Sunday, March 22, 2020

The laundry man waves and calls out to me as I pass his shop. He’s shutting down his storefront so he won’t have walk-in customers, but if l want the usual pickup next Sunday, I should just send him a text message. Traffic is slow, with maybe a half-dozen cars passing each minute on a usually traffic-jammed street. Soon after I reach the office, we hear lushly orchestrated pop music fade in, gradually getting louder until it is overwhelming. It isn’t anyone’s phone or computer: a truck is slowly rolling past, four stories below us, with large loudspeakers blasting the sound. Someone jokes that it is “in honor of the Feast of Corona.” At the supermarket, the cashiers are wearing something like flimsy helmets: a sheet of transparent plastic, like the ones once used for overhead projectors, covers their faces, attached to a headband labeled “anti-virus” in caution-tape yellow and black. Last week, the store replaced their register keyboards with touchscreens, which appear harder to use, especially when the cashiers are wearing latex gloves. The second screens, which customers can see, are harder to read. I have to assume that they’re charging the right prices. I only know for sure when I see the receipt.