, she’s improving, but I feel responsible for what happened, and don’t want to risk extending her situation, or vectoring it to Dad; we’re probably not even going to be doing dinner tonight with the folks.

Of course, with that being said, it’s not as if the world is shut down, and so as long as we don’t display too much in the way of external symptoms, we can get out and get ourselves provisioned for an extended stay in the house. Unlike Logan, it’s not in our nature to order delivery, even when we do want to eat restaurant food, and so we can take such a trip upon ourselves, when sufficiently medicated in order to approximate normal health.

However, restaurant stops and grocery shops are relatively surgical in nature, if you’ll pardon the expression; I’ve still gone the week thus far since showing up at the gym, and putting in the hour-and-a-half of workout that I usually do. One would expect that eating and indolence would be a perfect storm for gaining weight, but thus far, it doesn’t seem to have made too much of a difference. Granted, my morning weigh-in have been above the two-fifteen line rather than below, but they haven’t been more than two pounds – and sometimes barely half a pound – over the line. What I lack in preferred position, I’m making up in consistency, at the moment.

And if I wanted to shave off a little more weight, I could do just that, too; while I made a point of taking a razor to my face even in Honduras (where I couldn’t trust the water, and had to bring my own anti-bacterial soap to use as a shaving cream), I’ve decided to do what the cool kids are doing these days, and see if I can grow out a beard. I know this is something you wouldn’t want wanted to deal with back in the day, but you’re not here to have to, and in any event, this is probably just a momentary experiment. At the moment, I admit to looking like the survivor of a shipwreck, which might not be the best look for someone about to take a cruise later on this week (although for going on a vacation, why not? For what it’s worth, I’m making sure that neck is clean-shaven) Assuming I’m in decent enough shape to get back to work by the weekend, I’ll gauge the feedback, and adjust accordingly.

And, of course, in our weakened state – and with little else to do – we’ve been getting a fair amount of sleep. Let’s face it, our bodies need in order to fight off whatever this infection is. It may not be a fever (at 96.9ºF, it’s anything but – which explains why I can’t get below that two-fifteen line, as I’m not burning calories a such a low temperature), but whatever it is, its effect can’t just be ignored. Best to let the body rest, and let the antibodies do the work they need to.

But while the body may rest, the neurons keep firing, and they conjure up their usual scenarios in the still of the night. I found myself waking up just after midnight today, after having imagined myself back at university again. It was a confluence of then and now, with our bedroom serving as my dorm room (when we both know that two, and possibly three such rooms could be made out of it), and I could look out into the common room of a nearby tower, which presumably was just another dorm on campus. I would occasionally see you or Heidi or one of the other girls from those days milling about in there, but mostly you, although you seemed to be pointedly avoiding my stare. Meanwhile, I would have company over in the form of Dena or Emma (which is weird, as she’s no peer of mine, unless I was in college now. And to think I’d be worthy of a movie actress, even as a college-age kid, is peak Dunning-Krueger).

At some point, I tried to call you, to understand why you seemed to want nothing to do with me. I can recall asking “aren’t I good enough for you?” and wincing as my voice rose to a high-pitched whine, which irritated even myself; I could only imagine what it sounded like to you. If I can detect self-pity in my own tones, it must be so thick that you could have cut it with a knife.

Honestly, I don’t recall what it was you said – I can barely recall my own lines, for that matter – but it may have been something on the order of “that’s not how this works,” whatever that was supposed to mean. What I can recall is how your voice sounded; like the phone line had the ‘reverb’ setting turned way up, as it was echoing as you spoke. Fitting, I suppose, for a ghost.

Despite getting back to sleep for nearly six hours thereafter, I can still remember that much, and since you always liked to tell me about your dreams when you had them – and then ask me for mine in return, which tended to put me on a spot I couldn’t quite maneuver from – I figure I might as well fill you in on this one. I’ve come to accept that there’s not going to be any meaning I can draw from them, especially when I can only remember a fragment or two from them, but at least you’ve heard from me, and that can suffice for the day. Besides, we actually managed to speak with each other, even if it wasn’t on the best of terms for some reason. Was it that I was hanging out with someone else?

In any event, I’d hope you’d see your way clear to keep an eye on me, honey, and continue to wish me luck. I’m sure I’m going to need it.