Lisa knew she should have cancelled the dinner party. Who was entertaining anymore?

The evening news reports were grim in their recommendations. Stay away from public places. Forget movies, concerts, your favorite restaurant on a Friday night in lively Pasadena.

Everyone must do their part to stop the spread of the virus, which was now moving steadily across the globe like mold advancing on an old orange.

Michael, Lisa’s husband, convinced her that there was no danger in having his boss over for dinner.

“We’re in daily contact at work.” He put on his earnest-little-boy face. “So what difference does it make if he and his wife come over for a meal?”

He caught her eye roll. “Look, I need to find a way to thank him for the promotion. Meanwhile, Coronavirus has got everybody on edge, so let’s have some fun when we can still congregate. I’ll grill some salmon steaks and you make a big salad. Easy peasy lemon squeezy.” He pulled her into a dramatic dip, which ended the conversation.

**

Lisa was shocked silent. Michael’s boss, James, late 50s with iron-grey hair, was standing on her doorstep with his middle-aged wife, Janis. Both of them were wearing blue latex gloves and massive black masks, each with yellow dual carbon filters, giving them the look of alien bug creatures.

The hostess gifts were two white face masks with breathing valves improbably decorated with a jaunty gold bow.

“They’re N95s.” Janis’ words were muffled through the mask. “They’re sold out on Amazon.”

Lisa put the masks on the entry table and reached for Janis’ purse. “May I take this along with your coat?”

Janis reacted as if Lisa was aiming a loaded pistol at her forehead. “No!”

Lisa stepped back and raised her hands in surrender. “Oh my God,” she stuttered. “I, I’m so sorry. We should have told you when we invited you to dinner. We haven’t traveled anywhere in a month and we’re not sick, neither of us.”

“But you don’t really know that, do you?” Janis’ hazel eyes narrowed. “You could be in the prodromal stage of the virus. Not showing symptoms yet but contagious.”

Lisa looked to her husband for help but he and James were busy following the sanitation guidelines set by their company, elbow-bumping their greetings with male-themed gusto.

Janis’ eyes swept across the modest living room. “What kind of animals do you have here?”

Animals? “Um, a cat?”

“A cat?” Janis’ eyebrows shot up. “Don’t you know that they can spread COVID-19 to humans?”

Lisa thought of their cat, Max, who was probably sleeping under her pillow at this moment. The only thing he spread was a fine layer of cat hair on the couch.

“That’s been disproven,” Lisa said. “There’s no pet-to-human transmission of the Coronavirus. Anyway, he’s an indoor cat.”

Michael walked up to Lisa and Janis with his signature drink, a flute of champagne topped with blackberry juice.

“Enjoy!” he said, walking back to James for shop talk. There was to be no relief for Lisa.

Janis withdrew a light-green tube from her large leather purse. She inserted one end into her flute and slid it under her mask to drink. “Organic grass straw,” she explained.

Lisa took a long swig of her champagne. How were her guests going to eat dinner? Would they shovel food under their masks with spoons or suck it up with the grass straws? She imagined a piece of limp arugula dangling from the end of Janis’ straw as she tried in vain to get it up through the narrow opening and into her mouth.

“You know, there’s been a run in LA on anti-bacterial wet wipes, zinc tablets, and germ killers,” Janis said.

Lisa shrugged. What was wrong with washing your hands with soap and water? She tipped her glass and finished her drink in three gulps.

“There was a near-riot at the two drug stores nearest us,” Janis continued. “Shelves were empty so people were buying what they could. You know, toilet paper, dry cereal, jugs of wine.”

Wine? Toilet paper? Janis was waiting for a response, but what could Lisa say? This whole city has gone batshit crazy?

“I lucked out, I guess,” Lisa finally said. “I did a Costco run months ago and bought a bunch of that foaming anti-bacterial hand soap just because it was on sale.”

It was at that moment that Lisa’s nose tickled. A little tickle. Something she wouldn’t have even noticed a month ago. But looking at her two masked dinner guests, Lisa knew. A sneeze at this moment would be bad. Very bad. And yet, the more she told herself not to sneeze, the stronger the urge grew. Until it finally happened. Lisa sneezed one of the largest and wettest sneezes of her entire 32-year-life.

When she was done, she looked up to see her husband’s mouth opened in shock and her guests’ eyebrows raised so high that they vanished from their foreheads.

Janis shook her head. “I’m sorry, but we’re going to have to leave. Immediately. We can’t take any chances.”

James looked over at Michael. “She’s right, buddy. Sorry about that. Desperate times, right? But we really appreciate the gesture.”

“I need to visit the restroom before we leave,” Janis’ voice was terse.

“I cleaned the restroom right before you came,” Lisa whispered. Janis gave a quick nod as she briskly strode to the bathroom off the dining room.

Lisa watched the men elbow-bump their goodbyes. Janis returned, holding the tissue that she used to open the bathroom door, and they left with rushed apologies and goodbyes.

Michael closed the door behind them with a sigh. “Well, at least we have dinner for the next couple of nights, right?”

**

It wasn’t until the next day when Lisa went into the guest bathroom that she noticed. The foaming anti-bacterial hand soap on the sink was missing.

Lisa opened the storage cabinet under the sink. The ten anti-bacterial soaps that had been stored there the day before were gone. All of them.

At least she and Michael each had a N95 mask. After all, they were sold out on Amazon . . .