“Hello, Mother.”
“Tristan! You’ve been impossible to get hold of.”
“People are dying in droves. The NYPD is overwhelmed. So frankly, I’ve been busy.”
His mother made a non-committal noise before launching into “Jason came to brunch on Saturday. It’s so irritating that we can’t go to the place I like so much on Fifth Avenue. This lockdown thing is just awful.”
“The goal is to control the spread of the virus and maybe have less people die.”
“Yes, well, it’s very annoying. Luciana made brunch for us here. She said it was very difficult to find smoked salmon.”
Luciana had been the cook for his parents for nearly five years. He liked her and sometimes wondered how she managed to put up with his parents. He suspected the reason was money. His father never shirked on paying top dollar for g
