I was watching The Windsors last night when Michael walked into the living room and held out the phone on speaker so I could hear the announcement (In English, then Spanish, then Mandarin, then Vietnamese, then Tagalog…) that we are now legally required to shelter in place until the first week in May.

One of the volunteers at the library, Janie, called me yesterday. Janie is in her seventies, rail-thin, with iron-gray hair. She has volunteered at the library events department for a little over twenty years. She’s traveled all over the world and this country, has a lively circle of friends, and loves entertaining and exploring. Being forced to stay inside, and alone in her apartment has to be maddening for her.

“I think I have a fever,” she told me over the phone. “I keep getting hot. But I don’t have a thermometer here and they’re not to be had anywhere.”

I asked if she felt short of breath, was coughing. No and no. Had she phoned her physician? Yes. Twice. What did he say?

“He said I should make myself a martini, walk outside to the park down the street and enjoy it, while social distancing.” Pause. “He knows I love martinis.”

Hot flashes are supposed to end after menopause, but I get them, and my mother, who’s in her ’80s, still gets them. Even so, it’s scary to suddenly feel hot and sweaty in March of 2020.

Janie and I decided she’d feel better if she could use Zoom to talk to people instead of just hearing voices over the phone. I sent her a Zoom invitation for 4:00 pm, not feeling especially optimistic. Technology baffles her even more than it baffles most older people.

At 4:00, I logged onto Zoom and waited, looking at myself in the little Zoom window and noting that while the blue shirt I wore brought out my eyes, I really could use some makeup and should have brushed my hair. After a minute a window appeared, a black rectangle with Janie’s name in it.

“Can you hear me?” I asked.

Nothing. The window disappeared, then reappeared. “Look in the lower left of your window,” I said. “Click on the little microphone, then the little camera.” I resorted to pantomime, pointing down and towards the left. I had just begun to mime talking on a phone and was mouthing the words “call me” when a picture appeared and the audio kicked in. I could see the surface of Janie’s desk, one arm, her torso, the lower part of her face from the side and beyond that, the wall of pictures over her sofa.

She smiled.

We talked for about fifteen minutes, and she sounded much more like her old self, though efforts to get her to move her camera just resulted in tight close-ups of one arm and a minute or two of her being out of the frame entirely. I instructed her about sending Zoom invites to her friends and told her to call me whenever she felt like talking. “I’ll put you on the rotation” she said, laughing.