At the Senior Center, nobody is playing cards. The tables are folded and leaned against the wall; the Queen of Hearts is stuffed in a box upside-down and backward, jammed between a joker and the three of clubs. Down the street, the local diner is emptier than a Hopper painting, bacon grease coagulating in a cold tin can. No one in the shops, no one on the street except one black-masked old man in a worn peacoat with a dog-eared paperback stuffed in one pocket, sitting on a bus stop bench, clenching his fists and weeping. This is the way contagion works. The tears of the poet were in the reader all along.