A Mixed-Up Quarantine

 The quarantine was rough on everyone. People forced to stay home and abandon their social lives, employers forced to adopt new telecommuting practices in a short time to compensate, but there was one couple for whom the quarantine afforded certain benefits. Since the wedding, Carl and Felicia had mostly stayed within their initial decision to have Carl around during the week, and Carly around during the weekend, but if Carl was working from home...

“Give me one good reason why you can’t get dressed up as Carly while you’re working from home?” Felicia asked as Carl finished reading off an email he’d gotten from work. “No friends or family coming by, so you can’t be worried about being seen, right?”

“I can give you two!” Carl replied. “For one, I still have to do Zoom calls, and I can’t do those dressed as Carly. And besides, we agreed that I wouldn’t do any work when it was Carly time.”

“I think I’m willing to bend the rules. After all, these are trying times.” Felicia giggled. “How about this? They can’t see you from the waist down, right? Why don’t you wear that cute skirt I like and a pair of heels?”

“But if I get up, or the camera falls, it’s too risky” Carl insisted. “I think we should stick with the usual schedule.”

“Darn… I was hoping to see more of Carly since we’re home a lot more.” Felicia sighed.

Carl felt bad. He wanted Felicia to be happy, and it’s not like he didn’t enjoy being Carly every week, but things were getting too close and he didn’t think that anyone would really understand the whole Carly thing. There had to be a solution that would make them both happy.

“Well…” Carl started.

Felicia perked up immediately.

“Well what?” Felicia asked.

“The Zoom calls are only a few hours in the morning, I suppose I could bring Carly out once I’m finished and do the rest of my work like that.” Carl replied.

“Really?” Felicia asked.

“Really.” Carl replied.

Things started off good. Carl would wake up an hour before his Zoom meeting, remove all evidence of Carly from his upper half, change into a button down shirt and attend his meeting while Felicia slept in the bedroom (her office was far more lax and didn’t require daily Zoom meetings), and once he was finished, he would get dressed and made up, more often than not in something with a skirt, as was Felicia’s want, and spend the rest of the day as Carly until the couple went to bed. Everything seemed to be working out fine. That is until a certain Friday…

Carl’s firm was still working on cases, even if the courts weren’t open to dispense justice, so he had a steady stream of discovery and paperwork to do. He was supposed to give a presentation to the partners on Friday, and had been up late Thursday night putting the finishing touches on it, since he and Felicia had been… otherwise distracted during the workday. Which wouldn’t have been so bad, if he hadn’t, in his sleep-deprived state, forgotten to turn his alarm on.

Carl slowly stirred awake as the sun streamed into the room. Carl tried with all his might to drift back off to sleep, but he wasn’t able to. Defeated from his efforts, Carl reached over to the nightstand to grab his phone and check the time.

“Probably five minutes before the alarm…” Carl thought.

But that wasn’t what Carl saw. In-fact, what he saw was even more alarming.

“I’m late!” Carl hissed, kicking off the covers, revealing the nightgown he was wearing.

Carl leaped out of bed and rushed into the bathroom as Felicia continued to sleep.

10 Minutes Before the Meeting

Carl looked in the mirror and took stock of what he had to do. His routine usually started by checking his face for any stray bits of makeup that he might have missed when he wiped down his face before bed. Today, it was mostly clean, save for some stray bits of eyeliner left behind that he quickly wiped away.

After that, it was time to brush and tie his hair back, and do his morning business. Once that was concluded, Carl tiptoed back into the bedroom to pick out his outfit. He usually had his clothes set out, but given how late he was up, he had forgotten to pick out a shirt. As he looked for a decent shirt, he considered putting on a skirt, just so he could tuck the shirt in, but decided against it, since he was in a bit of a rush.

5 Minutes Before the Meeting

After making a quick cup of coffee, Carl sat down at the kitchen table with his laptop and opened up his presentation. During the loading, the screen went black, allowing Carl to see his reflection in the screen.

“Shit!” Carl exclaimed. “I forgot that Felicia went a little overboard yesterday...”

Felicia had insisted on cleaning up Carly’s eyebrows a bit while he was changing, and she went a little too far on one side, and had to do the other side the same to compensate, and the gist of it is that Carl’s eyebrows are decidedly feminine, and given that everyone would be looking at his face, it was something he had to fix.

Carl rushed back into the bathroom and frantically checked Felicia’s makeup bag until he found what he was searching for. An eyebrow pencil. Yesterday had been far from the first time that Felicia had gone overboard with Carly’s eyebrows, so Carl had become an old pro at fixing it, though he suspected some female coworkers could tell, no one had ever mentioned anything to him so far.

“Just a little touch-up here…” Carl said as he filled in his eyebrows. “That looks about right.”

Once he was satisfied, Carl headed back to his computer. The call would start any second now.

Any second now.

“They did say 10 A.M. right?” Carl wondered aloud.

After a few more minutes of waiting, Carl finally just tapped a few keys and video-called a coworker, a guy named Steve who Carl was friendly with, and who was supposed to be at the meeting. The call rang for a few moments and then Steve’s video appeared on the screen, with Steve wearing just a t-shirt.

“Carl, what’s up?” Steve asked.

“What happened to today’s meeting? I’m waiting for the call to start and no one’s here.” Carl said.

“Oh snap! Did you check your email? Two of the partners had their internet go down this morning, so they went ahead and cancelled the meeting.” Steve replied.

“What about my presentation?” Carl asked.

“Just CC everyone and attach it to an email.” Steve replied.

Carl’s face fell and he put his face into his hands. All that effort for nothing! Carl rubbed his eyes with his fingers. His fingers tipped with ten manicured and polished nails. With a bright pink nail polish.

“Oh!” Steve raised his eyebrow when he saw Carl’s hands.

Carl looked at the screen and noticed that he’d forgotten a crucial step in his routine. He didn’t remove his nail polish. Carl immediately pulled his hands out of frame.

”Of all the stupid things to forget!” Carl thought.

“I… uh…” Carl stammered as he tried to think up an explanation.

“I get it, your wife is starting to get cabin fever, right? Consider yourself lucky, mine does that for a living!” Steve lifted his foot up into frame, allowing Carl to see that Steve’s toenails had been shaped and painted a bright red.

“Yeah, the things we do to make them happy, right?” Carl laughed. “Anyway, I’ll send out the PowerPoint and I guess we’ll discuss it on Monday.”

“Sounds good.” Steve signed off of the Zoom call. “Enjoy your weekend.”

“Phew!” Carl sighed as he closed his laptop.

Felicia walked out of the bedroom rubbing her eyes.

“What’s all that commotion I heard?” she asked.

Carl started to open his mouth, but instead just shook his head and started to laugh.

The End?