Toni considered herself to be an organized person. Her job as a database administrator didn't leave her much room for ambiguity or uncertainty. It wasn't that she was inflexible or rigid. Chaos could come at her from any direction, and she had to be prepared for problems. Vigilance, prudence, preparedness, those were her duties.
It sounded better than to say she spent forty-some odd hours at a desk working on computers. Even if the servers themselves had a physical problem, she was seldom the one dispatched to handle it. She was at the top of the heap. Someone else could handle that, and if they couldn't... well, then she hadn't prepared them properly. It was like being the coach of a football team. If her team lost the game, at least half the blame was on her. So long as the player didn't throw the ball the wrong way or didn't fail to get a three-pointer...
Toni didn't watch sports. After all, she was a database administrator.
Despite having to respond to problems at any time during her time at work, she still had settled into some weekly routines. On Wednesdays, she took a slightly longer lunch to get Thai food at the restaurant across the street from her building. Thursday nights were for groceries, the night when the shops were consistently the least crowded. Friday evenings meant a hamburger from one of a set of rotating Americana chains between her work and her apartment. On Saturdays, she would take a long walk through the park and wind up at the mall to watch whatever movies had come out the previous day. On Sundays, she attended her local church and sung hymns with her community. She did so very quietly, as she was completely tone-deaf.
Monday would return soon after, and she'd be ready to get back to her job again.
One Monday... things had taken a turn.
The movie theater and the mall had closed. The restaurants near her work that were still open had gone take-out only. Her church had re-opened after a narrow window of closure, but not narrow enough for her liking. Several pastors around the nation swore, with the same certainty and clarity with which that they had conducted all their sermons, that divine forces would protect the congregation... only to be struck down themselves. It was disillusioning, for sure.
Many had been furloughed, laid off or otherwise displaced by this crisis. Toni's office graciously had allowed her to work remotely from her home until it was safe to return. One of her brave and unfortunate subordinates could be dispatched to the site if something physical went wrong, but the office would be otherwise left as empty as possible.
At first, Toni was excited. Now she could just crawl out of bed and do her job in her underwear. She didn't even have to brush her hair. Suddenly, a job that her bosses had insisted could not be performed remotely... definitely could. Toni rolled with it, set up her desk near the window of her bedroom and established a home base to operate from for the next few weeks.
That was in March.
Weeks turned into months... and the routine Toni had developed turned more into a groove. As summer stretched into fall, it could more accurately be described as a 'rut.'
On Sundays, she would order groceries to get her through the week. (She always tipped the delivery boys generously, as they were quite literally risking their lives to keep her safe and fed.) As the weeks moved on, her desire to cook anything elaborate dwindled. Over time, her grocery list had ossified: one or two boxes of cereal, milk, peanut butter, jam, sliced bread, a small box of snack crackers and a 12-pack of Coca-Cola Zero Sugar that she rationed out to last the entire week.
For breakfast, she'd have a bowl of whatever cereal she wasn't currently sick of eating. For lunch, a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, a dish she could never get sick of. For dinner...
Takeout.
She generally liked the restaurant experience. Lots of people complained about the Americana chains like Applebee's or Chili's, but... she always enjoyed her meals there. There were the rumors that, behind the scenes, the food was pre-packaged and pre-fab dishes in aseptic plastic packaging, and the 'cooks' job was merely to reheat and plate. The 'kitchen' may have been nothing but a row of microwaves, like a 50's automat. None of that mattered to her. It was still tasty.
Eating the same stuff after it had survived a half-hour drive from the restaurant in a styrofoam container... was less nice. After a few weeks of isolation, it was nice to have something familiar... until she started to have slightly cold takeout every night.
Toni mixed up what she got as much as she could. She'd never eaten so multiculturally before. She tried a few dishes from a local Pakistani restaurant, and even some sushi from a restaurant that was apparently one of the best in the country. But mostly... she reverted to burgers, chicken and other typical American dinner fare.
Once or twice, she had McDonald's delivered to her apartment. MCDONALD'S. It wasn't that she loved McDonald's and missed it. She just missed the idea that she could essentially be anywhere in the contiguous 48 states, move less than a kilometer in any direction... and then have the familiar foamy crunch of McNuggets. It was an artifact of the old world that still tasted just like it did before, one aspect of life that had not been turned entirely on its head.
Tonight, after a day that was stressful, but not heart-poundingly so, Toni wanted to try something a little different. Too often, a bad day ended with her staring down a puck of charred cow flesh. She didn't want to begin associating hamburgers with stress. Toni looked up Italian restaurants to see one that could make her a Fettuccine Alfredo, a meal she definitely didn't have the skill to whip up herself.
Strangely, only one restaurant appeared in the search when she typed in 'fettuccine alfredo.' How was there only one proper Italian restaurant in this town? There were TWO Ecuadorian restaurants, possibly run by a pair of feuding brothers.
Maybe Italian food was one of those things where snobby chefs from the old country insisted that Fettuccine Alfredo could not be enjoyed out of a takeout box. It simply MUST be enjoyed in a romantically lit restaurant while someone played a violin and the chef watched from a distance from behind his mustache the size of a hang glider.
Perhaps that was so, but she was not about to leave her apartment. As with so much American cuisine, the restaurant that decided to compromise the integrity of their dish would be the one to get her cash. They could call it 'fusion' if they wanted an excuse to pander to the dull American tongue.
Toni clicked the black button at the bottom of the page that completed the order. A simple animation of a cartoon hamburger falling into a takeout bag, the lettuce and tomato fluttering apart briefly before entering the bag, which itself fell into the bed of a cartoon pickup truck. The estimated delivery time was forty-five minutes.
Maybe it wouldn't take so long if they didn't make the burgers so big, Toni thought to herself. Then it wouldn't be necessary to find someone with a pickup truck.
--
Someone knocked at Toni's door. It brought her out of her stupor as she sat on her couch, staring out into space and barely listening to the sitcom repeats she had on the TV. Denied her beloved movies, she did not find any comfort in modern television programming. It was like she was a vampire who was forbidden from drinking human blood and, in the spirit of consolation, was offered a refreshing Clamato.
Toni dragged herself off the couch and made her way to the door. She normally had a mask hanging from the coat hook near the door, but they must have all been in the hamper, waiting to be washed. Instead, she pulled up the collar of her T-shirt and pinned it in place with the nose pads on her eyeglasses.
Allegedly protected from the outside world, Toni opened the door.
It was a woman. Most of the food delivery people she had met were men, with maybe five or six women bringing her food in the months since she started doing this every day.
The delivery woman had wavy brown hair past the shoulder and dark eyebrows. The rest of her face was covered by a blue earloop surgical mask, but her green-brown eyes definitely portrayed the smile that was surely beneath it. She had an oversized poofy winter coat that reached past her hips and thick leggings above her fur-lined boots.
"Hi!" The delivery woman said with enthusiasm that Toni couldn't hope to match. She held out the to-go bag like it was a present she couldn't wait to give. "Are you Toni?"
"I am." She put her hand out and grabbed the end of the stapled paper takeout bag, the closest contact she was comfortable with. "Thank you very much for this."
