Goines On: More masked men

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On their trip to Costco that day, the next piece of music was lively, and Mrs. Goines said it sounded like ballet music. An image of Trump dancing on stage and reciting tweets forced itself onto the screen of Goines’ imagination. He slapped the steering wheel with some glee. “Someone has to be composing a comic opera of Trump. History claims no bigger fool…Would the role be for a tenor or a baritone, do you think?”
    “Maybe a bass?” Mrs. Goines hazarded.
    “I guess anything could work, but bass seems too weighty, too serious. The voice needs to be flighty, bird-like. And just think” – another slap on the steering wheel – “the librettist has the whole archive of Trump’s tweets to draw on!”
    “Maybe the NY Met will broadcast it in HD live,” Mrs. Goines said, “if we ever get through this coronavirus.”
    At Costco, the Goineses donned their homemade T-shirt masks in the car. This particular style of mask really did cover up a person’s features, and Goines wondered again whether there were more masked robberies these days. He joked to the door attendant, who was also wearing a mask – a white, commercial one: “Shouldn’t there be a policeman here to take photos of people’s faces before they put their masks on?”
    Goines didn’t get the laugh he was expecting. The man said: “They might as well. All of our other freedoms are being taken away. All these regulations. Give me my freedom. I don’t care about no virus.”
    A wave of sadness washed over Goines as he continued into the store, wondering whose side the attendant was on.

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