Pandemic

Driving through New Haven she was flooded with nostalgic memories of her postgraduate days at Yale, especially when she passed by her old apartment block. In sixteen years nothing had changed from the outside. Slowing to a halt at the front door, she could practically smell the exotic flavors that permeated her cramped studio apartment year round thanks to the thick hallway carpets, which absorbed her multi-ethnic neighbors' cooking, magnified the aromas, and then released them. Gwen wondered if her unit still had the same blue and pink pastel-colored walls, which she and her friends had impulsively slapped on one day and regretted thereafter.

Her career since graduation had been so demanding that in retrospect the four years spent completing a PhD at Yale while working two part-time jobs struck her as carefree by comparison. By college, Gwen had accepted her driving ambition as part of her makeup; neither good nor bad, but as much a part of her as her passion for travel or her tireless work ethic. Most of her fellow students kept the goal of their PhD as their primary focus. Not Gwen. She planned her life well beyond the degree. But she never envisioned a career within government. As a student, she assumed she would get her own lab and a national health research grant. To one day have a shot at a Nobel Prize like her mentor, Dr. Isaac Moskor.

Savard was surprised to realize that she hadn't seen Isaac in almost four years. He never left New Haven. And she rarely found time to make it back. They had kept in touch by e-mail and phone, but Isaac wasn't much of a phone-talker and even less of a social writer. Professionally, Gwen tried to keep abreast of Moskor's research because many considered him the leading researcher into antiviral antibiotics. Though fiercely secretive with his work, he trusted Gwen enough to share breakthroughs with her.

Driving by her favorite student haunts, Gwen meandered her way across New Haven. Eventually she reached the sleepy middle-class neighborhood at the edge of town where Moskor lived. She pulled up to the curb in front of his modest, fifty-year-old beige bungalow. Like her former student residence, the house had not changed in the past twenty years.

Isaac Moskor met her at the front door. At least six-four and 250 pounds, he had a square face, slanting forehead, and a protuberant jaw that one might associate with professional wrestling, not academia. In his late sixties, his posture was still bone-straight and age had not diminished his mass. Though Savard was taller than average at five-eight, Moskor still had to stoop down to hug her. He held her in a tentative, awkward embrace, as if afraid of crushing her in his massive arms. Acts of physical intimacy were the only times Gwen ever sensed uncertainty from her mentor.

Moskor stood back and sized her up from toes to hair. "Still too skinny, but otherwise you look okay, kid," he said with his deep Jersey accent.

Gwen smiled warmly, realizing how much she had missed the man. "Can you still be a kid at forty-two?"

"To a sixty-nine-year-old? Absolutely." He spun with surprising speed for a man of his age and size. "Don't stand there like a potted plant. Come. Come."

Gwen followed him through the small foyer and into the living room. With two worn gray corduroy sofas, a frayed throw rug, and a few charcoal abstract prints, the room was as utilitarian as the rest of his house. Gwen knew that to Moskor and his wife houses were for sleeping and eating. The lab was where one lived.

"Where's ClaraT' Gwen asked, sinking into one of the surprisingly comfortable sofas.

Moskor shrugged. "Who knows? Maybe at the lab. Maybe at our daughter's." His face crumpled into a half grin, the deeper creases of which displayed the first evidence of his having aged since their last meeting. "The secret to our forty-plus-year marriage is a deep and abiding indifference to one another's whereabouts."

Gwen laughed. "I don't know why Clara puts up with you. "

Moskor shrugged again. "My movie-star good looks, I suppose." He dropped into the sofa beside Gwen. "If you want anything after your trip — like a beer, soda, bite to eat, or whatever-you know where the kitchen is. Nothing's moved. I'm too old to wait on anybody."

Realizing how parched she was from the trip, she got up and walked into the same kitchen where she had spent so many evenings helping Clara prepare dinner. "Want anything?" she asked Moskor.

"Wouldn't say no to a beer."

Gwen returned in under a minute with two opened beer bottles, knowing better than to bother with glasses in this house.

"How's the lawyer?" Moskor asked as Gwen sat back down on the couch beside him.

"Peter moved out a couple of days ago," she said. "We're getting divorced."

Moskor nodded, showing as much surprise as if Gwen had told him that Peter was out parking the car.

"Best for both of us, Isaac. We tried, but it hasn't worked for a long time. We're night and day, really."