In the world outside, the COVID-19 virus raged. The death toll rose every day, and my fearful fellow citizens, heeding government authorities, took shelter in their homes with loved ones, hoping to ride out the pandemic safely.

I sat in my house bored. My recent roommate Lisa and I had been cooped up in the house for over a month, and I'd long since grown restless. Lisa had been in the middle of the second year of paramedic school, when the virus struck, and the college sent her and all her classmates home. Now she took classes online. I guessed she was at her computer in her room on the other side of the house at that moment, watching one of her professors drone on about some subject or another.

It was early afternoon, and I wasn't working. I was looking at porn on the Internet, on my computer. The masturbatory pleasures of Internet porn offered a brief respite from my constant boredom. But after two weeks I'd begun to tire of porn and masturbating. I wanted more. I wanted the company of a real woman.

I had been single for five years, and actively dating for two. But two months earlier Carolyn, a lovely and lean Emergency Medical attendant I'd met while racing, had broken up with me. The lockdown prevented me from meeting anyone new. I was horny and frustrated, and jerking off to pictures on my computer screen went only so far to alleviate my frustration.

The ring of the phone on my desk interrupted the tedium.

"Joey," I said when I picked up the phone. I almost barked the introduction. I wondered if my social skills had grown rusty with my isolation.

"Ted, it's Joey." Joey was a long-time family friend and, owner of a company that does home renovations.

"Joey, it's great to hear from you," I said. "How are holding up in quarantine?"

"The family and I are fine," he said. "But business isn't so good. I have to hold off on that renovation that we talked about. Sorry about that."

Darn. That's what I'd feared. I was hoping that during the lockdown that I could get some of my house renovations completed. I guess they will have to wait.

I told Joey I understood and then we exchanged comforting pleasantries about our families and their health. After I hung up, I sat in my chair for a minute, staring at the computer screen, bored of porn and discouraged about the state of the world. I got up, at last, to give myself something else to do. The ergonomic chair on which I sat was wobbling strangely, and I figured I'd fix it to give my mind something constructive to dwell on. I walked to the garage. The wrench I was looking for wasn't on the work bench, where I thought I'd left it. That was odd. I was usually careful about where I left things. I walked back into the house, wondering if I'd used it for another project but forgotten about it.

Walking down the hallway, I heard a blast of music coming from behind the closed door of Lisa’s bedroom. I wondered if she'd seen the wrench. I knocked on the door but there was no answer. I figured she couldn't hear because of the music, so I opened the door and walked in.

Not three feet inside the room, I froze in place, my feet rooted to the ground. My mouth gaped open.

There she was reclined on the floor, back to me, legs sprawled open, facing an open laptop computer. She was completely naked.

She held a vibrator in her hand, and was moving it up and down rapidly buried inside her vagina.

I saw the thin lips of Lisa bare vulva cling to the rubber-encased shaft as it moved in and out of her.

The face of a young man filled most of the laptop screen. I could tell he and Lisa were engaged in a Zoom conference. I couldn't see his face clearly, but I could see enough to see his eyes bug out and his hands wave. Obviously, he had seen me enter the room behind Lisa, and he was trying to get her attention.

I didn't move. I don't know why. Lisa moved first.

Getting the hint, finally, from the young man on the screen, she turned around and saw me.

"Ted!" she screamed. I don't know which of us jumped more. Lisa curled her body into a ball and enfolded herself in her arms. The vibrator ,vibrating on the floor.

"What are you doing?" she cried.

"Sorry!" I said. "Sorry!" I couldn't think of what to say at first. "I knocked but you didn't answer." My hands flew wildly around me, as though their frantic movement would explain my being in her room.

"Sorry," I said again, and this time I backed out of the room. Without being fully conscious of doing it I took a last look at Lisa, naked on the floor, before I turned and left, closing the door behind me.

I retreated to the living room, and paced the floor, back and forth, forth and back.

The image of my roommate, naked and spread on the floor, burned in my mind. Try as I might, I couldn't erase it. Guilt and shame coursed through me. I battered my confused brain with accusatory questions: Why did I enter Lisa’s room without permission? Why didn't I leave the room immediately? Why did I stare at her naked body? What was wrong with me?

I worried about Lisa, too. Who was that guy? Why was she showing herself to him naked? Did she do that often?

I realized with dismay that there was a lot about my roommate that I hadn't known