Plague Diary II by Steve Chang

SHOE-MERANG, LIFT

The toilet paper has arrived, or maybe it’s the turnips. But the dog has kicked his shoes all over the foyer. I’ve asked him not to, but he’ll listen only to Linda.

And you think she’ll bring up the closet?

Someone could trip, I say, and fall. Out in the open like that? I’m disinfecting the turnips with an alcohol spray. They’re 80% organic.

She’s checking on herself in a clamshell compact. Very slowly, she brushes her eyebrows.

Someone, I stress to her indifference, might get hurt.

What’s left to hurt? she says, drawing her eyes on dark, dramatic.

In the foyer, I gather up the dog’s shoes and knot them together by the laces. Grabbing a fistful, I spin them into a speedy orbit. Then I open the front door and let that whirly-bird fly. It catches lift, like hope, and helicopters away. The dog, being a dog, runs after it.

We all have to do our part. We’re in this together.

I close the door and think twice. Then I lock it.

DORITOS

The boys would check in and ask
if I was depressed
I’d be too tired
from
Doritos
to
say

THE 13^th LABOR

She stares at her screen, resolved—no matter what she might hear from the kitchen—not to ask him what he’s doing.

He, on the other hand, is in there acting out. He’s grunting, ripping cardboard apart by the panel, and slapping it to the floor.

She refuses to acknowledge. She’s been working from home.

Now, silence. She blinks at the abatement of sound.

Is he finished?

—Lord Jesus, no, he is not.

He’s stomping cans into submission. Her brow is crunched into a frown. It’s shooting tinny bolts of lightning. Jesus God, he’s really flattening those cans. If he ever had a talent, this would likely be it: being both thorough and annoying.

So, she thinks, this is what we’re doing now.

Then, again—silence. Her fingers rest on the keyboard.

Is this the end?

—No, God, if only.

He’s onto the plastics, walking on clouds of it, crackling: all those gallons of Crystal Geyser he keeps ordering although, as she’s reminded him, the Brita’s been working just fine. So why buy more filters and water? In fact, why bother with recycling? And while we’re on the topic, she thinks, in times like these….

She has to let that thought go. She doesn’t know how it ends.

But the moment he stops to admire his work or, she thinks, more likely, to catch his breath, what she knows is that it’ll be her turn.

“O wow!” she’ll say. “Is that Hercules in there?”

Steve Chang is from the San Gabriel Valley, California. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Cleaver, Epiphany, Guernica, Hobart, J Journal, The Southampton Review, and elsewhere. He tweets @steveXisXok