Pest Control

by Bill Fitzhugh

  Bob took one last breath of clean air before he opened the door and stepped out onto the front stoop.

  “Hi, Dick,” Bob said. “How ya doin’?”

  Pratt sucked on his cigar and said nothing.

  “Listen,” Bob continued, “I was going to call—”

  “Hey, Mr. Goddamn Tambourine man,” Pratt shrieked. “Play a song for me…a little somethin’ to the tune of 300 ‘n’ 20 bucks!”

  Some spit landed on Bob when Pratt said “bucks!”

  Bob closed the door behind him. “Listen, Dick…”

  “Yo’.l You’re past due, scumbag!” Pratt said in his angular Bronx accent. “And let me tell you what the deal’s gonna be if you don’t come up with some money real fast.”

  As Pratt continued his abusive screed, Bob noticed a Con Ed truck pulling to a stop in front of his house.

  The driver, a competent-looking woman with long brown hair tumbling out from underneath her hard hat, stepped down from the truck’s cab and checked her clipboard to see that this was the correct address. She headed up the walkway to where Pratt was still railing at Bob.

  “Hey, yo, scumbag!” Pratt yelled, unaware of the Con Ed woman standing directly behind him. “Are you listening to me or what? I said I want my friggin’ money!”

  “Can you give me a few more days? I just lost my job.”

  “Like I give a rat’s ass,” Pratt said. “Pay your rent or find yourself a Fridgidaire box for three. You get my drift?”

  “Excuse me,” the woman said, startling Pratt so that he spit his stubby cigar onto the walkway.

  “Yo! Who the hell are you?” Pratt asked, his lecherous gaze lingering around the darted portion of her official jumpsuit.

  “I’m from Con Ed,” she said as she looked down on Pratt. “I’m looking for a Mr. Bob Dillon.”

  “Yeah, well it ain’t me, babe,” Pratt said as he leaned over to retrieve his filthy little Parodi. “He’s the lame-o, but I ain’t through with him yet, so you’ll just have to keep your little panties and your hard hat on till I’m done.”

  The woman’s head popped backwards and she snapped, “So who the hell are you?”

  Pratt postured back, squinting his eyes, and said, “Yo, I’m his friggin’ landlord, that’s who.” He turned back to Bob.

  The woman looked askance at Pratt’s hair, and addressed Bob. “Is your name really Bob Dillon?”

  “Afraid so,” Bob said.

  She smiled. “Boy, I bet that made for a fun childhood.”

  “Yo! Who asked you?” Pratt blurted.

  No one noticed as the door behind Bob opened slightly. Katy peered out through the crack and listened.

  “Hey, what’s your problem, stumpy?” the woman asked. “I’m just making a little friendly conversation with Mr. Dillon here.”

  “Hey, yo, this ain’t no friggin’ coffee klatch,” Pratt said. “I wanna know what you’re doing on my goddamn property.”

  “Well, not that it’s any of your damn business, but your tenant has fallen a little behind on his electric bill and I’m here to turn off the juice.”

  “Oops,” Bob said.

  Katy was embarrassed when she heard this.

  “Hey, yo, ain’t that just grand?” Pratt said. “Well get in line toots, ‘cause Mr. Limp Dick here owes me some rent money and you’re not gonna see dime one till I’m paid. Ya got it?”

  Just then, Katy smelled something besides Pratt’s cigar. It was essence of opportunity wafting up her tiny little nostrils, so she opened the door and stepped onto the porch.

  “Hey, Mr. Pratt,” Katy said. “Wanna buy some Girl Scout cookies?”

  “Piss off, kid,” he snarled. “I’m trying to squeeze some dough outta your deadbeat dad here.”

  “Hey, watch your language,” the Con Ed woman said. “That’s no way to talk in front of the kid.”

  “That’s alright,” Katy said. “I don’t mind.”

  “Look, Dick,” Bob said, “I just need a little time.”

  “Listen you freeloadin’ asswipe…” Pratt continued.

  “Hey,” Bob said, “there’s no need for that language.”

  “Yeah, what did I just tell you about that?” the Con Ed woman added.

  “Yo, sorry, I didn’t know you were all so sensitive,” Pratt said. “Let me put it to ya this way…pay up or I’ll throw you the hell out. I’ll be back tomorrow.”

  Pratt turned and huffed back to his house, which, unfortunately for Bob, was directly across the street.

  “How about you, lady? You wanna buy some Girl Scout cookies?” Katy smiled up toward the hard hat and the hair.

  “Sure, why not?” the hard hat said with a smile of her own. “How about a box of those mint ones?”

  “Alright!” Katy disappeared to retrieve the cookies.

  “Thanks, that was nice,” Bob said. “Listen, I know I’m behind, but…”

  “Hey, don’t worry about it,” the woman said. “I got a little latitude now that I got some seniority. I don’t wanna turn your power off.”

  “I appreciate that.”

  “I tell you what you need to do, though,” she said as she wrote on her clipboard. “Just drop by the payment center and pay whatever you can. We won’t turn you off if you show a little good faith.”

  “Great. Thanks,” Bob said. “I’ll do that.”

  Katy returned with a box of mint cookies and thrust them at the woman from Con Ed. “That’ll be five bucks, please.”

  “Five?” the woman asked. “They’re two-fifty over at the Waldbaum store.”

  “Yeah,” Katy said, gesturing gently toward her father, “but I got more overhead to cover than they do.”

  Chapter Eight

  Bob stared vacantly out the window of the storefront copy shop, illuminated by the warm rolling light that escaped from the Cannon TR-2000 Commercial Copier every time it cloned his flyer.

  Instead of the traditional résumé Mary almost certainly had in mind, Bob had created a flyer about his all-natural pest-control idea. Such a flyer was guaranteed to keep him from being bothered by real job offers, and, Bob thought, there was always the chance it could generate an inquiry from someone interested in his concept. After all, at various times Americans had believed polyester, Cheese Whiz, and Richard Nixon were all great ideas. Why shouldn’t they go for something with real substance?

  The first version of Bob’s flyer had been burdened with an abundance of scientific terminology, but he decided it was too factual and didn’t have enough of what advertisers called “sizzle.” So he redesigned it, opting for short, punchy copy and an arresting visual to grab the reader’s attention. To that end, the flyer was fashioned like a pirate’s flag—a white skull-and-crossbones on a black background. The copy, which was typed over the skull, went like this:

  Professional exterminator—Bonded!

  Fifteen years field experience!

  Proficient with poisons, traps, e-guns, etc!

  Gone private with lethal new concept!

  No pest left alive! Leaves no traces!

  No nerve damage! Act now!

  Satisfied with his new design, Bob waited patiently for the machine to give him fifty copies for his limited direct-mail campaign. As the machine whirred on, Bob stared out the window thinking about his future.

  Despite his Rotarian optimism, Bob was realistic enough to know his goal wouldn’t be easy to attain. Mary told him something like 70 percent of new businesses failed within the first six months. Another 20 percent went tits-up within the year. That left the other ten percent to succeed on hard work, a bit of luck, and choosing the right Yellow Pages. The worst part was, Bob couldn’t even qualify for this grim race unless he could cross-breed the perfect assassin bug in the first place.

 
Even if Bob came up with a Frankenstein bug that worked, he still needed two things: infested buildings and a cooperative building owner. The former would be easy enough to find in this city; the latter, well, he was working on it. If he could just get that meeting with Mr. Silverstein.

  There were a lot of “ifs” between here and Bob’s dream, like potholes on West Fifty-Fourth Street.

  Bob was so mesmerized by the hum and rhythm of the copy machine that he didn’t notice the guy in the “BUG-OFF” baseball cap who crossed Bedford Avenue and was standing on the sidewalk waving at Bob. After a moment, the man rapped on the window, snapping Bob back to reality. Bob acknowledged him with a smile.

  His name was Johnny Meehl, a blue-collar Brooklyn guy who had worked with Bob. Johnny lumbered into the copy shop. “Yo, Bobby-boy. Whatsup? Ya lookin’ kinda dazed and confused there.”

  “Hey Johnny, just copyin’ the ole résumé.”

  “Whatsup with that?” Johnny asked. “I thought since you told Rick to piss off, you was startin’ your own business.”

  “Yeah, I’m workin’ on it. These things take time, ya know.”

  “I heard that,” Johnny said as he read one of the flyers. “Listen, you almost through there? How ‘bout we go to Freddie’s for a cold one?”

  “I’d love to, Johnny, but I’m flat-assed broke.”

  “Hey, I don’t want to hear no no’s. I’m buyin’.”

  Bob thought a free beer was just the thing he needed, so he smiled and stacked the warm copies of his flyer along with some envelopes and stamps and headed out the door with Johnny.

  Adjacent to the copy shop was Freddie’s Tavern, not a fern bar by anyone’s definition. The clientele was guys deep in denial; no wives, girlfriends, or other enablers here. Co-dependency was the unused secret password and cheap draft was the only thing that ever empowered anyone here. No light beer in the cooler, and “Feelings” had never been near the jukebox.

  Freddie’s decor was standard fare, posters of Maris, Ewing, Namath, and other New York sports heroes. There were the usual neon beer signs and electric beer promotional paraphernalia. And posted behind the bar were hundreds of Polaroid snapshots of patrons in various stages of inebriation.

  Sitting at the bar, Bob and Johnny hunkered down behind two empty pitchers while working on a third. Johnny picked up the pitcher and sucked noisily from it. A moment later he let fly with a monster AAARRRRRRRRRRRUP!

  “He shoots, he scores!” Bob said.

  This was pure hilarity to the pest controllers, and they laughed and slapped each other on the back, carrying on like men in bars like Freddie’s are wont to do.

  When a small roach scurried down the bar, a beery business proposition popped into Bob’s head. He turned to the barkeep. “Yo, Freddie, you got roaches. You oughta hire me. I’m gonna start my own business.”

  “Hey, it’s atmosphere,” Freddie explained. “I don’t mess with it. You guys want another?”

  At that moment, it occurred to Bob that life was good. He had a beautiful wife and child, a friend who was buying the beer, and most importantly, he had a dream. Of course, after three pitchers of Budweiser, life tends to seem good, regardless of how things really are. That’s the point of beer.

  Around the midpoint of pitcher number five, Bob and Johnny began considering the philosophical implications of the pitcher that sat in front of them.

  Johnny, who lacked a degree in philosophy, nonetheless offered his analysis. “Issalf empty…”

  Bob, who had once taken a class in existentialism and was, therefore, more qualified than Johnny to address such weighty concepts countered with, “Issalf full…”

  The debate raged on.

  “You’re jus’ a opmotis…a otpomis…a op…you always look on the good sida things.”

  “The optimist,” Bob slurred, “sees the bagel and the donut sees the…wait a second, that’s not right.” Bob paused to gather his thoughts. “The optimist sees the donut and the pessimist sees the hole. I don’t know where I got ‘bagel’ from.”

  “I know where you can get great bagels!” Johnny said.

  “No, no, no, bagels don’t have nothing to do with it. What were we talking about?” Bob asked. “Oh yeah, I remember…Lemme ask you a question, Johnny whaddya want from life?”

  This was the sort of question Johnny never bothered with, so he stopped to give it some serious thought. After several seconds, the answer became apparent to him.

  “I dunno, the stuff I got, I guess. Job, a family, cable. A satellite dish would be nice, some good hockey tickets now and then. How ‘bout you?”

  “All I want outta life is my own truck with one of those big fiberglass bugs on the top. Ya know what I mean?”

  Johnny nodded in agreement. “I know eggsactly whatcha mean, boy that would be nice. But how the hell ya plan on gettin’ it?” Johnny slurred. “They don’t just give ’em away, ya know.”

  “I already told you, I’m startin’ my own business. It’s a brand-new idea, Bob’s All-Natural Pest Control. Killin’ bugs without chemicals.”

  Johnny, who had worked for a dozen different pest control outfits in the past ten years, pointed out that wasn’t exactly a new idea.

  “There’s a lot of competition out there for that sort of thing,” Johnny said.

  They spent the next twenty minutes discussing the merits of other, non-chemical methods for killing household insects.

  There was an old electronic apparatus which emitted an ultrasonic frequency designed to send household pests fleeing. However, after mice were found nesting in the devices, the attorney general put the manufacturer out of business.

  There were other, more technologically sound methods of pest control, including microwaves, super-heated air, liquid nitrogen, and electric shock. But Bob knew their drawbacks.

  The problems were revealed in a study at U.C. Berkeley. The study showed microwaving left eight percent of termites still alive and wooden framework severely burned. The electro-gun, a device delivering substantial currents of electricity, left 20 percent of the termites alive.

  Some pest controllers worked with extremes in heat and cold to eradicate insects from buildings. Liquid nitrogen worked by freezing the pests to a numbing 290 degrees below zero; however, you had to drill holes throughout your house to apply it, and it tended to warp drywall. Superheated air raised the internal temperature of structural wood to nearly 190 degrees. This killed the insects near the heat source, but others survived. There was also the problem with structural wood warping.

  The problem was that these methods were primarily termite-specific and some of them left enough bugs alive to reproduce and start all over again. Another problem—and to Bob, the more important one—was that someone else had already invented them.

  Bob struggled to explain his idea to his friend, but Johnny’s limited knowledge of insects was troublesome.

  “What the hell kind of bugs did you say?” Johnny asked.

  “Assassin Bugs,” Bob said. “They’re from the Reduviidae family.”

  “Never heard of ’em.” Johnny confessed. “You sure you’re not just making this up? I mean, I work with bugs, you’d think I’d have heard of these things.”

  “If you don’t believe me,” Bob said, “you oughta come see my workshop, it’s filled with ’em. You oughta see these suckers, they’re mean as hell!”

  “And you’re cross-breeding ’em? Whew! Better be careful, you’re screwing around with Mother Nature.” Johnny warned.

  “Hey, it’s natural,” Bob said. “Well, okay, I admit I gotta create a bug that doesn’t already exist, but otherwise it’s natural. No chlorinated hydrocarbons or organic phosphates to poison the water supply or screw up your nervous system.”

  “Hey!” Johnny said. “The hell you got against chlorinated hydrocarbons?” Johnny
pointed at the constantly twitching muscles around his right eye. “You making fun of this?”

  “Uh course not!” Bob said. “It’s hardly noticeable.”

  “Yeah, well I’ll tell you a thing or two, buddy. This twitch put two kids through public school!” Johnny said. “And it’d put two more through there if I could still have kids.” Johnny paused, almost making the connection. “What the hell are you anyway, one of those crackpot environmentalists?”

  “No way. I’m just trying to get a business going, that’s all. It’s a damn good idea and you know what? If it works I’ll be rich.” Bob sipped his beer. “It’s about money, I spose. Like you said, they ain’t exactly givin’ away those trucks with the big bugs on ’em.”

  “So,” Johnny said. “I guess the question is, where’re you gonna get enough money to get you a truck?”

  “I guess I need to get a job,” Bob said.

  “You had a job.”

  “No, I need a job that pays better.” Bob looked to Freddie, who was at the end of the bar reading the paper. “Hey, Freddie, izzat a Sunday paper? Let me see the classifieds.”

  Freddie slid the thick section of want ads down the bar, upsetting a bowl of beer nuts on the way.

  Johnny opened the paper randomly and focused his eyes well enough to read. Soon Johnny acted as if he’d struck gold.

  “Hey!” he shouted. “How’s 650 a week working part-time sound?”

  “Pretty damn good,” Bob said. “What’s the job?”