This morning is bright. I’m looking out now at blue sky beyond the buildings instead of purplish gray, and the Golden Gate Bridge is its usual glorious orange instead of a colorless shape shrouded in fog.

Yesterday was gray and wet. Some rain would have livened things up, but all we got were occasional splashes of drops on the window. The only break in the monotony was shortly after noon, when we were thrown into confusion by the loud buzz of the street door. The cat ran under the table, Michael and I leapt up from our desks, and there were feverish negotiations about how to handle this event. “I’m not buzzing them in!” I said, “I’ll go see who it is.”

Out the apartment and down the stairs, passing doors cracked open and eyes watching me as I passed. Our downstairs neighbor, Tina, came out with me. We got into the shadowy lobby just in time to see a uniformed delivery man in a face mask wave at us as he backed out the front door, the big Costco box he’d delivered resting on the carpet in the middle of the lobby.

We had negotiated with Tina about ordering from Costco. Michael and I asked for very little except some for aspirin, which we’d been told was delayed. Most likely there was nothing in that box for us.

For a moment Tina and I circled the box in a kind of do-si-do. “You know,” she said smiling, “I’m not a nervous person, but…” She didn’t want to touch it immediately because, she said, the virus is supposed to live on cardboard, but she didn’t want to leave it in the middle of the lobby where every passerby — the few there are these days — would see it through the glass front door. I ended up pushing the box with my foot behind a large built-in bench and out of sight. It was not heavy at all. “I’ll come back down and get it in a couple of hours,” said Tina. I went upstairs back to my desk for a Zoom meeting with co-workers about what we’re going to do about events at the library.

After the meeting, which took two hours, I was mystified to find the Costco box opened and resting in our hallway. “Do you know anything about this?” Michael asked. He’d gone to check the mail downstairs and found the box resting on the landing in front of our door. In it were several packages of albacore tuna and two enormous bags each of sliced almonds and chopped walnuts. “Did Tina put this here? Did we order this stuff?” he asked.

I had noticed the albacore tuna when we were looking at the online Costco catalogue, but I had decided against it. A bit too expensive. And I would never ask for that many almonds and certainly not walnuts, which I dislike.

Still, my heart did lighten at the sight of it, and I could not stop myself from mentally toting up menus that included pan bagnats, tuna salad with chickpeas and almond brickle, even as Michael telephoned Tina.

Yes, it was all hers. Our neighor across the hall had found the box downstairs and because it had our apartment number on it (Tina had asked to use ours because much of her mail gets automatically held at the post office) she’d carried it up for us.

Alas, no pan bagnats or brickle for us. Michael removed all the items and carried them down to Tina, then disposed of the box in the recycling downstairs.