May 24, 2020
Fourteen Days
Goldfarb knew it was on him. He knew that. Rachel Switzer made it perfectly clear she was happy to have sex on their second date even though she was leaving for a 10-day trek in Nepal the next day, but Goldfarb decided he would prefer to wait. Sex and then 10 days of longing and wondering and worrying was not going to work for him. He had waited this long. He could wait another 10 days.
10 days was a piece of cake. He had waited 20 years. He could do 10 days standing on his head.
“Shoot yourself,” she said, kissing him gently on his cheek when he dropped her off.
Shoot yourself. He was pretty sure she was joking. He was pretty sure she knew it was ‘suit yourself.’ But Goldfarb was not going to ask. It was Rachel Switzer.
Lewberg had nearly wet himself when Goldfarb told him he had run into the newly divorced Rachel Switzer inspecting mangoes in the fruit aisle of Brunos—an upscale grocery store on Avenue Road.
“Rachel Switzer,” he had exclaimed. “Rachel fucking Switzer.”
Goldfarb hadn’t told Lewberg that Rachel Switzer had spent nearly 15 minutes inspecting mangoes. He didn’t want to sully her reputation. And he certainly didn’t tell Lewberg that Rachel Switzer invited him in after the second date and he had said no. Because Lewberg would have fucking killed him.
So 10 days.
10 days was easy.
10 days was a walk in the park.
There had been a ‘hey sexy’ text from Katmandu on the second day and a ‘miss u’ text on the eighth day again from Kathmandu. And then a short ‘I can’t wait to tell you all about my trip’ email and photo from what looked to be Heathrow Airport.
Then, on the day Rachel Switzer got home, the Canadian government announced a mandatory 14-day quarantine for all returning travellers.
14 days.
Goldfarb knew it was on him.
Rachel Switzer was a very attractive woman Goldfarb and Lewberg knew back in the day. She was part of a group they used to hang with. Softball on Saturday mornings. Cycling down to the Beaches on Sundays. BBQs at Lewberg’s. She was a friend of a friend but then the friend stopped coming around but Rachel Switzer kept hanging out. Word was she dated older richer guys. A stockbroker from New York. A guy who owned a plastics factory. Those men never showed up for softball or cycling and there was much debate about whether they actually existed. She flirted with Goldfarb. Would buy him Dairy Queen dipped cones after softball. Lewberg harangued him until finally Goldfarb worked up the nerve to ask her out. She said yes. As if it was nothing. As if he was asking her to borrow a pen. As if she was wondering what took him so long. She even sounded excited. Goldfarb said, “Saturday?” Rachel Switzer said, “I can’t Saturday. My mom is forcing me to go out with a friend of the family. He lives in Australia. As if I would ever go live in Australia. I can go on Sunday. Sushi?” Goldfarb hated sushi but it was Rachel Switzer.
Rachel Switzer winked and said, “And you know what they say about sushi?”
Goldfarb didn’t know what they said about sushi. He was sure she meant oysters. But he didn’t correct her.
Because it was Rachel Switzer.
She cancelled the Sunday date. Then she went off and married the lawyer from Australia and she just fell off the earth. Now she was back.
Rachel Switzer was sending Goldfarb naked pictures. Goldfarb, in all his life, had never had anyone send him naked pictures before. A drunken Lewberg had once sent an out-of-focus picture of what might or might not have been his junk, but that didn’t really count. Goldfarb had not asked for naked pictures. They had just started arriving. To be fair, the first few had been fairly innocent. Just a glimpse here and a flash there. But they had gotten progressively more risqué. And now they were just naked pictures. Each picture arrived in a text with no added words aside from a capitalized countdown announcement.
NINE DAYS LEFT.
Nine days had been a topless Rachel Switzer dressed in jeans and wearing a Blue Jay baseball cap standing in front of the mirror.
Goldfarb had not known how to react to the pictures.
A thumbs-up emoji?
A heart?
In the end he chose to just reply with a short ‘thanks.’
He did not speak to Rachel Switzer. He did not FaceTime with Rachel Switzer. They texted a few times a day. Benign and innocent texts about her trip and the weather and the situation.
Rachel Switzer sent the same text every morning at 8:00 am. The text said:
‘Up and Adam.’ Followed by an emoji of the sun.
Goldfarb was convinced Rachel Switzer did not know she had it wrong. It would ordinarily bug the hell out of him. But there were the naked pictures.
A naked picture countdown text every day.
Goldfarb deleted the previous day’s picture when a new one arrived.
FIVE DAYS TO GO.
Was just cowboy hat and cowboy boots standing in front of the mirror.
Rachel Switzer had a lot of hats.
Goldfarb had said thanks.
When the cowboy boots picture arrived, Goldfarb broke down and called Lewberg.
Lewberg answered on the first ring.
“She is sending me naked pictures,” said Goldfarb.
“Who? Rachel Switzer?”
“No. Mother Theresa. Yes, Rachel Switzer.”
Lewberg was silent for a few seconds and then said, “She doesn’t seem like a sending-naked-pictures type of gal.”
“She has a lot of hats,” said Goldfarb.
“Yeah, I can see that. The hats I get. So what are you going to do?”
“What can I do. I wait five more days. You aren’t going to ask me to send you a picture?”
“No,” said Lewberg. “I have my own hats.”
Then he hung up.
The THREE DAYS LEFT text was not a naked picture. It was a fully clothed selfie of Rachel Switzer, sans mask, wearing a red beret, with a mango in her hand in what appeared to be the fruit aisle of Bruno’s grocery store. She had followed up the THREE DAYS LEFT announcement with a lower case ‘where it all began’ followed with a wink emoji.
Goldfarb texted Rachel Switzer.
‘Don’t you have three days left in your quarantine?’
Rachel Switzer replied back, ‘Yes!!’ with three happy faces and one heart happy face.
Goldfarb texted, ‘What are you doing at Bruno’s?’
Rachel Switzer replied, ‘I am going to make you my famous fruit salad.’
Goldfarb thought about it and then texted the only reply he could think of:
‘Thanks.’
Then he called Lewberg.
Lewberg answered on the first ring.
“I am sending you a picture,” said Goldfarb.
“Must be one hell of a hat,” replied Lewberg.
“You got it?” asked Goldfarb.
“Hold on,” said Lewberg. “Let me put you on speaker phone. Okay. Got it. What is that? A mango?”
“Yes,” replied Goldfarb.
“Mangoes are tough,” said Lewberg. “You never know what you are going to get with a mango.”
Goldfarb said yes. He didn’t say that Rachel Switzer spent 15 minutes picking the perfect mango.
“I like a good mango,” continued Lewberg.
Goldfarb waited patiently. He knew Lewberg was going to get to it.
“Harold,” he said. “Let me ask you this. Isn’t that Rachel Switzer holding the mango?”
Goldfarb said yes, it was.
“Doesn’t she still have three days left in quarantine?”
Goldfarb said yes, she does.
“What is she doing at Bruno’s with a mango in her hand?”
“She said she is going to make me her world-famous fruit salad.”
“I like a good fruit salad,” said Lewberg. “But not if it has bananas. It’s not that I don’t like bananas. Like them fine as stand-alones. Good source of potassium. But not in fruit salads. I’m just saying.”
Goldfarb didn’t say anything. He knew Lewberg was going to get to it.
He was not wrong.
Lewberg said, “Harold, let me say three things about the photo:
One, this is not a naked picture of Rachel Switzer. I thought we were friends.
Two, I don’t hate the beret. I’m not usually a beret type of guy, but I think she pulls it off.
Three, I haven’t seen Rachel Switzer in 20 years and I recognized her right away. Partly because, and let me be clear about how good this is, because Rachel Switzer looks exactly the same as she did 20 years ago. And partly, and I kind of think this might be important, I was able to recognize her because she wasn’t wearing a fucking mask.”
Goldfarb didn’t say anything. He knew Lewberg was right.
Fucking Rachel Switzer!
“Who knows where else she has been?” asked Goldfarb.
“She has no respect for the quarantine,” said Lewberg.
“She has no respect for the quarantine,” repeated Goldfarb.
Neither Goldfarb nor Lewberg spoke for a few seconds. Then Goldfarb said, “There is no way I can sleep with her now.”
“Nope,” agreed Lewberg.
“And I can’t tell her she doesn’t respect the quarantine and needs to do another 14 days.”
“No,” agreed Lewberg. “You definitely can’t.”
“Someone else needs to tell her,” Goldfarb mused out loud.
And then Lewberg, because he was Lewberg, said what he always said.
“I think I’ve got a guy.”
Rachel Switzer felt horribly. She was really, really apologetic. She had received a call from someone from the federal government telling her she had been seen violating the mandated 14-day quarantine and now had to commit for another 14 days.
She felt really, really bad.
‘I will make it up to you,’ she texted Goldfarb. And then she texted three eggplant emojis.
Goldfarb replied, ‘thanks.’
He didn’t tell her the call she received from the government of Canada was from a golfing buddy of Lewberg’s who worked in the Ministry of Indigenous and Northern Affairs and had nothing to do with the quarantine.
He didn’t tell her that Lewberg had a picture of that man in a compromising position with a hooker in Vegas. As if any pictures with Vegas hookers were anything but compromising.
Rachel Switzer sent more pictures.
In most of them, she wasn’t even wearing a hat.
Rachel Switzer texted Goldfarb he should consider her his girlfriend now.
Goldfarb texted back, ‘Really?’
And Rachel Switzer texted:
‘Yes. I am now your girlfriend. For all intensive purposes.’
The end.