Kockroach (17 page)

He thinks of Mite, but not of his betrayal. He thinks of sitting in the schvitz with Mite, of playing chess with Mite. And he thinks of the conversation they had in the big brown Lincoln as they drove together to see the house in Yonkers, using words like gratitude, feeling, hunger. They had just been words, passed back and forth, tools, but even in the car, Kockroach had known they were more. And he would like now to talk again to Mite about those words and others, words like loyalty and satisfaction. Words like violence and opportunity and power.

This desire to talk, to communicate, is completely foreign to a cockroach and yet it grows ever stronger within him. He knows it is alien, this desire, he knows it is a corruption, and yet it is too strong to deny. Just as words infected him with concepts and concepts infected him with thought, thought
infects him with the strange need to talk, to talk in words, to start it all again.

He brings back a great ball of starchy gluck to feed his colony and they swarm over the food and swarm over him, burying him in their writhing brown mass, and it feels still as good as ever it felt, and his genital flap swells and throbs in the middle of it, yes, but it is no longer enough.

He needs to mate, but his molt has made the allure of the female cockroach a vague remembrance and nothing more. He hungers for shrimp, to devour again their crackly briny sweetness. He opens his mouth and a cockroach crawls in and he chews it and swallows and repeats with two more, four more, and it is good, yes, musty and crunchy with a soft gooey interior, yes, but it is not shrimp. And he wants to talk, but his family, his swarm, they have no words, no concepts, no thoughts, and so the talk is painfully one-sided.

He hoped it would be enough, to live as once he had lived and to provide for his flock, he hoped it would be enough, but it is not enough, not anymore, not after being infected with words.

Kockroach needs again to enter the human world.

Kockroach moves
now through the streets of the city in the bright light of day.

The sun is painful and frightening, even as he keeps his dark glasses on and his hat low, yet he has no choice but to walk among the humans in the daytime. He is no longer afraid of giant predators, and he is no longer afraid that a human will recognize him for what he is and crush him, but that does not mean he is not afraid. Fear and greed, greed and fear, they are always with him, his boon companions. He was in the middle of the explosion. He saw humans flying through the air, humans riddled with bullets, humans torn apart like cockroaches at the many many hands of a millipede. The biggest danger he faces in the human world is to meet up with those who will recognize him and want to finish what he started. So he stays away from the world of his former life, away from Times Square, away from the places in which he had once been known. And, most painfully, he stays away from the night.

Kockroach moves now through the streets of the city in the bright light of day and he is looking for something. He is not sure exactly for what it is he is looking, but he is looking for something and the something has a name, a word Mite had taught him.

Opportunity.

He has thought it through. In his house, in his corner, in the darkness, he has thought it through. What went wrong. Why he continued to the warehouse even after he was certain of Mite’s betrayal. From wherein came the destruction. He has thought it through, he could not help but think it through—that is the way of thought he has discovered, it is self-perpetuating and it never shuts up—and the answer he came up with was that violence had guaranteed his failure. Not the violence perpetrated against Kockroach, but the violence Kockroach perpetrated himself.

Two cockroaches chasing after the same female, the same morsel of goop, two cockroaches battle, the stronger wins, the winner mates, the winner eats, it is so simple. And among the humans he discovered that he is the strongest and so it was natural for him to think that anything he saw, any female, any territory, was his to take. But he was wrong.

Human violence is very different from the cleanliness of cockroach violence. There is a battle and one human wins and that should be the end of it, but one battle is never enough. Human violence spirals. And each battle ever after grows in size and intensity as the combatants reach each for their tools. The beaten human comes back with a knife. The stabbed human comes back with a gun. The shot human comes back with a bomb. The bombed human comes back with an army. It continues, back and forth, until one side is utterly vanquished or both sides are utterly destroyed.

That is why Kockroach went to the warehouse even after he was certain that Mite had betrayed him. The fight would
spiral into something cataclysmic, it was so destined, it was a human fight, and Kockroach saw no reason to delay the inevitable. He had miscalculated the force arrayed against him, yes, but not the end result. What started with the simple snapping of an arm, with Kockroach winning the battle with the shirtless human who had grabbed Mite by the nose and stepped on a brother cockroach, inevitably led to massive destruction. It is the human way with violence. Cataclysm is cleansing, yes, but surviving the cleansing fire of the warehouse had been mostly a matter of luck. He was lucky once, he couldn’t be sure he’d be lucky twice.

And so Kockroach has decided he will have to find a different way to rise again in the human world. And so he is looking for opportunity. He remembers when Mite first gave him the word. “A little business,” had said Mite. “Beeswax. Something rich.”

Yes, that is what he wants, something rich, a little beeswax, opportunity, that is what he is seeking as he stalks the city’s streets.

“You’re looking for opportunity, young man?” says the woman behind the desk. She has high gray hair, clear glasses on a chain around her neck, and she looks like she just bit into a mouse.

“You got it, sweet pea.”

“Well, we don’t wear sunglasses at the bank, or our hats inside, and we don’t use words like ‘sweet pea.’ We maintain a certain decorum. Are you sure this is where you want to work?”

Kockroach looks around. The ceiling is high, men and women behind glass partitions are sorting through money. He wants to be rich again, he wants the green bills to be thick in his wallet and ready to buy food, women, grooming, shrimp. Why would he want to work anyplace else but a bank? “I’m sure.”

“Then fill this out.” She hands him a sheet of paper. “And don’t leave out the references. Three. We do nothing without references.”

Kockroach looks at the sheet of paper in his hand, covered with human writing and long blank lines. He looks up at the woman, who is staring at him through those clear glasses.

“I don’t read,” he says.

“I’m very sorry to hear that,” says the woman, without sounding very sorry at all. “But if you don’t read, what makes you think you can work at a bank?”

He leans over, tickles her chin. “Because I can count.”

Kockroach places the gray tub on the table and starts tossing in the dishes, the silverware, glasses and food. Shards break off as the plates and glasses hit one another from the tossing, but he continues. He is wearing still his suit, his hat, his tie, his dark glasses, but he has now an apron tied around his waist.

“You want opportunity?” had said the man at the register of the restaurant, a short man with a pointed beard. “Why not? This land of opportunity, right?”

“So they say, sweet pea.”

“You ever bus?”

“I had a Lincoln.”

“Don’t be cute. Take apron, take tub, show me something.”

Kockroach watched a boy with an apron sweep the remains off a table and, following his example, tied the apron round his back and grabbed a tub and began clearing table after table, giving each a quick swipe with a rag before going to the next. He works fast, with abandon. The clatter and clash of the dishes is lovely, and the smell too. He likes the work, he would do this for free.

A half a sandwich, soggy with spilled coffee, gray with ash, lies on a plate in the tub. He likes his starch soggy. He grabs the sandwich, stuffs it in his mouth.

“What you do?” says the man with the pointed beard, standing now in front of him.

Kockroach looks up at him, bits of sandwich sticking to his grinning lips.

“Get hell out of here. What, you some sort of animal?”

Kockroach drops the tub on the floor, pulls off the apron, wipes his mouth with it, tosses it in the tub.

“As a matter of fact,” he says before leaving.

It is harder than he anticipated, this opportunity beeswax.

It seems opportunity is available only to those who can fill out the form that is held in a desk drawer in every building and the form can only be filled out by someone who can read. He needs to learn, he realizes, but who can teach him? He thinks of Mite. If Mite were here, Mite would take care of him, Mite would fill out the form, Mite would teach him how
to read. It was Mite after all who had taken him to Abagados where he could find a job without the form. He hadn’t realized how difficult it is to navigate the human world without a Mite by his side.

Every attempt to find opportunity fails. The market with all that luscious food, the clothing store, the barbershop, every place is closed to him. He crosses avenues, he hops along streets, he skulks the back alleys, he is looking for something, anything, he is looking for a sign.

And a sign is exactly what he finds.

Through an alley, on a short cobbled street surrounded by the butt ends of huge factory buildings, atop a small building with a ground-floor office, he sees a sign. There are words that Kockroach can’t yet read but it is what is above the words that pulls him in. Huge, brown, oval, with six little legs sticking out, two beady eyes, two stubby antennae. It is a giant arthropod, a giant cockroach to be exact, not an accurate rendering, as Kockroach surely knows, but close enough to leave no doubt of what it is.

Kockroach rubs a finger across his teeth, twists his ears.

“Irv,” yells the woman at the front counter in a voice that resembles the screeching of a cat with a truck parked on its tail and which Kockroach finds positively lovely. “Is someone here looking for a job.”

Her blond hair is piled atop her head like a hornet’s nest. She rubs a stick across one of her fingernails. The mounds on her chest are astounding.

“Give him the form,” shouts a ragged voice from the back room.

“I gave him the form,” screeches again the woman, looking not at Kockroach but at her hand. The stick rubbing back and forth across the nail makes a sound like a cricket. “He says he needs to talk to you.”

“I’m busy,” the ragged voice shouts back.

“Mr. Brownside is busy,” says the woman.

Kockroach leans over the front counter and takes the woman’s hand in his own. She tries to tug it away but he holds it fast and brings it to his lips. He licks the middle finger lightly with the dry tip of his tongue.

“What did you go and do that for?”

“I couldn’t help myself, sweet pea.”

“Well, don’t do it again.”

He does it again, sees her eyelids flutter. Still holding her hand, he says, “What is your name?”

“Cassandra, with a
C
.”

“That’s a pretty name. What do you do here, Cassandra, with a
C
.?”

“I’m the receptionist.”

“I mean you and Mr. Brownside.”

“None a your frigging business. What are you, some sort of gumshoe for his…Oh, you don’t mean…Well, jeez, didn’t you see the sign? We’re the Brownside Extermination Company. We get rid of bugs.”

“Get rid of bugs? How?”

“How do you think? We exterminate them.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means you don’t want to be no bug around Irv.”

“Do you like wine, sweet pea?”

“What does that got to do with exterminating?”

“Let me in to talk to Mr. Brownside and you’ll find out.”

“What if I don’t want no wine?”

“Then we’ll drink champagne.”

“What if the bubbles set me sneezing?”

“I’ll get you a tissue and pour another glass.”

“What if I ain’t interested?”

He lowers his head, lets his tongue roll out its full ungodly length before gently brushing once again her finger with its tip.

“Irv,” she screeches. “Youse got a visitor.”

“It ain’t so easy as it looks,” says Irv Brownside, rumpled and unshaven, big-bellied, big-jawed, wearing a filthy brown coverall. His desk is piled with papers, journals, files, invoices, cans of poison, a thick pastrami sandwich. His work boots sit atop his desk, alongside his feet in their dirty woolen socks. He leans forward, picks up his sandwich, leans back, takes a bite. “You don’t just go in and spray. Oh it looks good, you in your uniform with the tank on your back, but when those little buggers they’re back that night it’s hell to pay. You want to kill ’em, you got to think like ’em. Not just any crack will do. They like it warm, they like it tight, they like it moist.”

“Don’t we all,” says Kockroach.

“What? Oh yeah, right. Good one. You got any exterminating experience?”

“Of course,” says Kockroach.

“What kind of pest? Your cockroach, your ant, your wasp, your termite, what?”

“The human kind.”

“What’s that? Oh, you’re making a joke. You’re a funny guy, huh? Is that why the smile?”

“I always smile.”

“I don’t like funny guys. Funny guys like to talk instead of work.”

“I like to work.”

“You don’t seem the type.”

“I’m a fool for work.”

“Look, if you got no experience, I can’t use you. I don’t got time to train. Fill out a form, and if things change, I’ll maybe give you a call.”

“No forms.”

“Everyone’s got to fill out a form. We need your numbers. The government and all.”

“No forms.”

“No forms?”

“No numbers.”

“What are you, on the lam?”

“Rack of lamb.”

“Heh? Oh yeah, again with the funny. So you’re talking something off the books. No taxes, no withholding, none of that Social Security bullcrap. Cash.”

“Perfect.”

“And with everything in cash—” he rubs an eyebrow—“you’d be expecting less than minimum, I suppose. Ain’t that so?”

“So.”

“And you think you can think like them little buggers?”

“I’m sure of it.”

Brownside takes a bite of his sandwich, swings his feet from the desk, pushes out of the chair, ambles off into a closet. He brings back a black chest the size of a small suitcase. He opens the chest on the desk. Inside rests an empty cage with a steel frame, wire-mesh sides, a small latched door.

“How many roaches in this city?” he says. “A hundred million or so? Bring me back just fifty and you got the job. Just a measly fifty. It should be the easiest thing in the world, but you got to know where to look. We open at seven. Show me at seven that you know where to look and I’ll give you the job.”

“No problem.”

“Don’t be so sure of yourself. Sixteen years in this business I been sending rooks out with that case and not a single one came back with more than twelve. Even pros can’t find twenty, nine times out of ten. It’s funny how when you don’t want them it’s all you can find, and when you’re looking you can’t find a one. Still think you can handle it?”

“Piece of cake,” says Kockroach.

Kockroach waits outside the Brownside Extermination of
fices with the black chest gripped in his hand. He has been waiting since before dawn reached its scaly fingers across the rooftops of the factories backing onto the alley. He didn’t want to be late so he arrived while the night was still thick with the imperfect darkness of the city. He waits, but his mind is not empty as before when he waited. Now he waits and, alas, he thinks.

He thinks about how it was before he was given words and about how the thoughts now don’t ever stop and leave him be. It doesn’t make him better, this curse of thought, of that he is certain, but it does make him different. And why, he wonders, should that difference make a difference?