Jenna Orkin
New York City

   In the era known as BC (Before Corona) it used to be a nuisance to have to stay home and wait for the plumber. You would chafe about how they'd given you a window of four hours during which you couldn't get anything done outside the apartment. What chutzpah! Who does business like that?! "I'll be there between one and five?" Answer: Pretty much all the utilities.

   Now it wouldn't matter. "Come any time," you could say. One hour is like the next, as is a day or a week or... 

   But now it wouldn't help; no workman will come. Barring emergencies, you're on your own. What's an emergency? In my friend's building, they spell it out: Fire or flood. Stopped up toilet? Mouse? Rat? Meh.

   I love my dentist. Is he still my dentist? BC, I worried he might retire, even though his is the kind of vocation that doesn't fade. Now I have the feeling that if life ever goes back to "normal," the landscape will have changed: An awful lot of the old routine won't be there to resume.

   BC, I got a call from my dentist's office. They'd sent a reminder for a cleaning in November but I was busy and felt fine and ignored it. But when they called in March, I thought, "Why not?" and went in. That, as it turned out, was the last time I took the subway. And as of today, fifty MTA employees have died of coronavirus.

   The hygienist was there but for the first time ever, the dentist wasn't. Nor were there any other patients. Coronavirus had been hovering in the news but only a minority of people were changing their habits. When the city shut down a few days later, I thought, He called all his patients to ensure they'd weather the Long Emergency, as James Howard Kunstler describes it. 

   But maybe the patients had been canceling and I was the only sucker the office could rope in.