I did worry for a while that I had got “it.” Someone with whom I'd been talking had coughed, though not in my direction. I think it would have had to make a 180-degree turn to get to me; I was six feet away. Mary said I should have stepped back two feet farther, but anyway.
So, there I was, on Wednesday last, with a stuffy head, and a very, very occasional cough, rheumy eyes — as usual — but wondering. . . . No fever, though. Thus Mary didn't think I had it. “But the nurse who came out when we went to pick up your prescriptions yesterday said it wasn't necessarily the determinant,” I said.
The next day, I was more sanguine, and she, when she listened to my rationale, seemed a little less so. And so it goes with us — we play off each other, a give-and-take that I find to be fun and enlivening — except when we don't play off each other and, momentarily, go head to head.
“I think I'm beyond it,” I said to her. This being last Thursday. “That Frenzy we drank last night cleared my head! Drink Frenzy to allay panic!”
“There was that guy who coughed, though. What's his name again?”
I told her, but, again, I reiterated that he'd turned to the side, even though he didn't cough into the crook of his arm, as we're told to do. Besides, I thought I had cleared the five-day incubation threshold.
“Five days?” she said. “Are you sure you're that far along?”
“Yes, yes. Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. . . .”
“Are you counting Sunday as a whole day?”
“Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday . . . well, I admit, I might be on the cusp, but I think I'm fine.”
She said, reassuringly, that she thought so too.
“You know, the thing is,” I said. “I would never want to give it to you, but if you were to give it to me I wouldn't mind.”
“I would like neither of us to get it,” she said.
And so, with that, I gave her another of my wonderful margaritas.