Jon Athan - Am I Beautiful?

Adam asked, “And what am I supposed to do until I can work again? Sit at home and watch you work your fingers to the bone? Clean the house? Do some gardening?”

“You can brainstorm a big ‘comeback’ campaign for when this is all over. You can work with Dallas remotely and be ready to hit the ground running when the time comes. You can stay healthy. You can enjoy your time with me and Riley. Just because we’re going to be stuck at home that doesn’t mean we’re alone. We have each other, hun.”

She crawled over to Adam. She sat up behind him, wrapped her arms around his neck, and rubbed her chest against his back. He felt her erect nipples on his bare back through her nightgown. Her warmth— her love —couldn’t defrost his cold heart. He pulled away from her and went to the window. He saw three teenagers loitering on the street in front of his home.

Punks, he thought.

Amber asked, “Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” Adam said.

From the tone of his voice, Amber knew he was lying. She said, “Adam, we need to—”

“I’m fine,” Adam interrupted.

“Then why won’t you look at me?”

“I just don’t want to talk about this anymore.”

“It’s important.”

“It is important, but this conversation isn’t.”

Amber asked, “What’s that supposed to mean?”

As he grabbed a white shirt from his dresser drawer, Adam said, “It means I don’t want to have this damn conversation right now.”

Turning her head to follow his every step without getting out of bed, Amber said, “Adam, you have to calm down. Stress isn’t good for anyone, especially right now. Come back to bed. Let’s talk about this.”

“I’m going to ‘brainstorm,’ in my office,” Adam said in a sarcastic tone. He muttered, “Someone has to fix things around here.”

Amber leaned forward and said, “Adam, please. I just wanted to feel like we were…” Adam exited the room and closed the door behind him. Amber leaned back against the headboard and said, “Like we were going to be okay…”

She thought about chasing after him. In her eyes, Adam was a good man. He was a supportive husband and caring father. But he didn’t handle pressure well. He never hit her or even raised a hand at her, but like most couples, they had their fair share of arguments. She didn’t want to disturb Riley’s sleep with a fight. She curled up in bed and thought about the state of the world and their future.

Adam’s home office was on the first floor. On his way down, he stopped by their nursery and checked on Riley. She slept in her crib without a blanket, but the room was warm. He kissed her forehead and stroked her short dark brown hair. In a gentle whisper, he told her the words he couldn’t tell Amber: ‘ I promise everything’s going to be okay. ’

He didn’t tell Amber those words because he didn’t want to add to his stress. He didn’t want to disappoint the love of his life if he failed to salvage his business. He could tell Riley because she couldn’t understand him, even if she were awake. He was a stubborn, anxious, frightened man, but he loved his family.

He went down to his office. It was a small room with a desk, an iMac and a printer, and an executive rolling chair and a recliner. Shelves filled with business textbooks, self-help books, novels, and memoirs from successful entrepreneurs cluttered the shelves behind his desk. Pictures of his family decorated the green walls.

He paced around in his office, floorboards creaking with each step. He mumbled incoherently, as if he were hoping a random word would spark a genius idea. His computer was open to a blank Word document, the text cursor blinking continuously. He spent about forty-five minutes walking in circles in his office.

An idea never hit him.

He fell into his rolling chair and stared at the monitor. He could hear someone laughing with each blink of the cursor— ha… ha… ha… HA! He closed the document and opened a web browser. He searched the news. Every headline concerned the pandemic: Sporting events canceled, schools closed nationwide, the stock market tumbling. It all made him anxious.

So, he turned his attention to the local crime news. He read about burglaries, shootings, Harvey Weinstein’s prison sentence, and a car accident caused by an intoxicated mother.

One headline caught his undivided attention: Dead man found horribly mutilated inside a vehicle in Skid Row . The article detailed the discovery of Matt Wolfe’s body days earlier and the police’s call for help from the public in finding the unknown assailant. The author described every graphic detail of the murder. Adam’s balls ached as he read about Matt’s severed genitals, then his throat tightened as he read about the amputated penis found hanging from Matt’s neck.

However, the description of Matt’s Glasgow smile—tame compared to the rest of the article—shocked him the most. Terrible memories of his last night in Tokyo shuffled in his mind.

“Mi… Miki?” he whispered.

Alexa Pérez—a ten-year-old girl—sat on a toilet, surrounded by the stall’s blue walls. Her sneakers barely touched the grimy tile floor. A surgical mask hung from the door’s sliding lock. She used her cell phone while urinating, watching clips of dogs on Instagram and videos of people dancing on TikTok. Only the grating noise from her cheap cell phone blared through the park’s public restroom.

Her phone buzzed with the arrival of a text message. Riddled with errors, it read: U comming 2 Lulu’s house?

Alexa responded: Omw .

Schools had been closed statewide for three days now, and they were expected to stay closed until the end of the academic year due to the ongoing medical crisis. Alexa’s parents managed to keep her home during the first two days, but they couldn’t watch her all the time. They couldn’t lock her in her bedroom and throw away the key, either.

Alexa’s father was a manager at a grocery store and her mother worked at a gas station. They were considered essential workers. So, while they worked, they allowed Alexa to go out as long as she agreed to stay in their neighborhood, wear a mask, and wash her hands thoroughly with soap. Schools were meant to educate, but parents often looked at them as a form of daycare.

And without daycare, they didn’t have a lot of options to take care of their kids.

Alexa wiped herself, then she pulled up her pants and flushed the toilet. She exited the stall and headed over to the sinks. The restroom door was closed but unlocked. It could only be locked with a key. She rinsed her hands, then she lathered them in soap. She rubbed her hands together for about fifteen seconds before she rinsed them again.

She headed to the exit while drying her hands with a brown paper towel. She gasped before she could reach for the door handle. She remembered about her mask. She hurried back to the stall and found her mask hanging from the door’s lock. Just as she grabbed it, the restroom door swung open. The hinges howled like an injured dog. Slow, clacking footsteps approached.

Alexa put her mask on. When she turned around, she found Miki standing in front of the sinks, blocking her path to the exit. It was a warm day, so Miki’s trench coat was unusual. Three big beads of sweat rolled down from her hairline. Her cloth mask and gloves were normal, though. Alexa had seen people wearing everything from surgical and cloth masks to goaltender masks and plastic bags to cover their faces since the pandemic began.

“Excuse me,” Alexa said as she stepped forward, planning on squeezing past her.