
Today my county eases into phase one of opening up. That’s three months of lockdown; a quarter of a year; a whole season, from snowfall to sunburn.
Here is an olfactory summary of how I spent this time:
A day into a conference for mystery writers in San Diego, the pandemic shut it down, and we all scrambled to find flights home. That night, I stood on my hotel room’s tiny balcony and watched sheets of rain before going downstairs to the restaurant, noisy with chatting authors, to catch up on industry gossip. I wore Ciro Danger in Extrait.
A few days later, I was out of a job…


