Quarantine by David Bobrow

“Your parents don’t mind how long we stay?” I asked.

“There’s some kind of a tax thing. Like it’s better if it’s occupied.”

The farmhouse was south of Charleston, halfway between Marlinton and Lewisberg. It was a house that Luke’s family owned but didn’t use. It was surrounded by rolling West Virginia hills, a river, and a country store that sold cattle feed and frozen steaks. 

There was a wood-burning stove in the middle of the living room that sent ducts like spider arms throughout the house but didn’t put out much heat unless you were right in front of it. Luke and I moved a small mattress down next to the fire and shared it at night, which didn’t seem unusual. We stayed up talking about dreams, stories of our past, hopes and plans. Talking at night was the sweetest part—hearing his quiet voice, his solid shoulders bumping occasionally against mine.

“…so when we moved to the big house, everything changed,” he said. “My dad was hardly home, and my mom drank herself into this cave.” He flipped his blond hair up, and the firelight caught his eyes, the goofy grin giving way to a depth that I hadn’t seen before.

“And their business kept growing?” I asked.

“Mortgage and Loans always grow. That’s what they do,” he said sadly. “They’re gonna make me run it someday.”

“Well, don’t let them.”

He sketched for me his family’s financial ascent, his parents growing more distant and self-absorbed as they collected larger houses and extravagant clutter. He vowed to chuck it all and join a commune, live simply in the country, read philosophy, grow vegetables.

Mornings, we baked bread from his vegan cookbook. Veganism was his creed: every tempeh stir-fry was an act of revolution, every page a new discovery. “You can make your own tortillas!” he shouted, uncovering a lost secret. 

When we first got to the house, we went through the cupboards, unloaded all the processed food into a bag, and stuck it in the cellar. Nothing packaged, nothing animal-based. Quarantine meant purification for the purpose of self-discovery. Frozen ground beef and twinkies were banished to the basement, where they wouldn’t tempt us. 

The bread never turned out. We had a pile of inedible, hard-rock lumps in the garbage, but we kept trying, and Luke said they were getting better. I wasn’t sure.

Afternoons, we played soccer in winter jackets, laughed and shoved across the field around a makeshift goal. Luke, with his perfect form, dribbled circles around me, snuck around my back to flick a shot into the net. It kept us warm.

Nudging each other side to side, we walked back to the house.

“You’ve gotten better,” I said.

“I know, right?”

“Since I’ve been coaching you.”

“Oh, you’ve been coaching me?” Luke said.

Luke’s legs were beefier than mine, his frame more solid, his eyes more certain. I imagined what it would be like to run with his confident stride, to look out at his wealthy world through his blue eyes.

“You suck as a coach,” I told him.

“Do I?”

“Yeah, ’cause I’m just as bad as I’ve always been.”

“And that’s my fault?”

“’Cause you suck as a coach.”

Shana, the purebred English setter, met us at the door, frantic to get out. The house came with two jobs. First, we had to make sure the pilot light for the water heater stayed on. (It didn’t.) Otherwise, the pipes would freeze. (They did, forcing us to lug water buckets from the well to the house by hand.)

Second, we had to take care of Shana if she went into heat. Luke’s family was hoping to breed her.

We hauled a jug of clean, icy water from the small well hut to the porch, set it right outside the door. Inside, we sat with the dog as she panted and licked at her inflamed underbelly.  We watched Max, the neighbor’s Chihuahua mutt, yap and throw himself insanely at the big bay window from outside. Luke checked and rechecked the latches on the doors.

In the living room, I picked at my backpack, a blue internal frame I had bought at a garage sale. I tried out the idea that this was our home, mine and Luke’s, cozy and warm; an interiority that he and I created together. Luke leafed through the mound of books he’d brought, everything from Plato’s Phaedrus to our favorite, Intentional Communities: America’s New Utopias. This humongous handbook detailed modern communes, like The Farm in Tennessee, a hundred-acre place that made hammocks and practiced group child-raising. I mapped them out on my road atlas, traced my hopeful hand along the red interstate lines that led away from my current sorry predicament.

My father, a struggling salesman, had just had a massive heart attack that year. He was still recovering, unable to work. He never blamed me specifically, but having a fuckup son leave college with no real plans probably didn’t lower his stress.  

Luke quoted from Plato: “Is it better to give your favor to the friend rather than to the lover?”

I smirked. “Who drops out of college so he can read Plato?”

“Why’d you drop out of college?” he asked.

“Because you said the universe would provide.”

“Didn’t it?” He gestured to the room and the land outside.

Leaving was Luke’s idea, but I was happy enough to go along. Trump’s election and the pandemic weren’t the reasons for leaving, but they made it seem more heroic. First, we left the fraternity with its conservative rules. Then we left college, then our families, and eventually reality. I was generally happy to follow him anywhere.

“So who you giving your favor to? The lover, or the friend?” It was bold, and unlike me, to ask.

“You know who.” Luke buried his head in the old book.

“I don’t,” I said quietly.

If during the night, on the one mattress in front of the wood stove, we laid against each other, his breath on my neck, hands wandering, it wasn’t something that needed to be talked about later. If he whispered, “You’re my best friend,” if shy kisses were exchanged, it wasn’t something that needed to be analyzed in the morning. If he said, “I love you,” it had to be the general kind of love one had for a sunset, an idea, or a piece of clothing. Hadn’t he said he was trying to learn to love everyone, like a Buddhist project, a sexy side road on the Eightfold Path?

Dinnertime, we collected the grainiest grains and the blandest beans and arranged them onto plates. Privately, I was not completely sold on veganism. Half the time, the beans were crunchy as stones and tasted like cardboard. I looked forward to brushing my teeth at night to at least taste a little something sweet in the toothpaste. 

Luke stirred at a porridge in a pot, tasted it, spat it out. Grabbed for ice and water.

“I thought that was a lot of cayenne,” he said.

“What is it?”

Luke flipped through the cookbook. “What the hell is chutney, anyway?”

I stirred the large pot of apples and spices. “I don’t think you were supposed to make this much.”

“I thought it was a side dish, like spicy applesauce,” he said.

“It’s a garnish,” I told him, “not a meal.” I pointed to the cookbook: “Serves 50-75 servings.”

He tasted it again, then, hands to throat, screamed and reached for the door, grabbed toward the drinking water bucket on the porch. He left just enough space for Shana to sneak between his legs and tear off across the yard where the neighbor mutt waited.

We both ran into the snow, chased after the two dogs in time to see Max, just over the next hill, desperately mounting Shana, his short gangly legs able to reach, but barely. We struggled to separate them, cursed and kicked and threw rocks at the Chihuahua, pulled Shana back to the safety of the house, feeling anything but safe. 

We huddled in shame around the kitchen table. The crunchy beans and tasteless rice sat neglected on the counter as we lapped up some quickly defrosted hamburger, French fries, and yes, twinkies.

“My parents are going to kill me,” Luke said, head in hands.

“Imagine what those puppies will look like,” I said.

“This, on top of their little cash flow issue,” he said.

“What do you mean?”

“Probably nothing. Banks always land on their feet. Or get bailed out. But for now, they may need to sell.”

“Sell what?”

He gestured his hand around at the sun setting through the window, the rolling hills, the storybook orange rays shining up into the clouds.

“Means we have to leave?”

“When they sell.” 

“Which would be when, approximately?”

“My parents and I aren’t great at communicating.”

“So they just turn off the power at some point?”

“Most likely.”

“And then what?”

“The universe will provide.”

“It’s just,” I said, “I don’t really have much of a safety net.”

After dinner, we hiked a nearby trail around Droop Mountain. Silently managing switchbacks, we caught occasional flashes of sunset as we climbed toward the top. There was a bright flash just before the sun ducked behind the horizon, and colors spread like horsehairs across the sky. We sat in silence a long time.

“If the sky had walls,” Luke said, finally, “we could climb to the top and look over the edge.”

“At what?” I asked.

“At whatever’s on the other side.” 

Back at the house, we lugged the icy well water inside, stripped down, face-to-face in the bathtub, took turns soaping each other up. He poured freezing liquid over my grimacing face, and I did the same for him.

Toweled off, flannel-shirted, laying on the one mattress, shoulder to shoulder, we stared hard into the crackling fire that night.

“Why’d you ask me to come to West Virginia?” I asked. 

“Who else would come,” he said, “to shelter in place in the middle of nowhere?”

“But you didn’t ask anyone else, did you?”

“No. I asked you.”

I leafed my fingers through his blond hair, now shoulder length. I kissed him, a real kiss this time. I’d never loved so much, felt so empty. We were two chariots climbing, me leading, finally sure where I wanted to go, Luke trying to follow. I felt him trying. If he reached the top, it had the quality of effort. “I want to learn to love everyone.” If I was briefly breathless, ecstatic, it wasn’t only in triumph, but also like a drowning man just before he goes under the waves. 

“I didn’t have to think of a girl this time,” he said, proud of himself.

“What’d you think of?” I asked, afraid of the answer.

“I thought of your face, when you come.”

“And that worked?”

He nodded.

I let that sink in, the triumph and tragedy of it.

“Why did you come here with me?” he asked. 

“I didn’t know how long it would be.”

“Covid?”

“No. I didn’t know how long it would be before I’d get to see you again.”

It’s easier to give your favor to the friend. He’ll meet you with right-minded reason rather than madness. He’ll offer less pleasure, less pain. It’s as true today as it was back then. But with the lover, you have a chance to climb the walls of the sky, to look at the place beyond.

I woke early, tiptoed to the blue pack, loaded clothes and gear. The blue pack, my sleeping bag on top, my tent tied to the bottom. My road. My future.

In the kitchen, I saw a new loaf of bread on a plate. It was a good loaf, a perfect loaf, rounded on top, fluffy and golden brown. I picked it up. It was light. Underneath, a note—“Don’t leave.”

I walked out into a headwind and freezing temps. I turned once and looked back, saw Luke sitting in the window, staring out at me. 

David Bobrow’s screenplays have been awarded at Oaxaca Film Fest, Cannes Screenplay Contest, and others. His short films have screened at Milwaukee Film Festival, Chicago LGBTQ+ Film Festival and others. His writing has appeared in a variety of journals.

18 April 2025