Pest Control

by Bill Fitzhugh

  Katy thought for a moment before speaking.

  “Wait. Mr. Pratt? I’ve got some money.”

  Pratt froze. He turned slowly.

  “Yeah?”

  It was an ugly sight; a grown man on his knees, counting the coins that lay among the shards of a Girl Scout’s broken piggy bank. As the smoke from his cheap cigar curled into his eyes, Pratt looked unhappy. He turned to Katy. “This all you got?”

  Chapter Nineteen

  The pile of extermination equipment Bob had stacked near the side entrance of Maison Henri included several large metal canisters covered with skull-and-crossbones and Mr. Yuck stickers, indicating the canisters were filled with noxious toxins.

  Bob had brought these for Mary’s benefit. His real arsenal was hidden among his myriad tools of chemical extermination—several shoe-box sized containers with a blood-red “assassins, strain zero” stenciled on the sides.

  Strain Zero was a cross between the Western Corsair and the Thread-legged Bug; these hybrids had inherited their elongated coxa and spined femur from their mother. They had the most unusual body type of all the strains—a powerful and squatty thorax of amber perched on dark, thin, but surprisingly strong limbs, sort of like Danny DiVito’s trunk perched on Manute Bol’s legs.

  Bob knocked on the back door and was let into the kitchen by Henri himself.

  “Bon jour,” said Henri. “You have brought your murderous insects, I trust?”

  He bent over and tapped at the side of the box. The Thread-Legged Corsairs made an angry squeaking noise. Henri jumped back and brushed his hands.

  “I wouldn’t get too close if I were you,” Bob warned. “These guys are pissed about being in these boxes and they’re hungry enough to eat the ass end out of a dead skunk, if you know what I mean.”

  “Ma foi,” Henri uttered as if the image had somehow violated him. He peeked again at the squeaking insects, then eyed Bob suspiciously before disappearing through the back door, leaving Bob to do his work.

  Bob went into the main dining room and set his bug boxes on a table for four. He dropped his tool kit onto the floor. From the tool kit he removed a drill, a three-foot length of three-quarter-inch clear plastic tubing, and a container of putty. Then, with his industrial-strength neoprene knee pads hitched tightly around his knees cutting off the circulation and making his feet all tingly, Bob spent the day introducing his Strain Zero hybrids to the wall spaces of Maison Henri while dreaming of his future.

  Chapter Twenty

  The Pinto belched gun-blue cracked-ring smoke as it hauled Mary back across the Queensboro Bridge. She was somewhere above the West Channel of the East River, dreaming a dream of her own about how far the money from the Maison Henri job would go toward maintaining her excellent credit rating and some new panty hose. Yet something nagged at her.

  Despite Bob’s promise to use poison, she wondered if she should have stayed and supervised…just to make sure.

  Midway across the span, high above Roosevelt Island, Mary glanced to her right at Goldwater Memorial Hospital, knowing that’s where Bob would end up if he ignored her edict to use copious amounts of poison at Maison Henri.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  The lunchtime crowd at the trendy bistro was well-heeled and hungry. The polite clank of silver on china barely covered the sounds of mastication as diners devoured bisque de homard and selle de veau.

  Strain Zero had been on the job for ten days. Bob, wearing a snappy khaki jumpsuit, and Henri, in his traditional chef’s whites, toured the chic eatery to see if the Assassin Bugs had been equal to the task.

  They first inspected the private dining room, unused at lunchtime. It was immaculate. Henri watched as Bob probed and peered into some dark places where roaches would be hiding. Not a bug in sight. For that matter, there were no hybrids in evidence either, but that didn’t matter to Henri. They passed through the busy main room, giving it only a cursory glance on their way toward the kitchen.

  “Well, Henry,” Bob said confidently. “It looks like we got the little buggers, doesn’t it?”

  A fleshy dowager, her mouth stuffed with Souffle Rothschild, looked up when she heard the khaki jumpsuit speak to the chef’s whites. Her concerned look said she was paying for something more authentic than “Henry.”

  “Ez I hiv tuld yu, ma neme is Ahn-ree,” Henri said with a curled lip and an accent thicker than pate. “Ahn-ree, Monsieur bug-person. I am from Anjou.”

  Ahn-ree leaned down to the stocky doyen and whispered in an exaggerated tone, “Mauvais quart d’heure,” as if to say this was an uncomfortable moment which would be over quickly.

  She nodded knowingly, though she had no idea what the Frenchman had said.

  As Henri spun and headed toward the kitchen to continue the inspection, Bob, much to his dismay, spotted a particularly large Brown-Banded Tropical cockroach (Supella supellectillium) doing the achy-breaky across an otherwise unoccupied table. Bob quickly scooped the offending specimen into his pocket and whacked his thigh with an open palm.

  CRUNCH!

  Bob whiffed the odor from the pulverized roach and fanned the air in the hopes that Ahn-ree would not get wind of his failure.

  Henri entered the kitchen and was inspecting the prep area when Bob saw another pair of large, mottled wings, their reddish-brown hue indicating a female. With practiced precision, Bob scooped, pocketed, and whacked her stinging his thigh with the force of his slap. CRUNCH! Henri quickly turned to see what the commotion was about.

  Bob, who was again fanning the air, acted as if he were trying to keep cool. “Awfully hot in here, Ahn-ree. What do have those ovens set at, five hundred degrees?”

  Ahn-ree paused as he smelled something rotten, but dismissed it as bleu cheese.

  Soon his inspection was complete and the Frenchman was satisfied. “Well, it seems your methode du naturel has rid me of my problem. Come to ze office and I will pey you ze balance of your fee.”

  Bob smiled, thinking he was home free. He began visualizing his truck with the big fiberglass bug on top until, suddenly, with heartbreaking shrillness, one of the cooks screamed and recoiled in horror, shattering Bob’s reverie.

  Bob and Henri rushed over to a pot of vichyssoise, which, to Bob’s chagrin, now served as an Olympic-sized swimming pool for roaches. Several of the 55 known species were represented in the pool, and it appeared the Australian Cockroach (Periplaneta australasiae) was winning with a nice crawl stroke.

  Henri, not a sports fan, reacted. “Merdel Mon dieul Ami de court Un tour de cochon!” Bob knew very little French, but could tell by Henri’s tone that he was not happy with the soup recipe. Desperate, he turned the flame on under the pot.

  “Ah ha! Die, you little bastards!” Bob yelled as he turned to Henri. “This is the last step of my method, Ahn-ree. My Assassins have chased them from their hiding places and herded them into one large container so we can …” His speech fizzled out. The entire kitchen staff stared, gape-jawed. Bob knew he was French toast, but he wasn’t ready to quit just yet.

  “You know,” Bob said as he fished one of the roaches out of the pot, “these things are great with snails.”

  Henri was not amused. Bob finally gave it up.

  The math was quite simple; that was the good news. Bob totaled his checkbook balance:

  $512.47

  -500.00

  12.47

  When the subtraction was complete, Bob handed the $500 check to an impatient and perturbed Henri. “There,” Bob said weakly. “Your deposit.”

  Henri ceremoniously slapped Bob on both cheeks with the check, then turned and huffed away.

  Bob stood there, crestfallen. Notwithstanding the two insects he had stuffed into his pocket, he had really thought he’d done it. He’d really believed he’d created a strain of Assassin that had completely debugged a co
mmercial building—and a restaurant of all places! He should have known better than to be so encouraged by a daytime inspection. In fact, for roaches to appear during the day at all, they had to be forced out by a population explosion. What were his Assassin Bugs doing? Bob envisioned his hybrids conducting seminars on reproduction in the wall spaces.

  Bob was leaving the kitchen when a waiter approached, nose in the air, carrying two large, leafy salads on his tray. Bob couldn’t resist. He reached into his pocket and tossed his two multi-legged “croutons” into the salads.

  As he stood on the sidewalk, the screams from inside told him someone had been disappointed with the barbe-de-capucin. He smiled guiltily as he headed for the subway, trying to figure out what went wrong and how the hell he would explain things to Mary.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  After three double shifts in five days, Mary was in a defeated and foul mood. The house looked like the Gaza Strip and she was determined to clean it up. As she vacuumed with her right hand, she lifted a cheap end table with her left. Clunk! A leg fell off. Exasperated, Mary stared at her new tripod, tempted to chew the other three legs off. She was frustrated, tired, and hungry. Low blood sugar was making her especially edgy.

  Unfortunately for Bob, he walked in the front door just at this moment. “Great news, sweetheart!” he announced.

  Mary couldn’t help herself, she was still a sucker for Bob and his positive attitude. She turned off the vacuum.

  “You did it? You got paid? Oh honey, that’s wonderful! I’ll call Mr. Pratt and we can…”

  “Well, slow down,” Bob said. “I didn’t exactly get paid.” Mary hoped she heard wrong. Maybe Bob said he wanted to get laid.

  “But what a fantastic learning experience!” Bob said as he put his arm around Mary’s shoulder. “I think that’s the best way for us to look at this.”

  Mary was floored. Her Gibraltar-like support of Bob, weakened by the eroding effects of his failures, was about to collapse like a muddy hillside in Southern California.

  “Bob, I told you to use the poison,” Mary said.

  “I know, but think about it like this, sweetheart, we’ve eliminated one of the strains. Don’t underestimate how important that is! Though to be frank, I really thought this strain would work. It tested great in the lab.”

  Mary hoisted the broken table leg in blunt object fashion.

  “Now, honey, let’s not do anything rash,” Bob pleaded as he backed toward the wall. “Let’s look at the positive side…”

  “Are you out of your goddamn mind? There is no goddamn positive side,” Mary screeched, using more profanity in two sentences than she normally used in two months. “You promised me you’d use poison!”

  “I know, but…”

  Mary stopped, the table leg dangling limply from her hand. She felt like Bob had cheated on her. “You lied to me,” she said.

  The table leg dropped to the floor with a muffled thump, crushing a small Black Carpet Beetle (Attagenus megatoma) between the rug and the padding.

  “Honey, I had a reason,” Bob said. “If I eliminated—”

  “No.” Mary interrupted. “It’s very simple. You lied.”

  Mary calmly headed upstairs. Too calmly. Zenlike. She called out for Katy to pack a suitcase. Bob followed her to the bedroom, where Mary hurled a suitcase onto the bed and began stuffing it with clothes.

  “C’mon, honey, I know what you’re thinking,” Bob pleaded. “We’ve been through this before. Right now the only thing you can see is our checking account balance.”

  “Ahhh,” Mary said, “the checking account balance.” She stopped packing and fixed Bob with a stare. “What is it now, $12.47? Perhaps it’s time we buy that cottage in the Hamptons we’ve had our eye on for so long.”

  Mary closed the suitcase and yelled down the hall, “Katy, come downstairs as soon as you’re packed!”

  Bob trailed Mary as she huffed downstairs with her suitcase. “I swear I thought it would work. Even if it didn’t, I thought he’d give me a chance to try again with poison.”

  At the bottom of the stairs Mary put her suitcase down. “You lied to me,” she said.

  “I know, honey, and I’m sorry,” Bob said. “Really, I am.”

  “Follow me,” Mary said. She turned and stalked to the Bug Room, Bob close behind. She went to the computer and grabbed Jiminy, Ringo, and Slim—Bob’s dried insect mascots.

  “Don’t worry, I’m not going to hurt them,” Mary said just before dropping them on the floor and crushing them into dust.

  “Oh, I lied,” Mary said. “Sorry about that, honey. Really, I am.” She looked down at the pulverized invertebrates and reacted with mock surprise. “Looks like that apology didn’t change a thing.”

  Mary turned and stormed out of the room. Bob followed.

  Thump. Thump. Thump. Katy dragged her suitcase down the stairs. Katy was determined to make her parents stop fighting. “Guess what?” Katy said. “I got an A-plus on my killer bee report!”

  “That’s nice,” said Mary. “Now wait outside.”

  “Don’t you want to know what I learned about bees?”

  “Not right now, sweetheart,” Bob said. “Maybe later.”

  But Katy didn’t want to wait until later. “You know how they have new bees?”

  “Katy, wait outside,” Mary said.

  She refused. “A queen and a drone mate in midair, then they fall to the ground,” Katy continued. “And to free herself, the queen has to pull the male gen-a-tail-ya from his body. I bet that hurts, don’t you?”

  Bob and Mary were struck speechless by the image of midair copulation.

  Katy had theorized that her parents would stop fighting if they had to discipline her, so she set about earning her punishment by continuing about the genitalia.

  “So the queen has this icky guy thing stuck in her, right? So what’s she supposed to do? I mean, she can’t fly around with one of those things, ‘cause then she’d be the king instead of the queen, so she gets the workers to help her pull it out. Then she has some babies or eggs or larva or something.”

  “Where did you get that?” Mary snapped at her.

  “It was in one of Daddy’s books,” Katy said.

  “It’s true,” Bob said. “That’s how they mate.”

  “Katy! Outside! Now!” Mary barked.

  Katy knew one-word sentences meant it was time to comply. She reluctantly went out the door.

  “We’ve been over this, Bob,” Mary said. “You have to accept your responsibilities! There’s no time for dreaming anymore. Have you forgotten that we’re behind on our rent?”

  Bob’s look said, “I wish you wouldn’t rub it in.”

  “If we can’t even pay rent,” Mary continued, “how do you expect to save money for Katy’s college education, huh? How?”

  “That’s why I’m doing this,” Bob said. “I could work for Bug-Off for the rest of my life and we’d still never have the money for Katy to go to college. You have to be a doctor or a lawyer or a plumber to get ahead these days. Dickheads working for other dickheads live paycheck-to-paycheck, treading water. You have to be your own boss to make enough money.”

  Mary’s business degree and knowledge of rising tuition costs told her Bob was right. But treading water was better than drowning.

  Mary opened the door and Katy fell into the front hall, her little ear having been pressed to the door. She smiled innocently.

  “Besides, Mary, you promised to give me two months.”

  “And you promised you’d use the poison.”

  Bob didn’t have a snappy comeback to that.

  “At least Katy will get fed at Mother’s,” Mary said, her voice dripping with sarcasm as she prepared to leave.

  “I’m not hungry,” Katy said, siding with her d
ad.

  “Yes you are,” Mary informed her.

  “Mary, I’m doing this because I love you and I don’t want to end up retiring thirty years from now with nothing more than a brass rat trap and a pat on the back. Would Katy be proud of that? Would you?”

  “No way,” Katy said. “I’d be totally embarrassed.”

  “This isn’t about down the road, Bob,” Mary said. “This is about now.”

  A cab pulled to the curb and Mary hefted the suitcases. “You know Mom’s number.”

  “Honey, please. Don’t leave.”

  Mary put down the suitcases and hugged her husband.

  “Bob, you know Katy and I love you more than anything, but you’ve got to stop gambling with our future. I’m through living hand-to-mouth. You’ve got to pull yourself together and look at the big picture.”

  “Mary, I need your help if I’m going to make this work. Please don’t go. Please.”

  Mary took Katy’s hand and led her toward the cab.

  Katy was near tears. “Bye, Daddy. I love you.” She broke free from her mother’s hand and ran to Bob, who hugged her.

  “I love you too, Doodlebug. And don’t worry, it’ll be alright.”

  Mary fought back her own tears. She didn’t want to do this, but it was the only way she could get through to Bob. She went to Katy and took her hand again. It was a terrible moment as Mary led her daughter down the walkway to the cab.

  Bob followed a few steps, trembling the way he did whenever he got pulled over by the police for speeding. The doors slammed and the cab pulled away heading for Astoria Boulevard. The last thing Bob saw as the cab faded away was Katy waving good-bye and wiping a tear from her sad, little face. Bob waved back weakly and then they were gone, the cab heading north under the pall of approaching storm clouds.

  It had come to this, Bob thought. Mary leaving him because he wanted to pursue his dream.