by Nina Post
“I have no idea. But they’re wearing ID bracelets.”
They walked through the apartment from Mr. Black’s office, down the open hall to the conference table, where she checked bracelets. Each bracelet told her what they were in charge of and their favorite Cluck Snack product, like Ilaniel, angel with dominion over fruit-bearing trees; favorite food: Cluck Snack Frozen-Like Dess’rt Bars.
“Good to know,” she said, then lifted a bracelet to show him what it read. “Return to Cluck Snack headquarters.”
“Return what―the SP or the bracelet?” Murray said.
“Both? And where are the headquarters?”
“I don’t know.”
Murray went out to buy sleeping bags and Kelly placed orders for delivery. She put the SPs up in the offices and general office areas. But they didn’t like to stay put, unless she was nearby.
That night, while she was reading in bed, something in the book made her think of her mother, and her grief hit her fast and hard. She didn’t notice the door open, or the soft sound of feet on the floor. Tubiel climbed up on the bed, turned on The Cluck Snack Network and sat there watching cartoons until she was asleep.
elly arrived at Amenity Tower with blonde hair, blue contact lenses, and padding on the upper part of the body, including the arms. She wore a long-sleeved polo shirt featuring Pothole City’s logo―a pothole―along with a rat that seemed to gnaw at the red circle and angled slash. She carried a metal toolbox and that universal all-access pass, the clipboard.
“Pothole City Bureau of Rodent Control,” she said to the front desk employee. “We have a report of a wasp nest the size of a party balloon up on your roof. Is the manager available?”
Kelly liked to be the first to mention the manager. But this employee―Josh, according to the nameplate―looked at her as though he only expected good things from people: kindness granted, efforts rewarded, treats given.
“The manager is recording his show. He does a local access interview and variety show here in the building.” Josh beamed.
“Sure. What’s On Your Mind, With Roger Balbi. It’s my favorite.”
“Is this going to take long?” Roger squinted into the wind sweeping over the roof. “Because Biofilm is going to be in my office in exactly six minutes and they’re surprisingly punctual.”
“Biofilm?” Kelly pretended to look for the wasp nest with a stick.
“An all-giant jazz band here in the building.”
“Well, I don’t see a problem here.” Kelly tapped the stick on a ledge. “Sometimes we get false reports, but we have to take each report seriously. OK, you’re all set. You’ll be receiving confirmation from the city in eight to ten days, though it could be up to twenty-four weeks. Feel free to phone our office, but only two people work there and they don’t answer the phone.”
Roger squinted. “Wait, confirmation for what?”
“Confirmation that the nest has been eradicated.”
“But there is no nest, you said.”
“Sir, I’m not in charge of Pothole City’s Streets and Sanitation Department. I just remove or eradicate the nests and issue rat stoppage tickets. Did you want a rat stoppage ticket? I think I have a whole stack of them on my clipboard.”
Roger knitted his eyebrows together and squinted. “I’ll just wait for that paper in the mail, then.”
“That’s best. Well, you’re all set, Mr―” Kelly pretended to check her clipboard. “Mr. Balbi. On behalf of Pothole City’s Bureau of Rodent Control, I thank you for your cooperation.”
They headed back to the stairs. As she expected, once they got close to the manager’s office, Roger ran off like a mongoose to continue with his show.
Using the security fob she pocketed while in the guise of an elevator inspector, she summoned the high-rise elevators and went to the top penthouse.
Once she covered the top ten floors, she took the stairs down and walked right into an apartment that had somehow been constructed inside the forty-fifth floor stairwell. She leaned over the metal railing and looked down at the fuzzy pink caterpillar-monster in the hanging bubble chair.
The space was configured unlike the small landings of all the other stairwell floors: with its high ceiling and generous space, it looked like a high-priced industrial-style loft.
The walls of the stairwell were a blush pink, the stairs a glossy white―but only on that floor. A huge painting of multicolored swirls and bubbles covered the east wall by the door to the hallway. Two smaller paintings of general-store candy added pops of color to the darker west wall.
A blonde realtor with a briefcase bag stood in front of the caterpillar swaying in the bubble chair.
“You told me that I would have access to utilities,” the caterpillar said, and ticked off the list on a tiny proleg. “Water, power, bathrooms.”
“You have power.” The realtor waved at the lights overhead and the table lamp by a hanging bed in the corner, on the other side of the stairs.
“Fine,” the caterpillar-thing said, “but if I have to use the bathroom, I have to go all the way down to the second floor. The photos you showed me misrepresented the space. You said this was, and I quote, ‘a gritty urban loft in a full-service building.’“
The realtor shook her head and held her briefcase in front of her. “It’s not my fault if you assumed the unit had a bathroom.”
The caterpillar stood and paced the long side of his apartment toward the door, his tubular body elongating and contracting. As he returned toward the bubble chair and the realtor, Kelly admired the colorful, beetle-style elytra covering the creature’s hindwings.
“The photos showed a bathroom and shower.”
“Located in the second floor locker room,” the realtor said. “Why do you think you were able to get this price? This is Amenity Tower, Pothole City’s Finest Luxury Condominium Building. You have full access to all of the amenities, as long as you pay your rent. Look on the bright side: you have no neighbors on either side of you.”
The caterpillar crossed several of its prolegs in a huff, using one to point accusingly at the realtor. “I have very poor vision and more than six times the number of muscles you have―nearly 300 in just my head segment alone. Do you have any idea how much time and physical effort it would take to get to the second floor bathroom? We’re talking an epic-scale challenge―if one of my neighbors doesn’t eat me first.”
Kelly descended the rest of the way, rounding the corner until she was in the middle of this creature’s apartment.
“Excuse me,” she said. “Just, you know, taking the stairs.”
uring a brief stop at her apartment, Kelly lugged the last of a dozen boxes from the building’s entrance into the general office area. She tore off the packing tape and folded open the box flaps. Inside, as she ordered, were smaller boxes containing the entire Cluck Snack product line. The return label said ‘Clucking Along Holdings,’ with no indication of the street address, city, or state.
She removed and stacked box after box of Cluck Snack Krispy Baked B’nana Bitz for Dogs and Ferrets (“Can Be Used As Cereal!”), Cluck Snack Cereal (“Can Be Used As Cereal!”), Cluck Snack Top’n (“Makes Anything Taste Like Cluck Snack”), and more.
More than a dozen SPs ran up to the boxes and tried to get them open.
“Cool your jets,” she said. “I haven’t even started on the salsa or the chewable vitamins.”
The SPs ran off again with their favorite products and traded the stickers and tiny comics using thick photo albums.
She took one of the books from them and looked through it, running her fingers over pages full of meticulously-placed puffy stickers, holograph stickers, and scratch-and-sniff stickers for every Cluck Snack product. Many of the stickers looked old, and Kelly wondered who the Cluck Snack company was and just how long the product line had actually been around.
Kelly handed Tubiel the sticker book then brought an armful of boxes into the kitchen. Tubiel ran up to the table with a beer stein.
/> “Bar’s closed.” She took out some non-perishable nonfat milk containers and set them on the table.
Tubiel tore open a box of the Cluck Snack Krispy Baked B’nana Bitz for Dogs and Ferrets (“Can Be Used As Cereal!”), poured the bowl close to full, then ran into Mr. Orange’s office.
She peeked in around the door. In a moment, to Tubiel’s delight and apparent expectation, a dancing chicken head filled the screen and said, “Try Cluck Snack Krispy Baked B’nana Bitz for Dogs and Ferrets (‘Can Be Used As Cereal!’)” Then the chicken sang:
“Cluck cluck cluck cluck cluck cluck snack
Snack snack snack snack snack snack cluck
Cluck snack cluck snack cluck snack cluck
Snack snack snack snack snack snack cluck.”
Tubiel clapped to the song, thumped his hand on the desk on the last “cluck,” then picked up his bowl to continue eating. Kelly entered the room and sat in Mr. Orange’s swivel chair.
“This is all you guys will eat? Cluck Snacks?”
Tubiel nodded, his mouth stuffed full of Krispy Baked B’nana Bitz.
“You like that as cereal?”
He nodded, eyes wide, milk dripping down his chin. Kelly rose briefly from the chair to wipe off the milk with the back of her hand, which she brushed on her jeans. “Okay, Tube. I’ll see you later. Refer to the lists if you need to.”
Tubiel nodded again to indicate that he knew all about the lists and how to use them. The lists gave a process for what to do if someone or something showed up on the surveillance cameras, or if they needed food or assistance, or if they were under attack.
As Kelly locked up the apartment and climbed down the fire escape, she started to sing the Cluck Snack jingle. “Snack snack snack snack snack snack cluck. Damn, that’s catchy.”
he top two floors of Kelly’s building were full of single-purpose angels, leaving twelve empty floors below. Later that day, four more votaries arrived, bedraggled, each with a bag: the angel in charge of the protection of wrestlers, luchadores and luchadore mask makers; an angel in charge of facial hair; and more angels of the hours and days.
When the single-purpose angels weren’t returning small birds or protecting water insects or growing fruit or dispensing dreams or overseeing a particular hour or protecting oceanographers or bike messengers, she had to give them things to do. If she didn’t, they would just group around her.
She taught them how to make pictorial maps and sketches, identify footprints, track down monsters, and impersonate city officials. Her only skills.
Murray had paper cuts on his hands, tape on his face, and sponge moistener in his hair from filling out so many forms. “Tell me again why they’re all here?” he asked her, pressing on his temples.
Kelly poured herself some coffee. One of the SPs walked in holding a pineapple and sat in the corner of Mr. Black’s office. He held it in front of him and stared at it.
“I’m just that popular.” She set her mug on one of the stacks. Murray winced, picked up her glass, and moved it to a coaster. “Or it’s you.”
“What’s me?”
Murray shrugged. “Maybe they’re coming here because you’re one of them, and you look like you can protect them.”
Another SP wandered in and climbed up on Mr. Black’s desk to play with the adding machine. He was delighted when it spit out a thin strip of paper with a chchchchchrrr sound.
“Looks can be deceiving,” Murray said. “Okay, let’s test your hypothesis and move to the general office area.”
Kelly shrugged and guided the angel with the pineapple and the one at the adding machine into the general office area.
“I’ll be right there,” Murray said, and went somewhere else. In a minute he returned, but stood a few yards away.
“Now what?” Kelly asked.
“Just wait.”
Gradually, all of the angels in the top two floors gravitated to Kelly, and within a few minutes, they clustered around her.
“You’re like the coach of an overly clingy little league team,” Murray said. “You know what―you do kind of remind me of Walter Matthau.”
f went to a workshop in the library where residents learned how to be more creative with the diabolical seals they used to sign pacts. He left early, since he didn’t have much use for one anyway, went to the fitness center at exactly 9:00 a.m., and settled into an exercise bike with a copy of Lodge & Camp magazine.
A yellow locust squatted hundreds of pounds on his small frame at the Smith machine. Another locust, black and yellow in color, spotted him, applying a featherweight touch with his tiny forelegs under the bar.
“C’mon Aldo, c’mon! One rep at a time!” the spotter yelled. “What’s the word, buddy? What’s the word?”
The weight-squatting locust exhaled forcefully through his palps. “Swarm!” Then he hissed out an alternating sequence of sounds: “Sssss! Thhhwwwwew! Sssss! Thhhhhwwwwew!”
“What is the word!” the spotter yelled.
“Dammit, Tim,” Aldo said.
“What is it, Aldo?”
Swarm,” Aldo said, weakly.
“What is the word?!” yelled Tim.
Aldo struggled with his last rep. “Swarm!” He dropped the bar on the floor, denting the rubber tiles with a loud thud.
On the bike, Af seethed. In his apartment it was easy to be the new, calm Af: just a normal, easygoing quasi-human, doing a crossword with a cup of coffee. But when he left the sanctity of his home, he opened himself up to external stimuli like these obnoxious locusts. Their mandibles hadn’t stopped flapping since he got there, and Af wanted the common areas to be quiet.
“This is our year, buddy.” Tim threw a small towel over one of his wings. “We’re gonna get so much ovipore we’ll barely have time to strip fields.”
“Yeah,” Aldo said. “I hit one last night, a nymph. I bent her over, gripped her with my valvae and rammed my aedeagus into her ovipore, like, a hundred times.”
Af waged a small internal struggle. Be like the willow, he told himself, closing his eyes. The bending willow. He tried so hard to picture himself as the bending willow, but it was almost impossible in the face of grunting, serotonin-drunk locusts.
Tim helped Aldo place the bar on the stops. Aldo sat up and they both scarfed two large pizzas resting on a nearby weight bench, followed by a bag of chocolate cupcakes and a quart of fruit punch each.
Af cringed at the sounds of mandibles gnawing through big pieces of food. He wanted to rip off those muscular locust legs and watch locust juice squirt all over the floor until their creepy eyes clouded, because every time he tried to get a peaceful workout, there were these two lunkhead locusts in their gregarious phase making all this noise.
Af couldn’t take it anymore. He got off the bike and went over to the locusts as they devoured the last of the food.
“Would you locusts mind keeping it down?”
Tim rose from the bench, hunching his wing buds up under his yellow-spotted thorax. He tilted his head and considered Af through half-closed lids as he rubbed his over-muscled hind femora against his under-developed abdomen, puffy from too much beer.
Their color turned dark as Aldo finished off another pizza. Af wished he could temporarily shut off his overwhelmed human sense receptors, busy processing the food, talcum powder, and weird locust sweat that reminded him of old dish sponge.
“You got a problem, old man?” Tim asked, rhetorically.
“Yeah, I have a problem,” Af said. “I can’t hear my podcast over your macho posturing.”
Tim and Aldo focused their reddish-violet eyes at Af, antennas quivering.
“We don’t think we’re being loud,” Tim said.
“Yeah. If you don’t like it, go somewhere else,” Aldo said.
“Do you know what I like to have for dinner once in a while?” Af casually leaned an arm on the Smith machine. “Roasted locust with olive oil, crushed garlic, fresh ground pepper and rosemary. 375 degrees for thirty minutes. If I’m out of the a
partment, I like bags of hot-boiled locusts. And then for dessert, I like to take a locust, pound it into a mash, then mix it with flour, water and sugar. It makes a nice little cake. Sometimes I even use a madeleine pan.”
Tim lunged at Af, his bulging femora flexing, but Aldo held him back.
“Lemme go!” Tim yelled.
“Dude, don’t you know what he is? It’s not worth it. He’s not worth it, okay? Let’s go do some plyometrics outside. We gotta focus on the training.”
Tim threw his damp towel on the weight bench. With that final exhibition of petulance, the two locusts stormed out of the free weight area, leaving pellet droppings, torn Locust Fitness magazines and damp weight benches in their wake―but they didn’t make it to the door. Af finally lost his temper.
When Pedro, a member of the building’s cleaning crew, entered the gym to replace the sanitary wipe canisters, he found a gory scene: segments and antennae, scraps of membranous and leathery wings, and body fluid coating the floor and equipment.
“Dios mio,” he whispered.
It took Pedro twenty minutes just to fill out the maintenance checklist. More than once, he regretted leaving his storied trapeze family for a job in Amenity Tower.
As he mopped up the last locust part, Pedro regretted that the locusts weren’t smaller, because then he would take them home. His wife Maria would wash them and toast them on the comal with a little lemon juice. They would eat them as a crispy botana while watching his honored namesake, Pedro Infante, in their favorite movie, Los Tres Huastecos.
As he mopped the floor, Pedro thought about picking up a bag of chapulines at the market for Maria.
efore she put on her next disguise and headed over to Amenity Tower for another futile stint looking for Don’s fugitive, Kelly stopped by the tube room to check for messages.
Incident at post office in bowels of HVT’s condo bldg. M
She pulled on jeans and a sweater, then grabbed her tool bag and some extra vials on her way out the window.
