Bedbugs

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Bedbugs Page 16

by Ben H. Winters


  Meanwhile the bugs were busy, busy, busy, flickering in the corner of Susan’s eyes, dancing across her knuckles, alighting on and off the back of her neck. Susan could feel them thick in the air around her, and she caught occasional whiffs of their tell-tale scent—a musty, too-sweet stink of raspberries and coriander. But when Susan looked up from Candy Land, or from the counter where she was making coffee and preparing lunch—when she turned her eyes directly upon the bedbugs—the badbugs, badbugs, bad bad bad—that she knew were there—she knew they were there—when she looked closer at the cluster writhing on the countertop, or at the line marching up the side of the trash can—they would transform under her gaze into specks of dirt, or twists of fabric, or nothing … just, nothing at all.

  “Your turn, honey,” Susan murmured, setting her yellow plastic man on a blue rectangle, and rubbed her eyes with her knuckles until bright red spots danced across the back of the lids.

  Alex came home a half hour earlier than his usual 6:30, acting as though not a thing were amiss in their charming little life. He was chatty and cheerful, brimming with positive news about GemFlex. The Tiffany shoot, in contrast to the Cartier debacle of last month, had gone off without a hitch. (“You were absolutely right, by the way,” Alex reported with a grin. “Vic would have been lost without me.”) What’s more, there had been a flurry of freshly signed clients, a big uptick in receipts going into the year’s end. But even as Alex prattled on, Susan could smell his nervousness, could feel his tentative movements; he was handling her with kid gloves, eyeing her anxiously, checking to see if Dr. Gerstein’s prescription had begun to take effect. To see if, in the doctor’s hideously condescending phrase, “the situation had begun to improve.”

  Sorry, pally, Susan thought grimly as she walked slowly down the stairs from putting Emma to bed. The situation has not improved.

  She had decided that, over dinner, she would make her husband understand that precisely the opposite was true: the situation was much, much worse. Worse than Susan had ever imagined.

  *

  “You’re not going to like what I have to say. But I need you to listen, and to try to understand.”

  Alex looked up from his plate, a spot of salad dressing on his chin, and examined Susan through the flowers that sat in a vase in the center of the kitchen table. It was a gaudy autumnal bouquet he’d brought home from Trader Joe’s, flushed with russet and orange, but all Susan could see in it were hiding places. She knew that the bugs were slipping up and down the stems, paddling in the stale water at the bottom of the vase. Susan hadn’t touched her salad. She sipped from a cup of coffee, the last of the pot she’d brewed hours ago, bitter, thick and gritty with sediment.

  It was Friday November 5, at 8:40 p.m. The Wendts had been living at 56 Cranberry Street for fifty-four days.

  “Go ahead,” Alex said gently. “I’m listening.”

  Susan took a breath and pushed her fingers with difficulty through her knotted, greasy hair. To have even a chance of getting Alex on her side, Susan knew, she needed to make all this insanity sound as nice and not-insane as she could. As normal as she could.

  “OK, so, I found this book.”

  “OK … ”

  She told Alex about Cimex Lectularius: The Shadow Species, making it sound basically like an entomological textbook, very scientific, very dry and serious.

  “The bottom line is, we somehow got these bedbugs,” she continued, while Alex sat stone faced on the other side of the table. “This particular strain of bedbugs, you might say. And, basically, they’re not going away.”

  “So.” Alex took off his glasses and exhaled deeply. “This is about moving again.”

  “No. It’s not above moving. God, I wish it were. Something very bad happened in this house. I think it has to do with the old tenants, with Jack and Jessica Spender.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Something happened. Something—something awful. And moving won’t help. They’ve got me now, Alex. They’ve got me.”

  “Susan?”

  She waved away his hand, gritted her teeth, ordered herself to keep it together. The tingling itch made itself known on her inner thigh, and she fought a need to scratch.

  “There’s only one way to end the curse, you see.”

  Alex’s eyes narrowed. “Did you say a curse?”

  Well, Susan thought. So much for keeping it nice and not-insane.

  “Yes, Alex. This house is cursed. The book uses the word “blighted,” but it’s the same difference. And the thing is, now I’ve … I’ve got it somehow. I’ve got the blight. I think I know how to end it, but it’s …” Her voice descended into a rasping whisper. “I don’t know if I can do it.”

  Susan looked searchingly into her husband’s eyes, looking for some glint of understanding, of empathy. They had met eight years ago and had been married for five. They had honeymooned in Finland, after putting sixteen countries in a hat and both swearing to abide by whichever came out first. Finland had been amazing, a wonderland of saunas and smoked fish and dreamlike bogs.

  Please, just let him—let him understand. Let him try to understand.

  Alex’s mouth opened slightly, and then, after a moment, he said, “Did you pick up the Olanzapine prescription?’ ”

  Susan squeezed her eyes shut and groaned, and in the silence that followed, she heard it, loud and vivid: a terrible deep hissing, a sibilant thrum in the back of her worn-out brain pan. The badbugs were laughing, a hideous insectine laughter, the devil’s own gleeful laughter. They were all around her now, in their colonies, in their swarms, massed and ready to strike … beneath the floorboards, under the sink, in the closets and the mattresses. Waiting. Susan gave in to the need to scratch, dove her hand into her lap and worked urgently at the fiery itches on her thighs.

  “No, Alex, I didn’t pick up the prescription.”

  “Why not?”

  “Why—” Susan interrupted herself with a dry and rattling cough and shook her head. She raised her hands from her lap to drag her nails across her prickly scalp, and dry white pieces of skin tumbled onto the table. Alex looked down at the floor.

  “Susan, please,” he murmured, and Susan thought, This is useless. Useless … “The medicine—”

  “Alex, we are in serious danger. I am in danger. Can you understand that?”

  Alex spoke slowly, choosing his words carefully. “I understand that you believe that you are in danger.” He reached across the table and took her rough, twitching hands in his own. “I am going to help you through this. You have an illness, baby. You’re sick.”

  She jerked her hands away. “I’m not.”

  “The landlord said we do not have bedbugs. The doctor said we do not have bedbugs. The bedbug exterminator, the amazing Kaufstein, the exterminator to the stars—I’m quoting now—”

  “I know what you’re doing.”

  “OK, well, she said we do not have bedbugs.” Alex’s voice was hardening, growing louder, and he shook his head as he spoke. “Look, I am not upset with you. I’m not. But you have a problem. And you have to deal with it.”

  Alex rose from the table. His big hands were balled into fists, the fists pressed into his sides. Susan got up, too, and stared defiantly into his eyes. “I don’t care what anybody says. We have bad—we have bedbugs, and they are not going away. ”

  Alex stepped backward, closed his eyes, and said nothing.

  “I need you, Alex! I need your help.” She put her hands on his shoulders, peering up at him until he opened his eyes. “I need you to believe me.”

  “Oh, Susan.” He roped his arms around her, gathered her into his chest, and rested his chin on her head. “Oh, baby. The doctor said—”

  “Please, Alex …” She spoke into his chest. Tears streamed down her cheeks. “Please …”

  “—the doctor specifically said that a symptom of this, this Ekbom’s syndrome, can be a belief that the insects are persecuting you, and you alone. He said that rejecting t
he reality of the condition can itself be a symptom of the condition.”

  Susan pulled away from him, scowling. “That makes no sense.”

  “Well, it makes a lot more sense than supernatural monster bedbugs.”

  Susan didn’t know what else to say. A miserable silence welled up in the room between them. Alex leaned against the doorframe, held his face in his hands, and let out a low grunt of frustration. Susan paced between the kitchen table and the stove, her mind pinwheeling: she thought of waiting until tomorrow morning, when Alex took Emma to ballet, and setting the building on fire. She contemplated following the example of the late, great Howard Scharfstein, wandering down to that creepy basement and blowing her brains out.

  At some point, Alex turned, shook his head, and slipped out of the room. As Susan watched him go, one of the tiles of the pressed-tin ceiling fell abruptly from its place and clattered noisily onto the wooden floorboards just behind her. Susan wheeled around and gaped at the ceiling. The square of plaster now exposed was like the space under a rock that’s been turned over, writhing with dozens and dozens of tiny brown and black bugs. As Susan watched wide-eyed, the badbugs began to fall, dropping in uneven, weightless rows to the kitchen floor, where they landed like paratroopers, scurrying off to the corners, alone, in pairs or little groups.

  Susan watched, frozen, as the bugs ran off in all directions, and then she heard it: a cheery knock from the front door.

  “Susan? Yoo-hoo? So sorry to bother you, dear.”

  25.

  Andrea Scharfstein, as it turned out, was having some trouble with her phone.

  “I am so sorry to be a pain in the tush, Suze, but I am supposed to talk to my sister Nan at ten, which means seven o’ clock in Portland. If she doesn’t hear from me right on the dot, she gets nervous. You know how old ladies are.”

  She gave Susan one of her broad, teasing winks, slouching with theatrical casualness against the doorframe.

  “Oh,” said Susan.

  “Anyhoo, you said if I was ever having trouble with this silly thing …” Andrea sighed, holding up the phone with a playfully apologetic smile. “So, but I’m barging in. How are you, kiddo?”

  The absurdity of the question, considering Susan’s surreal and terrifying circumstances, rendered her speechless for a moment. She thought of the bugs on her kitchen floor, scattering in all directions from the fallen ceiling tile, like soldiers preparing for an ambush. She thought of bugs in the hall closet, just behind her, slipping in and out of coat pockets. Bugs wreathing the air shaft, clinging to the cracks.

  “Oh, I’m just fine, thanks,” she said tonelessly. “Just fine.”

  “So, can you take a look at the thing? I just hate to think of old Nan fretting away, thinking I’ve been crushed under an armoire or something.”

  “Sure. You bet.”

  Andrea was wearing lavender leggings, a long flowing nightgown, and an old-fashioned robe, tied loosely with a sash. Her hair was piled atop her head, in curlers. I am under assault from an army of demonic insects, Susan thought, the notion drifting untethered through the buzzing fog of her mind, and Mrs. Roper is here for tech support.

  “Oh, you’re a lifesaver, dear. Absolutely a lifesaver.” She stepped past Susan, toward the kitchen, and the front door closed behind her. “Shall I put up the kettle for us?”

  Susan sat at the kitchen table with her hands folded in front of her while Andrea busied herself in the kitchen, pulling open drawers, rummaging for teabags, sugar, spoons. The aggressive normalcy of the situation began, against all odds, to steady Susan’s nerves: it seemed impossible that these two worlds could exist simultaneously, that a cheerful old woman could be fixing a pot of tea in the same apartment—in the same universe—where Susan was being tormented by a shadow species sent from some circle of hell. Andrea did not seem to notice the ceiling fragment, still lying dead center on the kitchen floor, or else she just chose not to mention it, stepping around or over it as she bustled about in her absurd robe and sash.

  “Handsome hubby’s asleep?”

  “What? Oh—yes,” Susan said.

  “I used to be the same way. Howard would tuck himself in at nine o’clock, or go up to read his mysteries, and I’d wander about the house for another hour or two. Liked the ‘alone time,’ I suppose. No shortage of that now.”

  “Hmm,” said Susan, and then she squinted at Andrea’s phone, a cheap Samsung clamshell, five or six years old, lying on the kitchen table next to her own shiny pink-cased iPhone. “So, what exactly is the issue?”

  “Well, it won’t do anything, that’s all! I’m sure I put it on some daffy setting or something, but I’ll be darned if I can undo it.”

  Susan poked at the power button. “It’s got no battery, that’s all. No power. When did you last charge it?”

  “It’s been charging all day.”

  “And are you sure the outlet is working?”

  “The …” Andrea tilted her head back, whacked herself dramatically on the forehead with the heel of her hand. “My goodness, now that you mention it, my hair dryer hasn’t been working either, and I keep that on the same plug.”

  Susan slid the dead phone across the table and managed a tight smile.

  “I was actually going to bring the dryer down also, but I thought, ‘Well, for heaven’s sake, Susan is a busy person, she’s not your own personal Maytag repairman.’ Even just the phone seemed enough of an intrusion … oops, there’s the kettle!”

  Andrea had a free hand with the sugar, but Susan sipped the tea gratefully, enjoying the sensation of sweet burn on her throat. The older woman remained standing, leaning back against the counter with her stick arms crossed, peering at Susan over the rims of her reading glasses while they drank their tea.

  “All right, young lady,” she said at last, playfully stern. “You want to tell me exactly what’s going on here?”

  Susan looked up.

  “Because I’m going to be honest with you, hon. You don’t look so hot.”

  Andrea leveled Susan with a caring, motherly gaze. “You can tell me, sweetheart. What are landladies for? Is it—” She angled her chin upward, toward the bedroom, and brought her voice down to a low and raspy voice. “Is it Alex?”

  “No. No, not exactly.”

  Susan felt the rising tide of anxiety and desperation welling up from her stomach, filling her chest. She didn’t think she could bear telling the whole story to Andrea, to have one more person tell her how crazy she was being. But it was too late; she put her head down on the table and moaned long and loud.

  “Oh, God, Andrea. Oh, God, oh, God.”

  The older woman rushed over, her slippers shushing across the hardwood, and sat down beside her. “Susan, Susan, Susan.” Andrea patted her on the shoulder, laid her head across her back, like a mother bird. “My goodness, what’s happened?”

  Susan raised her head from the table, wiping tears from her eyes with the rough, rutted backs of her hands. “It’s bedbugs, Andrea. This apartment has bedbugs, after all.”

  “Oh, no!” Andrea said, her hand flying to her mouth. She looked around anxiously. “But I thought the exterminator, that young lady, said you were clear.”

  “She did—” Susan stopped to blow her nose in a napkin. “She said so, but unfortunately she was wrong. Just … she was wrong.”

  A tiny bedbug appeared on the arm of Andrea’s chair. As Susan watched in mute horror, the insect skittered onto Andrea’s shirt sleeve and down the withered line of her arm.

  “Well, you know, Susan,” Andrea was saying, “If it’s necessary, I will of course pay for an exterminator.”

  “Andrea … ”

  “What, dear?”

  The bedbug—badbug, Susan reminded herself with a shudder, bad bad bad—was advancing toward the wet pink sore that glistened on Andrea’s forearm. The bug would slip into it, swim around in that pool of exposed blood. Susan’s hand jerked forward, slapped at the bug. Andrea looked up, stunned at the sudden violence.
r />   “Sorry—there was—”

  Susan turned over her hand. Nothing. No broken husk, no smear of brown and red. It had escaped. Oh, God. Oh, dear God, don’t let me be crazy. She dug her ragged, clawlike fingernails into her palms and began a desperate internal incantation: I am not—I am not crazy. I am not crazy. Susan looked at the floor, and the fallen ceiling tile was still there; as she watched, a bug, small and brown like a lentil, slipped out from underneath it and darted to the pantry.

  “Now, listen,” Andrea said. “Because this is very simple. We are going to call back that lady who came. No, that’s silly. We are going to call someone new. I am sure that in Howard’s Rolodex there are a zillion exterminators.”

  Susan shook her head, still working at the insides of her palms, feeling blood well up where she had broken through the flesh. She knew what would happen if Dana Kaufmann came back, or anyone else: they would look everywhere, turn the apartment upside down, and find nothing.

  The bugs were for Susan—for Susan alone. Body and soul.

  She moaned again and trailed out into a kind of desperate hiss. Andrea made a soft sympathetic exhale, brought her chair closer to Susan’s, and draped one thin bony arm over her shoulders.

  “What does Alex think?”

  Susan shook her head and gulped tea, wishing it were coffee. Her eyes ached, her brain thumped inside her skull.

  “Alex is not being that helpful.”

  “Men,” Andrea barked. “Men and their secrets.”

  Susan looked up, struck by the change in Andrea’s voice. The thin comedienne’s growl had transformed in that one sentence, dropped into a deep, angry rasp: “With their hiding. And their lying. And never there when you need them to be. Never, never.”

  As she spoke Andrea looked off into the distance, out the windows above the stove at the streetlights punctuating the darkness beyond, and Susan examined her face. There was a coldness behind her eyes, a steely sadness that Susan had never seen before: the old lady was reliving some memory, something painful and raw. Susan studied her, rubbing together her bloodied palms.

 

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