We were gathered in the lobby of the Sleep Inn, in a semicircle round the big screen above the fake fireplace. The TV burbled CNN night and day, usually, as business travelers and flight crews came in and out. The lobby had the fake living room look they now favour, reproduction couches and a credenza with a bowl of waxed apples on it. There was a sister hotel opposite, the Dulcet, on the other side of the Dunkin Donuts, that I’d transferred across from, a dive with broken furniture and plaster falling off the roof, and a bunch of dudes, I’m pretty sure, running girls out of it. Airport hotels, like people, sometimes get on the meth. The manager had taken one look at me, a how-did-you-get-here look, and silently transferred me over. There was no big screen in the lobby of the Dulcet, though you could see the black metal brace where one had been.

Here, there were half a dozen of us gathered around the screen as the whole thing turned blue and orange, as Donald Trump began his Oval Office address on the plague.