Love in the Time of Corona

You get lonely during a pandemic. I guess that’s why I struck up a relationship with Suzy, a chicken who lives in a group house on Harvard Avenue with several other lady chickens. I don’t call them “hen houses” because it evokes a complicated period in the early 1970s when I worked as a bouncer in an east Texas bordello called The Hen House. I wore red leather chaps and a white derby, a gun belt slung low around my waist, a seven-shooter in the holster for when the cowboys got unruly. A seven-shooter was a pistol of my own invention because I noticed in cowboy movies the bad guy would listen for six shots, assume you’re out of ammo and come at you. I surprised the heck out of a lot of rowdy cowboys with that seventh shot, let me tell you.

But I digress.

Suzy the chicken. In recent weeks, whenever I came down Harvard Avenue, she’d poke her little beak through the chicken wire, turn her head and blink her nictitating membrane at me. It wasn’t a “come-hither” winky-blink, nothing like that. It was a lonely blink. These days when I stare at myself for hours in the bathroom mirror, my blink is lonely, too.

Look, I know what’s worrying you – that fella in China who got involved with a pangolin and started the current global catastrophe. Hey, that guy ate the pangolin. I had no plans to eat Suzy. I didn’t even want her eggs – scrambled, over-easy or sunny-side up with a dash of paprika. This wasn’t going to be a transactional relationship. All I wanted was conversation.

Really – I just wanted to talk. The only other . . . human . . . I’ve been talking to for the last two months is my wife, Mary.

The other day, Mary said, “Please pass the salt.”

The next day, I answered. “Okay.”

The day after that, she said, “Thanks.”

Come on! I can’t just sit there at the kitchen table with Mary, day after day. I love her, but gosh darn it, a man needs something more during a pandemic.

So, why Suzy? you ask. Why a chicken? A married man chatting up another woman, even with six feet between the two of you – tongues will wag. But if somebody sees you talking to a chicken – who’s going to think twice about that? Besides, the other couples on my street with their perfect marriages – I don’t want them to know my marriage is, well, rocky. This pandemic business. I’m nervy, Mary’s snappish. I know things will calm down when we can all come out of our houses in 2027 when they invent that vaccine. But until then . . . well, I needed Suzy. 

So the other day, just after dawn, I paid Suzy a visit. I waited at a respectful distance until she laid her egg and settled herself. Then I approached.

“Hi Suzy. You don’t mind if I call you Suzy, do you?”

Suzy cocked her head the way chickens do, held me in her one-eyed gaze. She did not nictate her nictitating membrane, not even once. She was listening. Really listening.

“I’m lonely, Suzy,” I said. “And I know you are, too. I pass by here, I see it. Look, I don’t want anything unseemly. I’d just like to stop by once in a while . . .  to talk.”

You know that endless moment when you open your heart to a chicken, make yourself utterly vulnerable? Wait for emotional reciprocity that might never come? One of the female chickens standing behind Suzy snickered. 

But not Suzy. Her beak-lips slowly parted. And you’re not going to believe this. You’re not going to believe what happened next. It started with a cluck, then the sounds clarified. There was no mistaking it. As clear as day, and with a slight Delco accent, Suzy said four words to me:

“Please pass the salt.”

My eyes went wide. I backed away, turned and ran. It wasn’t going to be any different with a chicken! Marriage is sacred, even the boring parts! Chastened, I ran all the way home, burst through the front door intending to sweep Mary into my arms. 

When I rushed into the kitchen, she was at the table. Across from her sat a fox – in my chair, drinking from my coffee cup! 

Mary clutched the top of her pink nightie – the one she’d worn on our wedding night. 

“A wife gets lonely during a pandemic!” she cried.

The fox winked at me, and took another sip of coffee. If I’d had my trusty seven-shooter, I’d have shot him on the spot.

Writer Jon Cohen lives in Swarthmore.