Bedbugs (22 page)

Someone has to commit the act, think the thought that throws open the door to the darkness
.

The Mandarin Oriental Hotel. And then—the next morning—
the next morning
—a spot of blood on her pillow.

For as bedbugs are drawn to heat and carbon dioxide, badbugs are drawn to the hot stink of evil
.

“Susan?”

Andrea was waving her hands in front of Susan’s eyes, snapping her fingers. Susan stood abruptly, and the legs of her chair scraped loudly on the kitchen floor.

“Andrea, it’s time for you to go downstairs and call your sister, I think.”

“Yes. But—”

“Nan will be worried sick, Andrea. Just worried to death.”

She grabbed the two teacups by their handles and tossed them in the sink, moving quickly, feeling a kind of delirious lightness. She plucked the phones off the kitchen table, handed Andrea’s to her and stuck her own in her pocket. “Susan?”

She led Andrea by the elbow, down the hallway and to the door.

“Glad to help. Good night, Andrea.”

Susan stood with her hand on the doorknob, listening to the muffled patter as Andrea scurried down the steps.
Cimex Lectularius: The Shadow Species
had said in no certain terms how the curse could be undone, how the badbugs could be sent back to the other side.

Pullman Thibodaux was unequivocal on that last point. Susan marched back to the kitchen counter, where the knife block sat thick and squat, like a gargoyle. She ran her fingers along the protruding handles, hearing Alex’s voice in her head, condescending, chastising.
I’ve told you, save the good knives for when you really need a good knife
.

“Totally,” Susan said. “You’re totally right, honey.” She wrapped her fingers around the heaviest handle and slid the butcher’s knife free from the block.

The little TV on Alex’s dresser was on, as if he had intended to wait up for her and continue their conversation, but he had fallen fast asleep. He lay in a nest of pillows, his thick curly hair splayed out around his head, mouth half open, snoring gently. Susan turned off the TV and watched him sleep, the handle of the butcher knife sweating in her palm. The room was silent but for the baby monitor on the night table, emitting its steady sibilant crackle.

Susan crouched beside her husband and whispered in his ear:

“Bad news, Alex. We have bedbugs.”

He muttered something unintelligible, licked his lips, and turned over, presenting her with the back of his head. She whispered again, a little louder, in his other ear: “Lots and lots and lots and lots and lots of them.”

He slept on.

“Dammit, Alex, wake
up
.” She smacked him on the side of the head, as hard as she could, cracking the butt of the handle on the base of his skull.

“Get up.”

Alex shot up into a crawling position and then fell forward again, gripping the back of his head. He flipped over, blinking, confused, the covers bunching around his torso. “Susan? Did you—what—”

He saw the knife and froze with his mouth open. His hair sprung out in all directions, a crust of drool pooled at the corner of his mouth. His eyes were brown and wide. Susan had always loved his eyes. As she held up her knife, watching him tremble, she felt a sudden sharp sting at the back of her neck: new bite. New itch.

Susan winced but did not release her grip on the knife. He had done this to her. All of the pain and confusion and misery. All of the itching.
He had done it
.

“What are you doing, Susan?”

“Why did you do it?”

“Why did I do
what?
”

She swung the knife, inexpertly. He jerked back and the blade just barely caught him, tracing a bright line of blood along the tan flesh of his forearm. Alex shrieked, high and womanish, pulled back against the headboard. Both of them stared at the long line of the cut, and then up at each other.

“What were you doing at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel the Friday night after we moved to Brooklyn?”

“What? Susan—”

“Friday, September 17. The Mandarin Oriental Hotel.”

All the details were completely clear to Susan, totally available to her. Now she knew the story, of how her life had fallen to pieces, and why. Because of whom.

“I seriously don’t know what you’re—”

He cut himself off, midsentence, and lunged for the knife. She jumped backward, steadied herself on her back foot, and parried forward, nearly cutting him again. Alex retreated against the pillows, lifting the comforter over his chest as if it were a shield.

“Susan, I swear to God I have never been to the Mandarin
Oriental Hotel.”

“Don’t lie,” Susan said flatly. The knife trembled in her hand. “Please, don’t lie.”

“You’re sick, Sue. You have—”

She cut him again and did a better job of it, swinging the blade like a scythe, right across his ribs. The knife bit deep, biting into the fat layer of flesh above his heart, and she could feel the resistance of meat beneath the blade. Alex brought his arm down and then up, staring at the sticky mess in his hand.

“Oh, God. Susan—”

“Tell me the truth,”
she hissed.

“OK,” Alex said slowly, pressing his hands against the wound, keeping his eyes on the knife, now smeared and dripping with his blood. “All right. Um … I did. That night, the …”

“The seventeenth.”

“I ran into this girl. This old friend of mine.”

“What’s her name?”

He swallowed hard, staring at the knife.

“Uh, Theresa.”

Susan scowled. “Theresa?”

“From—from college. You don’t know her. She’s a photographer, too, from my program. Nobody special—just this girl. ”

As his confession unspooled, tears trickled down Susan’s cheeks. Not because he had cheated on her, had betrayed her, had fucked some stupid girl from NYU in a hotel room. Susan was crying
because she was going to have to kill him
in order to end this terrible torment. He had drawn the badbugs to the hot stink of his evil, and she would have to sacrifice him like a pig on an altar or they would consume her.

“Susan?” He looked at her in the darkness, his eyes wide and wet
with fear, his chest drooling blood around his hands. Susan felt the prickly heat of a thousand itches all over her body, felt the weight of the knife in her hand, heard it demanding action. She stepped toward the bed and was distracted by a small shifting noise over the monitor, a barely audible pop and crackle: Emma shifting, adjusting herself in sleep. Out of sheer instinct, Susan turned her head to the sound, and Alex leaped at her.

*

The next six minutes passed in a wild panting frenzy.

Alex rolled from the bed, tossing the sheets and comforter to the ground, kicking his legs into Susan’s midsection. She went down hard on her ass, and Alex flung himself on top of her, wrestling her arm down, slapping at her hands, grabbing for the knife. She brought her knee up into his stomach and then cracked the knife handle into his jaw. He cried out and reared back, clutching his mouth, blood gushing between his fingers, more blood spilling from his chest. Susan slipped out from under him and hurled herself out of the bedroom.

He stumbled after her onto the landing, shouting, “Goddamn it, Susan, stop!” and then “Shit!” as his toe connected with the split in the floorboards. Susan halted, abruptly, stepping to one side just in time to let his big lumbering body chase itself past her, onto the top step. And then she was behind him, pushing him, hard, two hands in the middle of the back. Alex went tumbling down the steps, banging his head against the wall as he fell, and she chased after him, butcher’s knife clutched in two hands.

When he landed at the bottom, she was towering over him, straddling his body with her legs.

“Susan. Please. Think about what you’re doing.
Please.
”

She took a deep breath, bared her teeth.

“I’m sorry, Alex.”

She brought the knife down, fast, like a missile whistling toward its target, right at Alex’s neck, but he rolled away, kicking at her shins. She got up and followed, and they paraded slowly down the hallway: he walking backward, facing her with his hands raised, she following, one big step forward for each of his steps backward. She slashed at him, big wild uneven swings of the knife.

“Susan!”

He ducked as the knife sang just under his nose.

“Susan! Jesus, Susan, stop!”

They were in the living room now, passing under the archway and the ornately beautiful old sconces. In the corner of her eye Susan saw bugs crawling in and out of the teardrop-shaped lightbulbs that adorned the fixtures, bugs like sports fans crowding the bleachers.

Now Alex had his back to the wall of the living room, just to the right of the small door that led to the bonus room. Susan stepped toward him with the knife raised, and Alex grabbed her wrists and spun her around. She had a lunatic flash of memory, dancing at their wedding,
one-two-three, one-two-three
. And then it was Susan’s back against the wall and he had her pinned, his chest against hers, smashing her breasts, constricting her breath, his full weight pressed across her body.

Alex flung open the door of the bonus room, grabbed Susan by the waist, and shoved her inside. He slammed the door and she grabbed at the handle, rattled it, screaming, but Alex was holding it closed. She could picture him, leaning backward with the handle in
his hands, sealing her in. She banged on the door.

“Alex!”

There was a loud scraping noise—what—oh, God. The sofa. Still holding the door tightly shut with one hand, he had reached with the other for the giant heavy leather sofa, was dragging it in place to block the door, pen her in. She pounded on the door. “Alex! Don’t leave me here!” The adrenalin-fueled anger in her veins was cooling rapidly, freezing into fear. She hammered the door with her fists. “Let me out, Alex.”

“Susan, I’m going to take Emma somewhere safe, and I’ll be back soon.”

Emma—no
—Alex wouldn’t know what to pack for her, wouldn’t know how to take care of her. Her girl, her daughter.

“Alex. Wait.”

“I’m sorry, Susan.”

“Let me out, Alex. Don’t leave me here.” The magnitude of what was occurring swelled up in her, like a balloon expanding in her gut. She pressed her palms against the door. “Please.”

His footsteps moved out of the living room, pounded up the stairs toward the bedrooms. She tried the door again, and then leaned her forehead against it, tears cascading down her cheeks.

“Please.”

Five minutes later, the footsteps were back on the stairs. She heard Alex grunt, shifting Emma’s sleeping weight in his arms. Abstract, disconnected worries floated helter-skelter through her mind: Was he bringing her heavy coat? What would she have for breakfast? Where would they go?

*

The front door closed, and after a few terrible minutes of silence, Susan rose shakily to her feet and turned to survey the room in which she was now imprisoned. The painting remained where she had left it, pinned to her easel in the corner, just beside the window. It was still covered in the bites and welts that Susan did not remember painting.

But it was no longer a painting of Jessica Spender.

It was a self-portrait.

It was her.

The first of the badbugs crawled in under the door about an hour later.

It might have been less than an hour, or it might have been more. Susan wore no watch, and the moon gave no clue, hanging mute and unmoving in the window.

It was just the one bug, and it was not a big one. A stage three, Susan thought, maybe even a stage two. An eighth of an inch. Someone who was not waiting for it would never have noticed. But Susan’s eyes were trained, and she
was
waiting. Now they were coming for her. Susan was sure of that.

She watched the little bug from where she sat in the far corner of the room, under the one big window, where she had first discovered the photograph of Jessica and Jack. It crawled toward her, and Susan watched it come. Her knees were drawn up in front of her, her hands laced across the kneecaps. No more hiding for Susan’s friends, no more darting out when others couldn’t or wouldn’t see.

Now she was awake and alive and in their time, and they were coming.

The little stage three, a dark brown oval, a tiny creeping shadow in the moonlight, took a winding course across the hardwood floor, making its roundabout way to where Susan sat, waiting for it, her
stomach churning with dread. A single bug. It skittered forward a foot, paused, skittered forward another half foot. Doubled back, circled around, came closer still.

No reason to hurry
, the bug was saying with its easy meandering pace.
We’ve got you now
.

She looked at the badbug, and the badbug looked back at her.