by Nina Post
He had to wait weeks before he could even visit the wormery to see it and would stare at the photos of the litter on the web site, wondering which one would be his. He bought an expensive hundred-gallon tub with gelatin in bulk, a bed (ten feet long), and a mobile that played Phil Collins songs, which he learned through various forums that death worms loved.
That was only one-fourth of his Death Worm Wish List, which included a scorpion plushie and a board book about the unluckiest scorpion.
Having been burned by human-related things before, he hadn’t told Kelly about it in case something happened.
And, of course, something did happen. When he got the death worm contract, he was dismayed to see that it looked like this:
We only breeds qualty death worms, and ur death worm comes with 3 year warrantie.
You mus take your death worm to licensd vet within 24 hors after you pick up, or the warranty void. If there sick death worms at the vet and, your death wrm there at the same tie, the waranty is void.
You must feed your deth worm the fine organic death worm meel, or warrant is void.
You mus keep your death worm in a calm, stress-free envirement, or warranty void.
Woeful treatment of the English language aside, that didn’t sound like much of a warranty, so Af sent back the contract with a few suggested changes. Af had learned that such negotiations were common in business transactions, but the worm breeder took this as an affront short of an open declaration of war, and right before he was going to visit his death worm for the first time, the breeder said he would not sell him one, and mailed back his deposit.
Owing to this experience, and the stress of living in Amenity Tower and in Pothole City, Af went to a transcendental meditation guru and paid five thousand dollars for a mantra that was not working at all, not one bit.
And five thousand dollars was a lot of human money.
Ever since he became bound to Amenity Tower, he had learned that humans need money for all kinds of things: to keep their fragile bodies operating, to house their fragile bodies, to assuage their emotional pain, and to distract themselves from the daily struggle of being alive and the underlying dread of their own mortality.
He loved Kelly, but she couldn’t help his situation. He wanted that money back, and after extensive research thought he narrowed down the current location of the so-called guru to Iowa. The guru appeared to be moving east.
Plus, he had a loophole he was certain would hold strongly enough even that far out. It wasn’t ideal (it was far from ideal), but it was necessary.
It seemed so easy to be human for the bad ones. They dedicated their days to making things worse for others, blithely reducing the quality of life for everyone around them, looking out only for themselves, caring nothing about the effect they had and being rewarded for it. Af observed that if you generally followed the rules, were not a raging psychopath (or even a calm one), and tried to be helpful, it was a harder go.
From deep in the building, he heard the rumble of the 1920s elevator. His spirits soared. He sprinted to the kitchen to get the glasses of Cabernet from the fridge and warm up the casserole.
He wasn’t going to say anything about it on a Friday night, though. Tomorrow, he would go on the road and track down this guru to get his five thousand dollars back.
It couldn’t have been a good idea to get a death worm, anyway.
Kelly and Af drank red wine and watched Vertigo from the sofa. Tubiel had already changed into his chickadee-print pajamas and perched on the end of the sofa. Firiel read the “Fungal Genetics and Biology” journal in a butterfly chair, Rochel constructed a model airplane on the long table, and Kermit listened to music by the casement window. Achiel roller-skated around the perimeter in the main section, wearing, for whatever reason, a four-peaked biretta with his toaster-print pajamas.
“The Jackal said we’re a boring couple,” Kelly said with a half-smile.
“Oh, are we?” Af said. “Already?”
“But a good one.”
“Come on, look around us. This is boring? We’re more like Rousseau than Gauguin.”
“I’ll pretend to know what you mean.”
After a moment, Af said, “The Jackal and the sea slug—what’s her name?”
“Elysia.”
“Right,” Af said. “They have a contentious relationship. Whenever I see him lately, he’s in some kind of argument. I think he likes the drama. So, what do you think—should we get dressed up in formal wear, go out in the snow and sleet and thirty-mile-per-hour winds, and find some decadent speakeasy where we can drink and smoke and dance the Charleston? Better if it’s also a masquerade party.”
She smirked. “Because it’s 1924?”
“I don’t keep track of such things.”
“Nah. I think we should stay here. But do you know the Charleston?”
“No, but I’m a quick learner,” Af said. “Should we learn all the dances tonight?”
“I think we should get Tubiel to learn them all first, and he could teach us.”
Tubiel smiled and shrugged.
“Or we can watch Vertigo.”
“Sounds good,” she said, her head against his shoulder, relieved to be home.
I’m Also Making Two Loaves of Challah
he following morning, Kelly stood in line at Pothole City Donuts, adjacent to the Amenity Tower lobby. She waited behind a new resident, the bee hummingbird, who briefly went into torpor before snapping awake and buying a dozen nectar and mosquito donuts, devouring the entire box before Kelly even approached the counter.
Medusa, the owner, fluttered her pyrite wings and smiled, revealing intricately-painted fangs. “Hey Kelly! The usual?”
“Absolutely.” Though she was intrigued by the daily special: popcorn chocolate glazed.
“Buenos días,” the hummingbird said, less than a foot away, her beak encrusted with donut.
Kelly felt the breeze from the hummingbird’s wings and heard the buzzing pitch of impossibly fast motion. “Buenos días.” Kelly stepped up to the counter and picked up a large coffee and her current favorite doughnut: blood orange, almond, and ricotta. As she did, she admired Medusa’s vivid pink, white, and black fingernails.
She hurried to her office, determined to get in some quiet working time before Charlotte wrecked her day. But the Claw & Crutty rep was already there.
“Good morning! How are you today?” Charlotte kept typing.
“Feeling blessed!” Kelly said, matching (if not surpassing) Charlotte’s fake sincerity.
Trying to pretend Charlotte wasn’t in the room, Kelly checked her news feeds, ate her breakfast, and checked her email. How long would Charlotte stay?
She would start to dread coming to the office. Is that what corporate wanted? Were they trying to drive her out? If they were, it was a highly effective way to do it.
“I thought we could start by looking over the budget and year-to-date variance.” Charlotte’s words filled her with horror. She didn’t mind having to do the paperwork, but not with Charlotte.
“I need some time to deal with my email. Are there any specific things you want to go over?” Kelly asked without thinking much about it.
“In a building like this, everything.”
Kelly read another email from FedEx indicating that they couldn’t deliver a package because it required a signature. Kelly could concede the possibility, as minuscule as it was, that FedEx happened to show up when the front desk was left unattended, but three days in a row?
She called and sat on hold. When they picked up, FedEx told her the same thing they said the past two days. They told her the company and address of the package’s sender, neither of which seemed to exist. Was it from a hell lodge? Another dimension? The three Special Situation International execs who owned the building she lived in? Her father? Don? Who was sending it, and what was it—and why wouldn’t they deliver it? Did it need a particular signature? It didn’t have a name, only the address of Amenity Tower, with the st
range addition of #7.0.3., as though that were a unit number, which it absolutely was not. But she had already talked to every resident on floor seven about it.
Charlotte let out a sound of disgust and leaned over. “Do you have any wipes?”
Kelly opened a drawer and tossed Charlotte a sanitizing wipe packet.
“I got something gooey on my leg somewhere in the building.”
Kelly shrugged. “It’s part of the deal.”
Charlotte squinted at her. “Part of what deal?”
“When the residents aren’t human.”
“Not human?” Charlotte barked a short laugh.
“Uh, yeah.” Why did she need to state the obvious? “The only humans in this building are me, the building engineers, some of the cleaning crew, and you.”
Charlotte laughed. “What are you talking about?”
Kelly was confused about how she could possibly be confused. “None of the residents in Amenity Tower are human.” How many different ways could she say the same thing? Charlotte had to know that, right? She was from corporate. But there was the thing about Roger…
Charlotte laughed. “You’re funny.”
Kelly chafed in the now-crowded and stifling office. She flapped her blouse. The windowless walls felt like they were closing in on her, making it hard to breathe. She couldn’t stand it one more second, and so she abruptly stood, grabbed some folders off her desk, and headed for the door.
Charlotte looked up. “Where are you going? We need to work on the reserve, on the amenities, on bringing up property values—”
She also had to prepare her management report for the board meeting that night, and send out some letters to residents. “That’s exactly what I’ll be doing. In the field.”
Kelly walked down the hall of the management office and out to the elevator vestibule, mentally listing the tasks she had to do to get Charlotte Talbot the hell out of her office. The only way she could expedite the building flashing project and cut the budget by twenty-thousand dollars was to get the job finished some other way.
She went up to unit 2412 and knocked. The camel spider unlocked the door and peered out through the crack, shiny black eyes blinking behind lenses that corrected for farsightedness. The scent coming from the apartment was wonderful—an infrequent occurrence in Amenity Tower.
“Good morning, Mr. Solifugid,” Kelly said. “I’d like to talk to you about a special project I’m hoping you can help us with.”
“Why don’t you come in. I just took some bread out of the oven.”
Kelly followed him into the meticulously clean and organized condo. High wood shelves holding a large collection of both comic books and vinyl records encircled the living room, and high-end dog beds padded the floor.
The spider used his chelicerae to slice a loaf of bread resting on a cutting board, muscles flexing as he did. “It’s sourdough. Would you like some? I’m also making two loaves of challah, but that isn’t ready yet. I took the dough out of the fridge to braid a minute ago.”
“I would love some.”
He put a slice of the sourdough on a plate and gave her the plate and a knife, a butter dish, and a small bowl of marmalade.
“So, what can I help you with? I hope you don’t mind if I keep working on this.” He collected a large ball of dough from a bowl, took half of its contents, and put the smaller ball on a floured cutting board.
“No, of course not.” She paused a beat. “Amenity Tower is doing a flashing repair project to repair the exterior surface of the building,” she explained, spreading butter and jam on the bread. She ate when she could.
“The project would involve looking for any cracks and gaps, things like that, repairing it on the spot with new materials. You happen to have a specific… skill. Aside from bread-making.” She froze for a second, wondering if that came off as some kind of double entendre.
The camel spider blinked and smiled. “You must mean the suction cups on my pedipalps.”
“Yes,” she said, relieved. “Yes. And I know that spiders climb buildings in Pothole City.”
He cut the dough into three sections and rolled each section into a long string. Kelly ate the sourdough in small pieces, watching the camel spider’s movements. Maybe she should do this more often. No, bad idea. Most of it wouldn’t be what she considered edible, and could be something she’d want to stab to a table with a knife.
“Sure, some do, to keep warm. If they don’t have an apartment like this, I guess.” The camel spider looked sheepish. “Though I admit I do have a workspace in one of the structures on the roof. I like it up there.” His expression changed to concern. “Am I in trouble for that?”
He joined the three strings at the top and proceeded to braid the sections, lifting one carefully over another section, and bringing the third over the middle.
“No, no, not at all,” Kelly said. “A third helpful aspect for the project is your strength.”
If a camel spider could blush, she thought she’d seen it. “I like to train with weights in the fitness center. It’s my favorite amenity.” He adjusted the braid and pushed in slightly on the ends. He moved the braided loaf to a baking sheet and worked on the second ball of dough.
This reminded her that she also needed to send out an amenity survey.
“Are you up for it?”
“By myself?” he asked, carefully looping over the sections until he had another neat braid. “Those sit there to rise more.”
“I’m also going to talk to the remora.”
“I see. Hmm.” He filled the bowl with water to let it soak in the sink and wiped off his chelicerae with a clean dishtowel. “All right, I’ll do it.”
“Terrific! Thank you.”
“In return, perhaps I could use a bigger workspace on the roof.”
“It’s fine with me.” On her way out, Kelly took a better look at the living room. “You have a lovely apartment. It seems so spacious.”
The camel spider nodded. “I’m a bit of an obsessive declutterer. I have my collections, as you can see, but I keep it organized and dusted. I get rid of other things, and regret it later.” He gave her a sad smile.
As she went out the door, he adjusted his glasses and said, “I’ll see you at the board meeting tonight. I’m the new vice-president!”
She wanted to warn him to not be excited about it.
To complete her flashing project group, Kelly went up to apartment 2805. Residents were more likely to be at home in the morning.
The remora answered the door alone and faced her at a sideways angle, his sealed water contraption gurgling. Its dorsal suction looked like industrial equipment.
Kelly was a little taken aback. “Mr. Echeneis—where’s your friend?” She’d never seen the remora without the shark.
The remora burbled some air bubbles and pressed on a button to talk through a speaker. “I removed that attachment site. It wasn’t working out. But I’m looking for a new site, if you know of anything.”
“I don’t right now. But I’m wondering if you could help me with a building project. I need a team to finish the flashing repair, and the camel spider’s already agreed to be part of it.”
“What would that entail?”
She explained, and added, “That suctioned fin of yours would be a huge help.”
The remora pressed the button to speak. “I’ve gotta run to pick up an important printout in the business center, but yeah, I can probably do that. Can you send me the details?”
Kelly said she would, and took the elevator up to the forty-first floor.
Her flashing repair dream team completed, Kelly checked the walls in the trash room, and the length of the hallway, and the stairwell landing, bewildered about what unit FedEx had tried to deliver to. She didn’t even know what she was looking for, aside from an unauthorized unit addition, which could often be the case in the stairwell.
Af was on the forty-second floor. Maybe she could go up and—
The walkie-talkie chirped and
she clicked it on, eyes closed. “Yes?”
“Kelly, I need you back in the office right now.” Charlotte.
She briefly entertained the notion of walking out now. Instead, she called Af, but he didn’t pick up and she didn’t feel like leaving a voice mail.
Charlotte glanced up when Kelly came into the room and returned her attention to her screen. “Get me the year-to-date financial report, along with the adopted budget for the year. Obviously there are some discrepancies between the year-to-date financials and the budget that you and the board projected for this year, so I’m going to want to take a look at both of those and see where your projections were wrong.”
Kelly sat at her desk, enervated already, wondering if she should have another doughnut. Was she getting addicted to doughnuts? Doughnuts dominated her thoughts; a refreshing change.
“You can look at it if you want,” Kelly said, “but we’re obviously aware of what’s different. The difference is all in the capital expenses section.”
While Charlotte clicked her mouse in a way that made Kelly want to swing a studded ball of iron around the office, she started to write up a resident amenity survey.
Better to keep it simple, she thought, and mention some of the amenities. She had a thousand things to do that day, anyway.
Resident Amenity Survey
Most current valued amenity
A. Fitness Center
B. Indoor Lap Pool
C. Business Center
D. Death Worm Relief Area
E. 24-Hour Doorman
F. Laundry room
G. Ping-Pong
Most Desired Amenity: _______________________________
