To Libby, Jenny, Bill, and Ron: I will join your pod, but I will not wear the “Pfizer Boyz” sweatshirt that Ron had printed up.
To Bill: If you don’t mention the mustache, I won’t mention the mullet.
To Steph: I will join you for outdoor brunch, wearing five layers of clothing, plus mittens, scarf, and a balaclava, but you have to share a dark personal secret with me. And it has to be really devastating—something not even Marcus knows.
To Libby: I’ll provide feedback on your “quar rom-com” screenplay if you give me all your streaming-service logins.
To the pizza-delivery guy: I’ll double the tip if you pretend that this is the first time we’ve seen each other today.
To my cousin Alex: If you help me troubleshoot my Wi-Fi, I’ll tell your parents that TikTok dancing is a perfectly legitimate extracurricular activity.
To Jenny: If you promise never again to mention your nut-milk podcast “Got Milks?,” then I promise to stop talking about my rewatch of “The Wire.” (It totally holds up!)
To Steph and Marcus: If I join your Zoom Monopoly night, I get the top hat. No, the race car. And nobody is allowed to say anything when I “Tokyo drift” the corners and make cool revving sounds.
To Gram-Gram: I promise to read the article that you forwarded about Hugo Chavez’s posthumous mission to swap America’s guns for Peloton bikes, if you promise to get the vaccine. On a related note, I will endure one sixty-minute phone call in complete silence if I am made the sole beneficiary of your will.
To our postal carrier, Jeff (Jim?): I will stop asking whether I receive an “average” amount of packages, or whether the neighbors get way more than me and, if so, which neighbors. I will also stop prying into the unspoken rivalry between you and the FedEx guy. (I’ve seen the looks you two exchange when your trucks pass each other.) I guess the trade-off here would be fewer awkward silences.
To Summer: If you listen to my pitch for why David Simon should be in the Biden Administration—and why policy ideas like Hamsterdam deserve a ten-city pilot program—I will cook dinner for two weeks.
To Fido: I’ll stop adding my last name when I introduce you at the dog park. I know it’s weird. In exchange, I simply ask that you go easy on my new slippers.
To my book club: I’ll pretend that I finished the book if we restrict our talk to the movie adaptation. If you insist on acting superior—with your long attention spans and your breaks from social media—I’ll be forced to say things like, “Don’t you think Jennifer Lopez is our modern-day Gatsby?”
To the FedEx guy: I’ll sign for the package. But first you have to agree that it’s a little suspicious that your deliveries never coincide with Jeff’s. You know, Jeff—the U.S.P.S. guy? Don’t play dumb.
To Summer: If you admit that lockdown is, in fact, the best time to experiment with facial hair, and you admit that I can pull it off, I will shave the mustache.
To my blue button-down shirt: I will tuck you in for a thousand dollars.
