Out the door of Monica’s bedroom Viral saw a septuagenarian woman holding an armful of paper, plastic, and canvas bags by the apartment’s entrance.

“Viral, this is my roommate, Gigi,” Monica said. Gigi didn’t look like an Iraq War vet named Jaxon who had a penchant for baggy urban wear. She looked like a grandma who hadn’t had to deal with the weight of a husband since the kids were old enough to leave the house. She damn near bounced, Viral thought.

“Hi Viral, I like your style,” Gigi said. Viral put his hands into the pocket of the giant sweatshirt he’d borrowed from Monica’s husband and said thanks.

Gigi’s head looked like an eggplant. By Viral’s estimate her noggin had enough volume to hold at least three of Monica’s little, marble dome stacked end-to-end. She had on a pair of color-shifting bifocals that tinted in the sun. Having just come indoors, her glasses were caught in the middle state between dark and light. The half-tilt shade gave her the elan of a geriatric swinger. For a moment, Viral considered entertaining the imagery, but his better instincts stopped him before his imagination could even take a step toward a fantasized first base.

On to the round dining table located too close to the apartment’s front door, Gigi laid her groceries. She turned two of the four rings she had on her hands and ran her fingers through her pink and blond hair. She unzipped her grey hooded sweatshirt showing a shirt with a floral print that looked to Viral like the window dressing his mom had installed in his bedroom the day after he left for college.

“Whew!” she said, shaking her arms out. “Things are really picking up out there.”

Hanging her bifocals from the gold and silver chain around her neck, she wiped her eyes and forehead with the back of her hands. “There was almost a riot at the grocery store,” she said, “I saw a Latinx woman throw an elbow into the throat of a man who then fell on top of his baby. All for a 24-pack of Charmin Ultra. It’s a sad state of affairs when people are -- that’s why I always have been telling Americans that they use too much T.P. Sheryll Crow said it, too, and I agreed with her. Check my timeline.”

Gigi began to stack the contents of her groceries next to the mixing bowl and candle wax that had dried on the dining table. Viral thought about the plastic pitcher his parents used to keep next to the toilet in their bathroom until he was ten years old. Though he’d never used it himself, he learned from his cousins in India that it was common place to wash their ass-holes with water and their hands after a doo-doo. The practice had struck Viral as unhygienic, savage even, but now it sounded damn near preferable to taking elbows to the trake.

Gigi saw Viral watching her, and she said, “You know, I spent a few years in India back in the ‘60s during the whole Maharishi acid, thing.”

Viral didn’t know what she was talking about.

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“I learned to clean my ass with water and my hand. Jubuulpore. Do you know it?”

Viral told her no, and Gigi shook her head.

“I coulda sworn you were a dot Indian from the size of your lips. But with a nose like that I suppose you could be Sri Lankan, too.” Gigi took a pause from unpacking her sundries and tilted her head toward Viral. It was presumably, Viral thought, to put into practice her skills as an amateur phrenologist. Thankfully, Monica stepped in.

“Sorry, Gee, but me and Viral were just about to step out.”

“Viral and I,” Gigi corrected. Later, Viral would learn that Gigi had been an elementary school teacher before sojourning in search of the Beatles in 1965. Upon returning to the states, the eventual end of the Vietnam War and the election of President Peanut -- as Monica had referred to him -- inspired her to join the swelling ranks of the burgeoning healthcare industry. After certified training to become a registered nurse, Gigi became a part of the emergency department at St. Jude’s Hospital in downtown Wilmington, where she’d been offered the opportunity to float between the pulmonary and cardiac critical care units. Forty years later she was still practicing even though the pension she’d locked in didn’t really require it.

“Well don’t let me keep you,” Gigi said, toting a plastic bag of fruit into the kitchen. “I only got a few hours anyway before I got to report.” She pulled an apple out of the bag she’d put on the island and squeezed it between her fingers.

Grabbing her purse and jacket from the recliner in the living room where she’d tossed them, Monica said, “Alright, Gee, be careful at work, will you?”

“I always am, mammacita.”

Monica stopped at the front door. She watched Gigi smell her fingers, lick them, then reach into her bag of fruit for another apple. From experience, Monica knew that Gigi was never careful...mammacita.

Holding out an apple to Viral, Gigi asked, “One for the road?”

Viral shrugged and reached for it. Monica slapped his wrist. Gigi screamed My Goodness.

“We don’t feed the animals,” Monica said to Gigi with a wry smile, “Bureau policy.”

“Oh, he’s that kind of friend.” Gigi winked at Viral. “The kind you have to shackle to the furniture.”

From the twinkle that flew across her eye like a dying meteorite, Viral had a hunch that Gigi’s time in the Himalayas might have included a lot of fornication with the sherpas; the sherpas who may have looked a bit like him but, you know, less Sri Lankan. He’d only seen it once before, at the Ramadan dinner where he’d pooped himself, but Viral could tell Gigi was one of those westerners who had a fetish for the hash brown. If Monica hadn’t been tugging on the sleeve of his sweatshirt Viral would have slipped whole hog back into the vision of Gigi swinging in the seventies talking about OPEC while taking the d*ck.

Monica slammed the door to her Taurus after she and Viral were back in. Viral was rubbing the wrist she’d slapped. “What was that about?” he asked.

“There’s hand sanitizer in the glove box. Get it.”

Monica stared straight ahead through the windshield as Viral rummaged through her stuff. After applying some Purel to his palms he passed it to Agent Treyna. She was looking at her building rubbing her hands together in a way that Viral could have called wringing. From the way her lips turned down at their corners, Viral got the feeling that Monica was saying some kind of goodbye.