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to me.
    “Mike, you can’t be serious.”
    “I don’t know. I was just reading a blog; this guy is hiding out in Queen Anne and writing about people in white suits collecting sick people. The big CDC suits that cover them from head to toe with gas masks, the works.”
    “A blog? Oh Jesus, Mike, I thought you were onto something there.”
    “What about the site that worked a few minutes ago but now is down? Isn’t that weird?”
    “Right. Websites never go down.”
    I sit back, turn around to face the computer and look at the blog again, then I burst out laughing. She is right. What am I getting so worked up about? I’m not some ace reporter in a book who discovers something the rest of the American public has missed. It’s absurd, but I know what it stems from. I don’t want to think about today’s date.
    I look over my shoulder at Erin, and she is smiling at me with her arms crossed.
    “You’re right, it’s silly. I’m just a little … off today.”
    “Off your rocker, maybe.”
    “Would you have me any other way?”
    “I would take you that way … any way for that matter,” and then she winks, which makes me blush until I turn around and try to concentrate on work.
    I wish I were a drinking man so I could have a liquid lunch.
     
    * * *
     
    Noon rolls around. I have poked and prodded the web, contacted friends, and finally called my buddy who is a cop. Dale sounded distracted; he has been on the force in Bellevue for a couple of years. When I asked him about the excitement in Seattle, he blew it off, claiming it was way out of his area. I asked him if he’d heard any rumors, and he replied with a curt “no” and said he had to go because he was on duty. We have chatted while he was on duty before, but he sounded harried today. Maybe he was about to pull someone over.
    I head out to a local deli to grab a bite to eat. The wind whips my shirt around my back as I step out of the small office space on Denny Avenue. It is colder than usual, and I’m betting rain. It’s a pretty safe gamble in Seattle. Some kids light off fireworks, and I jump at the sound of firecrackers in an alley. It sounded like gunfire for a moment, and all the paranoia of the morning has set me on edge. Last night was bad enough, and it is still a day before the fourth. Kids were blowing stuff up for hours as I tossed and turned and finally fell asleep around 1:00 a.m.
    I usually go out to lunch with Bob in advertising, but today he brought something to eat. I didn’t bother with Jim, because he was busy screaming into the phone at a vendor that screwed up an order of paper. Erin broke out a huge salad before I could ask her if she wanted to grab a bite to eat.
    So I venture out alone and walk the warm three blocks to the deli. Lou isn’t behind the counter, but his wife is. She is a tall Korean woman who smiles all the time and is in the habit of experimenting with new meals to unleash on her regulars. She once made a batch of coleslaw with kimchi in it, only she didn’t tell me about the hot stuff. I thought I was going to have a heart attack right in the tiny store. She laughed so hard that my tears of pain turned into tears of laughter for her.
    I order a turkey, bacon, avocado sandwich and wait with a couple of other guys. We all stand around trying to look interested in the candy bars and bags of chips so we don’t have to look at or talk to each other. I wander over to the news rack and scour the front page for any weird stories, but it is the usual bad news about the economy. I must be a sight, a newsman reading a rival newspaper. Except that they aren’t even a rival. They could swallow our little rag with barely a burp of indigestion.
    I move to the window while the woman works on three orders as fast as she can. She tends to be a perfectionist, which is fine with me. All I have to go back to is a stuffy room with buzzing computers.
    A couple wanders past the deli hand in hand, but they don’t look very happy. The