Sunny Days Inside Read online

  That night, after gobbling her food and drinking two bowls of water, Sweet Pea flopped down in her dog bed where she almost never slept. Because of her pushed-in face, her snores were loud.

  She’d waddled around for four hours and now didn’t even have the energy to mooch when Louis and Angelique ate dinner.

  •

  Business was steady after that, with three or four customers a day. Some asked for a daily booking because exercise was important and a routine kept you sane. Louis gave these customers a 15 percent loyalty discount. If somebody called and asked for one of the prebooked times, Louis would mention the special deal and the fact that prebooking meant you were never disappointed.

  This way, five days into his new business, Sweet Pea was pretty much booked solid.

  Angelique’s depression had completely lifted by then. She spent a lot of time watching hairstyling videos on YouTube because Louis told her it was important to keep improving your skills even during a business slowdown. Louis himself no longer walked Sweet Pea because he didn’t want to give up the potential income.

  During the second week of the lockdown, Louis got a scare. Something landed on him in the middle of the night like it had dropped from the ceiling.

  He woke with a gasp, clutching the pillow and blinking into the darkness.

  On the news that day he’d seen a report about animals taking over the empty streets in towns and villages around the world. Sheep and goats roamed freely, eating out of gardens and trimming hedges. One place in South America had been invaded by llamas. In big locked-down cities, hungry rats were forced to venture out even in daylight. There wasn’t enough food now that people weren’t throwing garbage around.

  But it wasn’t a rat on his bed. Or a sheep, or a llama.

  It was Sweet Pea. She kissed Louis’ astonished face.

  “How did you get up on the bed, Sweet Pea?”

  Louis kneaded her and felt not a round body, but a solidly oblong one.

  •

  Any business will have peaks and troughs.

  In other words, an entrepreneur should expect ups and downs. But the skilled entrepreneur, being flexible, will know how to troubleshoot in the down times and not only survive, but flourish.

  Sweet Pea was thirteen years old — two years older than Louis. In dog years, that meant she was sixty-eight. Louis’ grandma, whom he hadn’t been able to visit because of the virus, was sixty-seven. That meant that Sweet Pea, like Grand-Mère, was an old lady.

  So Louis shouldn’t have been surprised the morning he approached Sweet Pea on his bed (she usually joined him sometime in the night now). She took one look at the leash and rolled over onto her back, showing Louis her well-toned furry belly. That’s what dogs did to say, “You are the boss of me, I know. But I really, really don’t want to do what you are asking me to do.”

  Louis picked her up and set her gently on the floor. She rolled onto her back again and gazed at him with pleading eyes.

  Louis sighed. “You’ve had enough, haven’t you, Sweet Pea? You’re tired.”

  Sweet Pea’s tail swished back and forth across the carpet.

  His regular 7:30 a.m. customer was Reo from upstairs, a kid two grades ahead and two feet taller, a track-and-field star. He was probably the person who had most tired Sweet Pea out. He’d probably made her run!

  Rather than cancel by phone, Louis decided to meet Reo, because there was a chance that once Sweet Pea was out of the apartment, she’d change her mind.

  Louis carried her to the lobby. Reo was already there in his shorts, running shoes, and face mask, stretching his long legs. He had his hair in a sumo-style ponytail that Louis had never seen on him before. Normally his hair wasn’t long enough.

  “There’s a problem,” Louis said. He set Sweet Pea down. She rolled onto her back. “See? She doesn’t want to go out.”

  “I’ll carry her,” Reo said. “I’m carrying her half the time anyway. I just need to get out.”

  Reo put the money in Louis’ envelope, gathered Sweet Pea in his arms and held her to his chest. She was already wagging like crazy so Louis opened the door for them, handing Reo the poop bag as he and Sweet Pea jogged off.

  After breakfast, Louis went back down to wait for Reo to come back. The next customer, Danila, sat behind him at school — when there was school. It seemed a hundred years ago. She walked Sweet Pea with her mom and little sister, Mimi.

  Louis just couldn’t see them lugging Sweet Pea around for an hour. And he couldn’t see Sweet Pea enjoying being carried so much. He’d have to cancel.

  In fact, Sweet Pea looked a little queasy when Reo returned and set her on the floor of the lobby.

  “Thanks, man,” Reo said.

  Danila and her family came down the stairs wearing masks. Reo moved six feet away to let them pass. It was automatic now. Nobody had to think about it.

  Like Reo, Mimi had her hair gathered in a ponytail on the top of her head to keep it out of her eyes, but hers spurted like a fountain. Danila wore a headband. She smiled shyly at Louis.

  Their mother, in a bandanna, had a tired, worried face like most of the parents these days. Hers was a little swollen, like she’d been crying.

  Louis told them, “I’m sorry, but Sweet Pea needs a day off.”

  “Are you sick, Sweet Pea?” the girls asked, which prompted the dog to mooch some pats.

  “She’s just tired.”

  “Sweet Pea needs a baby carriage,” Mimi said.

  Louis laughed, but it was a good idea. “Do you have one?”

  “We do,” their mother said. “It’s in the storage room. Wait a minute and I’ll go get it.”

  She came back with a foldable stroller, opened it and brushed it off. “You don’t mind a little dust, do you, Sweet Pea?”

  Right away the girls started arguing about who got to push first, the way they always argued about holding the leash. Louis was still grinning his head off over the stroller. When Danila noticed, she looked embarrassed.

  “Fine,” she told her little sister. “You go first.”

  “I guess if anyone says Sweet Pea isn’t walking,” their mom said, “we can say we’re taking her out for a poop.”

  Louis pulled a bag out of his pocket. “Show them this.”

  “It’s our license!”

  They all laughed.

  When their mom took out her money, Louis lowered his voice, the way they did on TV when people were making deals. “Listen. No charge if I can keep using the stroller.”

  The mom gave him a sidelong look from her swollen eyes. “Is your mom working?”

  “No.”

  She put the money in the envelope as usual. “You can keep the stroller and the money. My husband still has a job.”

  “Bye, Louis!” the girls called on the way out.

  Their mother paused and studied Louis for a moment. “How come your hair looks so good when everybody else is a fright?”

  “My mom’s a hairdresser.”

  “Lucky you.”

  •

  Saved from the entrepreneurial trough thanks to a stroller! Sweet Pea spent the rest of the day perambulating around the neighborhood in comfort. She would whine when she wanted to get down and read a pee-mail message on a lamppost or a tree, then add her reply.

  At the same time, Louis knew that this business opportunity would be short-lived. Soon they’d lift the lockdown. People would be able to go out again without a pet.

  The savvy entrepreneur is always looking for ways to expand and diversify. That day, almost every customer commented on Louis’ neat hair. Everybody else was as shaggy as a llama.

  “Too bad your mom can’t do house calls,” somebody joked.

  Louis had returned to the apartment to find Angelique in front of the computer watching another video. In it, a stylist was demonstrating a
wisping technique on a model.

  Louis stood watching for a minute.

  He thought of Zoom church, which Angelique claimed was only half as good as actual church, but better than no church at all.

  •

  Feeling shaggy? Looking rough?

  GET A ZOOM HAIRCUT!

  Our live stylist and live model will lead you through the process with professional equipment

  (fully sterilized)

  delivered to your door.

  Why not look your best once more?

  (Okay, your almost best!)

  BOOK NOW!

  He didn’t ask to be paid in advance. At Hair by Angelique, you paid after. Louis’ mom charged $45 for a haircut in person, so would only charge $30 for a Zoom cut. In the end, it worked out the same because anybody who could, tipped generously.

  Louis took the bookings, wrote them in the Hair by Angelique section of the appointment scribbler, boiled the scissors, combs and clips, dried and wrapped them in plastic (while wearing rubber gloves and a mask). He dropped the tools off at the door of each client’s apartment (they were called “clients” in a salon), knocked, then hurried back to be the live model for the Zoom haircut. In between, he picked up and dropped off Sweet Pea in the lobby.

  After two days he was as exhausted as Sweet Pea. Sweet Pea herself was getting tired of the stroller rides. Now as she was wheeled out of the building, she cast Louis a mournful glance.

  “Do I have to go out again?” it seemed to say.

  Louis sat on the swivel desk chair in front of the computer. He waved to Sam, who was sitting in front of his computer in apartment 3B. Sam was in grade three, freckled and blue-eyed. He waved back skeptically and let out a puff of air that ruffled his dirty-blond bangs.

  Angelique draped Louis in a towel. Sam’s mother draped him. Louis only saw her hands.

  Sam looked up at his mom. “But I don’t want a boy’s haircut.”

  “Don’t worry,” Angelique reassured him. “We’re not going to cut your hair like Louis’. I’m just using him to show your mom what to do.”

  Louis understood why Sam was worried. Even though Angelique was barely trimming his hair, each time she demonstrated, Louis’ hair was a fraction of an inch shorter. After a few more cuts he’d be as bald as Conner’s dad.

  “No!” Sam covered his head with his arms.

  Louis glanced at the clock. Ten minutes until he had to collect Sweet Pea from the lobby.

  “Listen, Sam,” he said. “Can you meet me back here in fifteen minutes? I have a surprise.”

  “A surprise?” Sam perked up.

  Louis waved and shut off the camera.

  “What now?” Angelique asked.

  “Maman?” he told her. “The customer is always right.”

  •

  Fifteen minutes later, when Sam and his mom Zoomed in for their appointment, a different model waited on the chair, her moppy hair curtaining her pushed-in face.

  “Sweet Pea!” Sam shrieked.

  Angelique took up the spray bottle and misted Sweet Pea’s head. Sam’s mom misted Sam’s.

  Angelique parted the dog fur into sections with the comb, securing each one with clips. Sam’s mom followed along.

  “You’re so cute, Sweet Pea!” Sam cooed. “Now we’ll be twins!”

  Sweet Pea wagged and sighed with happiness.

  Finally, she got to stay home, too.

  6

  The Two Harriets

  They — Jessica, her teenaged brother Jacob and their parents, Nancy and Alan — baked bread. The first batch didn’t rise, so they rolled it out flat and baked accidental crackers instead.

  A lot of accidental crackers.

  They cleaned everything, even the light fixtures. Alan stood on a chair, unscrewed each globe and passed it down to Jacob, who shook the dead flies onto a sheet of newspaper.

  Jacob kept the flies. He transferred them to a cigar box that he kept on the dresser in the room he shared with Jessica, a curtain separating their two sides. When Jessica asked what he planned to do with the flies, he said, “Eat them, of course.”

  He lived to gross her out.

  They learned to play the one musical instrument they had in the apartment — a plastic recorder. Jacob refused because he said spit collected inside it and could transmit the virus. Instead, he assembled a drum set from pots and pans and bowls. Then they recorded themselves playing and singing “Oh, Susanna!” to send to Jessica and Jacob’s grandparents.

  They got a big shock when they played it back. It sounded like a garbage truck backing over a trio of howler monkeys.

  They — just Jessica and her parents this time — learned to crochet. Together they made half an afghan, which they abandoned when the weather warmed up and they ran out of yarn.

  Jacob wouldn’t crochet, or give them a reason why not. He said it was “obvious.”

  “Are you gender-stereotyping, young man?” Nancy asked.

  They finished a 2,000-piece jigsaw puzzle of the night sky. Jacob worked on Orion’s belt. So his pants wouldn’t fall down, he said.

  They drew pictures and because none of them was a very good artist (Alan’s people had no necks), they reused the paper when they taught themselves origami.

  They reread all the books in the apartment. They didn’t actually own that many books, being not only avid library users, but four people working and “going to school” in a two-bedroom apartment where shelf space was limited. Jessica still had a few treasured favorites: Frog and Toad, Charlotte’s Web, Harriet the Spy. Jacob: One Hundred Best Fart Jokes.

  They could borrow ebooks from the library, of course, but the point of these activities according to Nancy and Alan was to keep their kids, and themselves, off their computer and phones for at least part of the day. But as those days got longer and their tempers shorter (Jacob’s, mainly), Nancy and Alan gave up trying to force their kids to do offline things. Also, there were so many wonderful activities, like square dancing and yoga (Jacob: “Kill me now!”) that they could only do watching YouTube videos.

  “We should all learn a language,” Nancy suggested at dinner one night. They were having Jessica’s favorite: Moroccan chicken with raisins.

  “What language?” Alan asked, passing around the bottomless basket of hard, half-burnt crackers.

  “How about Mandarin?”

  “Seriously?” Jacob said. “That’s, like, the hardest language in the world.”

  “Maybe,” Nancy said. “That’s why I think we should all learn it together.”

  Jacob coughed and sent cracker crumbs spewing across the table.

  “Ick,” Jessica said. “Did you just infect us?”

  “I’ll learn Mandarin with you, sweetheart,” Alan said.

  Jacob refused, shaking his head of overgrown hair. He looked like an Irish setter now. Both he and Jessica had inherited the red from their dad.

  Nancy said, “You have friends who speak Mandarin, Jacob. You could talk to them.”

  “They would laugh me out of the room if I tried to speak Mandarin. Not that I’ll ever be in the same room with them again ever in my life.”

  “Oh, honey, you will.”

  “When? Next year? By then my social development will be stunted.”

  “You’re already stunted,” Jessica told him. She turned to Alan and Nancy. “He’s collecting dead flies. He says he’s going to eat them.”

  Alan looked up from his dinner. “He’s what?”

  “Actually, you’re eating them.” Jacob pointed at Jessica’s plate.

  “I’m going to throw up!” she said, pushing it away.

  “Jacob, I know this is hard,” Nancy said, “but we’ll get through it as a family.”

  “I’m fifteen! I don’t need a family! I need a peer group!”

  This sort of argum
ent occurred whenever their parents introduced an activity to distract them from what was happening in the world. Their reasonableness eventually wore Jacob down, as usual. He said he’d learn a second language, but one he chose himself.

  •

  Jessica missed her friends, too. She knew most of the kids in the building. They went to the same school — when there was school — and played or hung out in the playground just behind the apartment building.

  Back when they were allowed to go out for walks, they waved to each other from across the street. They texted and phoned, Skyped, Zoomed or FaceTimed. But after a while, Jessica lost interest and burrowed deeper into her family cocoon. Since they were all stuck at home, what was there to talk about anyway?

  The one girl in the building Jessica didn’t know had moved into the next-door apartment only a couple of months before the virus hit. She didn’t go to the neighborhood school or hang out in the playground. She was Deaf and went to Deaf school. Her dad was Deaf, too. Sometimes Jessica saw them out on the balcony talking with their hands. It looked pretty cool.

  The girl’s name was Meena. Nancy found it out when she met the mother, who was hearing, in the hall shortly after they moved in.

  One day Jacob was counting his fly collection, which he did whenever he wanted to drive Jessica out of their room. He yanked back the curtain and glared from under all his hair.

  “You ate two of my flies. There are only sixteen now.”

  “You’re making me sick!” Jessica screamed.

  She stormed out, all the way to the balcony, which was about as far away from Jacob as she could get.

  Meena’s balcony door slid open and she stuck her head out. Jessica smiled and waved. Meena’s eyes widened and she ducked right back inside, though her hand did flutter in Jessica’s direction before the door closed again.

  Shy, Jessica thought.

  •

  After just one Mandarin lesson, Alan switched to Spanish. Jacob said there were twenty-three languages on the app he’d downloaded. He wanted to choose carefully, but at the moment was trying to decide between Icelandic and Swahili.