As clear as day, a sudden picture in his head: Perry’s ten and staying at his uncle’s ranch in Arizona, and the cow in the pen behind the barn is giving birth on this winter morning, and the steaming calf, all bloody and brown and wet, just hangs there for a moment from the end of the cow before falling to the cold manure with a plop.
The roach slid over his upper lip and fell tumbling into the water-stained yellow bowl of his bathroom sink and landed on its back with its legs all folded up and moving weakly as if in prayer. Perry put the bottom edge of the ant-and-roach can on the bug and pushed. The roach folded up like a man doing a sit-up before the can cut it in half with a crunch. The top half flipped over and dragged itself to the drain and disappeared. He turned on the cold water and washed the bottom half down too.
Perry speculated briefly on the proposition that all things separated someday somehow come together again. Going around, coming around. Like the way when you threw your bowling ball, you always got it back. He could feel his heart beating in his face. He closed his eyes and tried to breathe through his nose. The right side was still stopped up absolutely, but he was able to get a weak stream of foul-smelling air in through the left. He didn’t fool himself that he’d cleared everything out of there. He knew what roaches and their leavings smelled like, and that smell was still in his nose, in spite of the bug spray. He felt dizzy, and he grabbed onto the sink. The jolt that had stunned the roach had done its job on him too. He wondered if he dare do his right side.
“You in there, Perry?” Carmela called.
So she was up. Perry pulled himself together and picked up the ice pick. Maybe he could spear a few and avoid taking another shot of the bug spray. Maybe he could do it before he had to deal with Carmela. He put the point of the ice pick in his right nostril and slowly probed upwards. He felt the roaches scurry away from the sharp tool, pressing themselves tighter into his sinuses. The itch and tickle of their scrambling legs and questing antennae made him bite his lips and squint his eyes. He pushed a little more with the ice pick and felt it break into one of the hard shells. The activity in his nose became frantic, and behind him Carmela pounded on the door. Perry flinched and stabbed himself somewhere deep inside his right nostril.
“Come on, Perry. Open up. I gotta pee!” Carmela banged on the bathroom door again. It sounded like artillery shelling.
Blood flooded from Perry’s nose. “Go away, you cow. I’m bleeding!”
“Who’re you calling a cow!” Carmela yelled. She rattled the knob and kicked the door. “I’ll show you a cow! Let me in!”
Perry threw the ice pick at the toilet. Too dangerous with Carmela distracting him every minute. He was lucky he hadn’t lost an eye. Why couldn’t she have slept a little longer? In fact, why did this whole mess have to be happening to him? What kind of world is it where bugs crawl up your nose but leave your crabby wife alone? A world where you’re 37 and as bald as honeydew melon already; a world where you can’t smoke, because you cough up your lungs when you do; where you can’t eat red meat because your cholesterol is too high; a world where you can’t take a drink because your daddy died of it and it makes your knees knock to think about being like that—although you have been, you really have been, just ask Carmela, but you don’t want to think about that right now, after all, you’ve got bugs up your nose—a world where you’ve got a going-nowhere-fast job, Jesus, some young punk called you Pop on the dock just the other day; a world where your wife is fooling around with someone, you don’t know who, but someone. That kind of world. Any more questions?
“Are you going to let me in?” Carmela banged on the door again. She was quiet a moment, then she said, “I’m going to pee in your precious bowling bag if you don’t let me use the toilet, Perry.”
He didn’t say anything, but he hated the thought of her squatting like a skinny white frog over his genuine leather bowling bag doing her business. The guys had given him that bag last year after he took City mostly all by himself.
“I’m going now,” she said, and he could hear her moving away from the door. “Here I go walking toward the closet to get your bowling bag, Perry. Can you hear me walking to get your bowling bag? Stomp, stomp, stomp. I’m at the closet. I’m opening the door. I’m picking up your bowling bag. Last chance, Perry.”
Another of life’s never-ending irritations, Perry thought. He could wash his ball, but he’d never get the smell out of his bag. He took his finger away from his right nostril and blood streamed into the sink. Suddenly angry at the entire universe, Perry snatched up the bug poison and gave his right nostril a good long spray. To hell with caution.
“I’m peeing in your bowling bag, Perry!”
Perry’s nose jumped around on his face like it wanted to get off. It felt like the residents in there had decided to get out of town but had forgotten the way and were just busting down the walls, cutting corners, going cross-country. He felt them tumbling down into the top of his throat, and he gagged and spit bugs into the sink. They landed, lively, and scrambled over the edge and dropped to the floor and dashed under the door.
“Squirt, squirt. Pee, pee,” Carmela yelled. “Can you hear me peeing in your bowling bag, Perry?”
The pain in Perry’s head was like being slapped hard on both ears at the same time by a big TV wrestler, and he slumped to the floor still holding onto the sink with one hand. He squeezed his eyes shut.
Another head picture: Perry’s in bed on his back staring at a ceiling he can’t see because it’s absolutely dark in the bedroom; he can’t see his hand in front of his face; in fact, he moves his hand up in front of his face to check that; right, he can’t see it, but he can feel the roaches leaving his nose. He struggles not to scream and jump up clawing at his face. They come out at night, and the reason Carmela knows about them is that they don’t all come crawling back to his nose in the morning. Some of them stay out and breed and live in the kitchen cabinets and in her underwear drawers and behind the couch and in the bathtub and beneath the sink—everywhere. It’s not so astonishing, he thinks, that a kind of roach has developed that can live in his nose. After all, they live almost everywhere else. He read once about a roach that lives in TVs and never comes out until the TV dies. The bugs in TV-land listen to the programs and the commercials and eat the insulated guts of their machines. Snug. It’s not so surprising that a cousin would get around to Perry’s nose sooner or later.
Perry opened his eyes. He snatched up the bug spray. If, when he sprayed his nose, they exited his mouth, it stood to reason that if he sprayed his mouth they’d exit his nose. So he opened wide and sprayed, realizing almost at once that his logic was flawed. His stomach twisted, and he had only time to throw open the lid of the toilet before throwing up in the bowl.
“I hear what you’re doing.” Carmela was back at the door. “I might have known. You promised, Perry. Sneaking around like your old man. Did you hide the bottle in the toilet tank? That’s it, isn’t it, Perry? Come out of there!”
Maybe some more ice-picking would help. He crawled around on the floor and felt behind the toilet until he found the ice pick, sat up with his back against the tub, and probed around in his nose. He wiped his bloody hands on his chest. More spray too. He gave his left nostril another shot of bug spray.
“Will you please please let me in, Perry,” Carmela said. “I have to get dressed before Bob gets here.”
“Who’s Bob?” Perry’s voice was weak and wet and bubbly. Why ask? Bob would be her lover, of course. He gave his right nostril a shot of bug spray. His nose felt pretty numb. Maybe if he poked the ice pick through the side of his nose, he’d surprise the buggers. Perry pushed the point of the ice pick into the side of his nose. Whoops! Bone. He moved it down to a softer spot and pushed again and felt the point break through like stabbing an orange. No pain. He wiggled the pick around and up and down, then pulled it out and did the same thing to the other
side.
“Big Bob, the Bug Man. The exterminator. Don’t you ever listen when I talk? I told you last night.”
Last night. There was something about the head picture he’d just seen that was important to his strategy. Something about night. What was it? The dark. All the bugs playing on his face, running down his body. He wondered if Carmela ever felt them crawl across her as they left his nose to set up colonies in the apartment. They came out in the dark. That was it.
Perry scrambled around looking for the pliers. When he found them, he hugged them to his chest while he gave each of his nostrils a couple of squirts of bug spray, then he got to his feet and looked in the mirror again. There was a small jagged wound on either side of his nose and a lot of blood. He held up the pliers and snapped them open and closed a couple of times in front of his face. He remembered his plan for them. What he would do is lean in close to the mirror, poise the pliers in front of his nose, then stretch way out with his left hand and switch off the light. When he felt the bugs come out, he’d switch on the light and crush them with the pliers!
Perry put his plan into action. When he switched off the light, however, things did not get entirely dark. Blue and green fluorescent globes swam before his eyes. Some of them spun, shooting off sparks which later became globes themselves. Perry might have been lost forever, watching this light show, if he hadn’t finally felt the bugs leave his nose and begin to explore his face.
Now!
He flipped on the light.
A giant roach stared back at him from the mirror.
Perry screamed, dropped the pliers, and jumped back, realizing even as he moved that what he was looking at was his own reflection. The bugs had taken over. Something in his mind must have realized that he could never beat them and had joined them. He moved his antennae experimentally and clicked and clacked his mouth parts a couple of times. My, he’d never known roaches had such big, never-blinking, brown, glassy eyes.
The doorbell rang.
“That’s Bob!” Carmela said. “Now I’m going to have to meet him in my robe!”
“Don’t you always?” Perry muttered. He knew he should be frightened, and he supposed he was, at least a little, but mostly the bug head seemed exactly right, the logical conclusion to this whole affair. He reached for the doorknob. Now that he had a big scary bug head, he might as well go out and have a showdown with this Bob guy. He’d take the ice pick. Maybe chase Carmela around the house a couple of times, too.
Perry eased open the door and ducked his big head as he stepped into the bedroom. He bet they’d put their heads together whispering, discussing him, no doubt, probably planning on how they could take him out of the picture. His new look would put a monkey wrench in their plans. A bigger and buggier Perry would be something new to consider. He’d expected Carmela to put his bowling bag in the middle of the room, just to taunt him, but if she had in fact peed in the bag, she’d discreetly closed the closet door on her mess. Perry moved quietly to the bedroom door and peeked out into the living room.
They weren’t in the living room. Perry moved on to the kitchen. It wasn’t easy to hold the weight of his new head up. He was wobbly on his feet, and everything looked a lot different through bug eyes—mostly out of focus, and he tended to see double in little fits that came and went—making navigation tricky between the coffee table and the couch, and around the glass case with Carmela’s plate collection. Everything smelled of bug spray and blood. His legs were cold. Maybe he should have put on some pants.
He stepped into the kitchen. Carmela stood in her ragged pink robe fussing with the coffee pot on the stove. She’d pulled up her yellow hair and tied it on top so it looked like a geyser of straw. Perry didn’t see Bob right away. In fact, it took him a few moments to puzzle out just what he was seeing. He finally decided it was a big gray butt sticking out from beneath the kitchen sink.
“Excuse me,” Perry said.
Carmela jerked her head around. She yelped and dropped the coffee pot.
The butt under the sink scrambled back, and Perry saw it was a man, Big Bob, no doubt, older than Perry would have guessed, middle fifties maybe. He was dressed in gray overalls, and he dragged a silver canister and nozzle out from under the sink as he got to his feet.
“Jesus!” Bob said. “What’s wrong with his nose?”
It looked to Perry like Big Bob was not so surprised as he should be, it looked, in fact, like Big Bob was fighting down a grin. Carmela, too. How could they even see his nose in his present condition?
Then it dawned on him.
Big Bob and Carmela had obviously planned the whole thing.
Picture this: Big Bob and Carmela meet at a sidewalk cafe downtown. He’s holding her hand across the table, and they drink white wine and eat thin strips of white fish with lemon wedges and sliced cucumbers. Fallen leaves rustle around their feet. The autumn sun shines in her yellow hair. A mustache flashes on and off Bob’s face. Now you see it, now you don’t. Tricky bastard. Bob’s in the Bug Biz, and he’s got contacts down South. She tells him she’s so unhappy. He hands her a glass vial. Yuck, she says. From South America, he says. So how am I supposed to get them in his nose? He raises one eyebrow, says, you say he drinks? Just lets it hang there. She grins. She doesn’t ask for it, but he reassures her anyway that these are strictly His and not Hers bugs. They won’t get near her nose. Good news! Her grin gets wider, triumphant, and Perry sees from its very meanness something essential about her soul.
He sees the light, he learns the Lesson, and the Lesson is Life Is Like Bowling. If you’re going to come out on top, you’ve got to keep throwing the ball.
“Maybe you better put down the ice pick,” Bob said.
Time to pick up the spare. Perry ran at Big Bob.
Bob stepped to one side, swinging his nozzle up as he moved, and sprayed Perry in the face.
Perry jerked his hands up to his face and stabbed himself in the cheek with the ice pick. He stood up on his toes, windmilling his arms for balance, then fell back to his heels, and Bob gave him another squirt in the face with the bug stuff.
Real bug stuff, industrial strength. No more Mr. Grocery Store wimpy bug spray. Big Bob the Bug Man had dosed him good. Put his head in a greasy cloud. Knocked him down flat on his ass.
Perry pulled his arms in under his chin in an attitude of prayer. When the light goes on, everyone scrambles for cover, but this is what we all really want, this sweet cloud of sleep. His body shook with a sudden convulsion, and he kicked his heels against the floor. Big Bob put a big black boot on Perry’s middle and pushed, and Perry did a bone crunching sit-up.
Gutter ball.
So, tell us again about the Lesson you’ve learned, about how Life Is Like Bowling.
Okay, okay. Forget it.
The Lesson is Life Is Nothing Like Bowling, Perry decides.
“I’ll pack a bag,” Carmela said.
A Breath Holding Contest
I’ll breathe through my ears and win, or I’ll die. I won’t give in. I fully expect my ears to save me. It’s a faith inherited from my father who, in endless attempts to verify his theory of teleportation, used to lurk in shadows, inside closets, behind bushes and trees, under my bed to pop out screaming like a crack-crazed axe murderer, hoping I’d just go somewhere else. If you’re scared enough, he’d say, your mind will move your body, Sonny. I used to think that’s the way he got rid of Mom—teleported her and her hardware-selling boyfriend to Florida.
I’ve round-robined my way into the finals, and now I sit lotus fashion on the beach in front of the local champion, a tiny whisper of a woman like a famine victim in a yellow swim suit. She looks familiar, but after all these years, opponents tend to blur in my mind. Her name is Marcia, and, like me, she wears an orange scuba mask, her mouth sealed shut with adhesive tape. She’s beaming evil thoughts at me, her be
ady blues narrowed but steady. She’s got that “I win, you lose” look. People tell me I wear that look, too, meaning it as an insult, but I always take it as a compliment. Contests, any and all kinds of contests, are my meat. Marcia doesn’t realize who she’s dealing with.
She makes me nervous, though, and I get offensive. I put together a thought and shoot it across the space that separates us.
I can eat more jalapeno peppers than you can!
She doesn’t seem impressed. This could be trouble.
I can stand on my head longer than you can, she fires back.
The spectators crouch like scavenging sea gulls on the slick, black rocks that circle Marcia and me where we sit locked in our combat, noisy as corpses with our weakly bottled up gases. The Pacific washes the rocks, but it doesn’t move the onlookers, the fans, in their tennis outfits, their bikinis, their cut-off jeans and dopey hats. They shake away the salt spray and laugh. They won’t admit it, but they hope one of us dies today. That’s what spectators are for—to look upon the twisted, purple face of defeat and shiver deliciously.
Drops of seawater dot the glass of my mask. I smell wet rubber. I taste hospitals in the tape over my mouth. Huge hands crush my chest. I want to breathe! God, how I want it. Just to gulp in big bites of cool ocean air, smell again the pine forest lining this Oregon beach, taste the fishy sea soup in the breeze. I wouldn’t turn my nose up at even the waves of sunscreen and sweat wafting from the spectators. I ache. I ache. I mustn’t let it show.
I can do more one-armed pushups than you can, I tell Marcia.
I can do more tap-dance steps, she rallies.
Meet Me in the Moon Room Page 9