Page 60 of 56 Days
“Well, then... yeah. I suppose. This is about my normal time.”
Oliver looks around the courtyard. “God,” he says, “it’s so quiet.”
“No traffic. I think that’s the big change today.”
“No anything. So—what’s the plan?”
“Well, I need to log into our system by nine,” Ciara says. “Do you mind if I take the spare bedroom after lunch? I have to take a couple of calls then, so...” Over the weekend, they dragged the dining table into the spare bedroom to serve as a desk. The deal is that one of them will take the makeshift office in the morning, the other in the afternoon. Whoever doesn’t have it gets to lie on the couch, use the coffee table, or sit at the breakfast bar—or even work from bed, if they like. “I’m just going to tackle emails this morning. I can do that from the couch.”
“Fine by me.”
“And I think I’ll go for a walk around noon. I might even try to do that every day and I’m telling you this so I actuallydodo it. Accountability, and all that jazz.”
“Then here’s what we’ll do,” Oliver says, leaning forward. “I’ll take the bedroom for the first half of the day, you have the couch. When you go for your walk, I’ll make lunch. Then, if you don’t mind, I’ll go for a run around five, and you can do dinner?”
She makes a face.
“Okay,” he says. “Startdinner. Like, preheat the oven.”
“I can do that. Although you might have to show me how to work the oven.”
“And then tonight, I thought we could start onFrom the Earth to theMoon?”
It’s some show about the moon landings he’s been on about.
She smiles. “Sounds like a plan.”
Oliver settles back into his chair, satisfied.
She’s noticed this about him: he needs a plan in place and will build it if there isn’t one already. He has to know what’s happening now and next and after that, and what’s happening has to have some kind of structure to it. She saw the logic in this for their empty Saturdays or lazy Sundays, but it seems like overkill for a weekday that’s mostly going to be spent on work.
Still, she supposes having some structure to their days in lockdown can’t be a bad thing.
Ciara risks a look at Yoga Woman’s balcony.
It’s empty.
She’s gone.
When Ciara reaches the end of Harcourt Street, she sees that the gates at the corner of Stephen’s Green are closed. She isn’t able to read the text on theneon-yellowsignscable-tiedto the railings until she’s crossed the road and is standing in front of them, but the branding is familiar by now and she’s already guessed what they say: due toCOVID-19, they’ve closed the park.
This doesn’t make any sense—it’s apark?—but there’s no one to complain to. She starts walking around the perimeter railing instead, catching glimpses here and there of the perfectly empty green, leafy spaces beyond. It looks peaceful but doesn’t sound it; there’s a cacophony of incessant squawking coming from inside. Apparently the seagulls that usually terrorize Grafton Street shoppers have already commandeered the park for themselves.
A Luas tram slinks past carrying just three passengers. Two uniformed Gardaí pass on bicycles, barely going faster than her own two feet, weaving figure eights on the road and chatting casually to each other like they’re out for a Sunday spin. She’s one of only a handful of pedestrians.
There’s also an ominous buzzing noise she can’t quite place—quiet at first, then steadily growing louder. She thinks an alarm has been set off somewhere until she sees the man standing twenty feet away, manipulating a set of handheld controls, looking upward. She follows his gaze and spies the drone, a tiny black object moving steadily across the midday sky, just above the rooftops, capturing bird’s-eyefootage of anear-emptycity.
Ciara had imagined getting a coffee and drinking it on a bench by the duck pond in the park, but now she sees how naive such a plan was: the park is locked and there is nowhere to get a coffee. Even the little convenience store at the top of Grafton Street, while still open as an essential business, has an Out of Order sign on itsself-servecoffee machine.
She will have to think of something else to do each day, somewhere else to sit and think. Because she knows she needs it, the processing time. She’s not used to being with another persontwenty-fourhours a day, and everything has happened so fast.
Life has suddenly exploded on her, that’s what it feels like. She came to Dublin. She found Oliver. An unprecedented global emergency began. She and Oliver have moved in together.
And that’s just all in the last month.
Last night, after Oliver had fallen asleep and rolled away from her, she’d lain awake in the dark for a little while, unable to quiet her mind as her thoughts raced. It’s not that she doesn’t want to be where she is—on the contrary, she’sexactlywhere she wants to be. Things are working out for her here better than she’d even hoped—and quickly.
But the speed is the very problem. It feels as if some unseen force has a hold of both her elbows and is pulling her along, like those protestors you see on the news being dragged away—their toes barely touching the ground—by police in riot gear. It’s not that she’s being pulled toward a place she doesn’t want to go, it’s just that...
