Victor is a talented cook, and in the ten minutes it took me to change into my sweatpants and curl up on the sofa in front of the TV, the apartment was already filled with the smell of something good simmering on the stove. I watched as the news channel flashed images of ransacked shelves at the supermarkets and lines snaking out onto the street outside the distribution centers, and then the picture cut to a little girl with blond curls and a nose crusted with snot trying to work a gas mask down over her face. When I looked up from the TV screen I caught a reflection of myself in the window, tucked under a blanket like a child before a hurricane, and I realized that I was full of happy anticipation. Outside the world was cold and dark, but inside the rooms were lit with the yellow glow of lamps, and, waiting for Victor to call me for dinner, I felt the rush of pleasure that I used to seek in the made-up games of my childhood, where all things were eclipsed by the singular goal of survival.

Victor must have felt it too, because despite the grim uncertainty of the news and the future threat of scarcity, the meal he’d prepared was a feast. We ate Japanese style, sitting on cushions around the coffee table, the television turned down low behind us. There was duck cooked with apricots and raspberries, and salad with pomegranate seeds. He turned off the lights, lit candles, and opened a bottle of wine from the region where his family comes from in Languedoc. I told him about the scene at the distribution center. He stopped eating and stared at me the way he used to when I was a student and would sit in his office scratching my bare knees. In the middle of a sentence he leaned across the corner of the table and kissed me. His tongue was in my mouth, and he slipped his hand under my bra. When I pushed my hand against the hardness under his jeans, he groaned and rolled on top of me. He unbuckled his belt, and I inhaled sharply when he pulled off my pants and I felt him against my stomach, felt my spine crack, and my ribs pressing into the floorboards.