On their way out the door, she hands him a mask. Without complaint, he fits the bands over his ears and snugs the filter into place over his nose and mouth. “I look like a bad guy,” he says and makes his finger into a pistol. “Stick ’em up.”

She pulls aside her jacket to show him her shoulder holster. “You first.”

She drives. In the history of their relationship, he has driven only a handful of times. She likes the control, and he prefers to daydream, sightsee, or read. On the few occasions he did take the wheel, she yelled at him in an unrelenting stream of back-seat driving, so they stuck with what worked. When he leans back his seat and flops one foot up on the dash, she gives it a long stare but doesn’t say anything. He has his cell phone powered up and he’s tapping out an e-mail message to Virginia Mason Hospital.

“You know what this reminds me of?” Jack says.

There he goes, multitasking again. Typing and talking. She doesn’t respond, despite the long silence, because she knows he’ll tell her anyway. “You ever hum a song and you have no idea what its lyrics are or even what it’s called?”

She doesn’t hum or whistle or even sing. But she always remembers the lyrics.

“This is like that,” he says. “The music’s inside you even when you think you’ve lost it. You know what I mean?”

She knows. He’s talking about them. Their relationship—maybe even their love—is still resting inside them. They know how to talk to each other and move around each other. They haven’t forgotten what it means to be in the same room.

“We weren’t terrible together,” he says.

She laughs. She can’t remember the last time she laughed, and it startles her enough that she claps a hand over her mouth.

“Okay,” he says and continues to type. “I guess I’m wrong again.”

It’s cloudy but not raining, so the campus green is packed with students. They toss Frisbees, play guitar, kick Hacky Sacks, lounge on blankets. Many of them appear to be in denial about the weather. Fifty degrees with a chill wind, and only half the young men wear shirts. All Nora can think about is exposure. The way the students are all piled on top of each other, rubbing shoulders, sharing drinks, trading phones. When one young woman throws back her head and belts out the lyrics to a song playing on her phone, Nora can’t help but imagine a geyser of aerosols expelled from her mouth, spreading at least ten feet and breathed in by at least seven others. Could one of the students be infected? Could it already be spreading among them?