Ira stopped and looked at her. "Now what?" she said.
"You can't put matzoh meal next to matzoh ball soup."
"OK, Mr. Alphabet. What goes in between?"
"Boxes in the left cabinets, cans in the right. B before C. It's all alphabetical."
FOR THE FIRST time in my young life I witnessed signs of resignation in the colony, which I instinctively knew was out of our character and boded ill. Clausewitz, who until now had gone so far as to avoid even passive sentence structures, said, "We're going to have to wait for him to make a mistake. But when he does..."
The entire colony retired early to the dining room baseboard.
The next night I returned to the kitchen with Rosa. Kotex, her sister, was already there. She was pushing her head into a tumbleweed of hair and dust that had been formed and blown across the floor by the refrigerator fan.
Rosa started toward her, legs laboring on the new vinyl. "Don't eat that! Where's your dignity?"
The dust roll disintegrated, covering Kotex with grime. She found no food. I had no idea what she was thinking.
"There are important things to do," Rosa said to her. "Why don't you go on reconnaissance?"
"Why bother."
"Why bother?" Rosa exploded. "Give me that." She reached for a small clump of dust.
Kotex pulled it away, then crashed it over Rosa's head, where it stuck like an oversized crown of thorns. It slowly fell to her sides in pieces. She and her sister looked identical in their filth.
"I won't allow it!" Rosa said, and ran from the room.
I did not see her the following day. That evening I decided to go alone to find food.
It was hard work crossing the floor. The factory coating on the vinyl pulled at my legs, and the pits in the texture of it wrenched my joints. Pits might help hide dirt in a normal kitchen; they would be wasted here.
I reached the base cabinet. Polyurethane made it easy to grip, but not so easy to release. I struggled to the counter and descended into the bottom of the sink, an area uncomfortably far from safety.
After taking a drink I looked up. I realized that I didn't have a reasonable plan. Why was I intent on scaling the towering wall cabinets? I not only doubted I would find food, I had no reason to think I could get in at all. I decided to come back another night, better rested and with help.
The fear of the black unknown down the drain drove me out of the sink. I didn't want to return to the morbid baseboard. I chose to take a modest climb, up the peg board beside the stove, where the pots and pans hung.
I was thrilled to find a rare patch of crusted egg on the lip of the frying pan. It was my first food in days. Soon, contented, I fell asleep.
I was awakened by sounds of brushing and flushing. I had slept right through the dawn. The percussion of wingtips approached. Stupid! How could I have ended up in the frying pan at breakfast time!
I looked out. I had seconds to make my move. I couldn't race the shoes across the floor; I would lose. But I couldn't stay here. The small saucepan beside me? No, it could be used to boil eggs. The larger one hanging below? It might cook oatmeal. The steps were upon me. I had to choose. I raced to the small saucepan, praying today was one of Ira's cholesterol-free days.
Terror winded me. I peaked out. Ira was reaching for a bowl and spoon. That could mean anything—except fried eggs. I should have stayed put.
Now I could only wait. I thought I saw something move beside the edge of the cabinet door. I stared through the low light. But for what? No one had gotten into the new cabinets yet. Still the image was real: I could make out the tips of two antennae. A head soon appeared. The figure squirmed, thrashing the wood with antennae and front legs. Slowly, painfully, it emerged, one segment at a time. A small puff rose from the back. The second pair of legs pulled free just as I received the first wind. It was Rosa.
Why in God's name was she coming out now? In half an hour she could promenade down the door in safety. Now Ira had only to turn his head and he would permanently putty the door with her.
She finally pulled free and started to run across the cabinets. Ira got out a glass and then the orange juice carton, which he set beside the bowl and spoon. He even folded the napkin. He was giving her every chance to get down and out of the room.
But she refused. From the cabinet above the refrigerator she made a spectacular leap to the cereal box, ran over the tab, and disappeared through the slot.
Ira still hadn't declared today's menu. Raisin bran, boiled eggs, or oatmeal? I now ruled out oatmeal, because he didn't cook it alone, and there was no sign of Ruth.
Raisin bran or boiled eggs. Then I understood his diabolical plan: It was Rosa or me—she in the cereal box and me in the pan—in a grisly game of breakfast roulette.
It was Nature's shame that one like him could menace one like her. Poor Rosa, light of my young life.
Then Ira turned toward me. I assumed he would take the cereal. Now I could only think of the yards of shit that I hoped were insistently backed up in his colon this morning. He walked to the sink, within an arm's length of me. Would he reach up for my saucepan? Could he stomach watching me tread water, softening, then melting over his eggs? Bran was so much better for him.
I heard him wash his hands. My heaving chitin grated as I flattened against the pan. But then I heard wingtip patters. He was turning back toward the refrigerator.
I peeked out. He seized the cereal box. Poor Rosa. He flipped tab from slot and tipped box to bowl, pouring out brown flakes and body-sized raisins. There wasn't much left in the box when he was done.
Was my Rosa in the bowl? I couldn't see her, but then I knew she wouldn't lie on the surface. I didn't want to call out and distract her. But the uncertainty was maddening. I shuddered as the freezing vitamin-A-and-D-fortified-pasteurized-homogenized-99%-fat-free milk rose in the bowl. She couldn't withstand it for long. Nor could she allow herself to float and be exposed. She might be clinging to one of the flakes projecting from the milk. But those would be the first to be spooned up.
Ira turned the box around and read the quiz, answering aloud. "Thomas Jefferson.. the Liberty Bell...Philadelphia... shit, New York, I meant New York..."
If she was in the bowl, milk was starting to choke her. If the worst happened and he saw her, would she break across the counter? His little breakfast napkin was so flimsy that he would have to go for a paper towel to strike her, that might give her time to reach the edge of the counter.
But even if she did, what chance did she have on that slick, rutted floor against his manly wingtips? Maybe she'd stay on the counter and make a dash up his sleeve, taking the fight to him.
The volume in the bowl was decreasing quickly. Ira's incisors shone with milk as he tore at the flakes, pushing them back in his mouth for annihilation by his gold-capped grindstones. His tongue shot from its lair every few strokes to swab the teeth, hesitating as if to draw a breath before it retreated. Bits of flake flew from his mouth, most landing back in the bowl, only to be spooned in again. I hoped that if Rosa had to die it would be just once.
As he was finishing his meal Ira read the ingredient list on the side of the box, making faces as he stumbled over the names of the chemicals. He looked at his watch and stood up.
He put away the milk carton, tucked tab in slot, and put the cereal box back on the refrigerator. I hoped he would leave me the bowl with the last inch of milk, cool and sweet from the sugar crusting the raisins. But, at the sink, he tipped the bowl to his mouth and swallowed. His mother would have been pleased.
He paused. His tongue was working, chasing an elusive last chew. A raisin twig? One last flake? Blinking his eyes with satisfaction, he pushed it forward and closed his incisors. From the cavern came a thin snapping, and a muffled howl: "Imperialist!"
Noble Rosa! Submerged in the cold milk to avoid the adult, she now fell prey to his training as a child. When he opened his mouth wide, I saw my indomitable lover. "Take that!" she cried, kicking her back legs against his eye tooth
. Her front legs were broken, limp. His jaws still drifted as he felt for the last material, the upper incisors rising and lowering like the blade of a busy guillotine.
Rosa had never learned the virtue of silence. She thrashed until the tongue finally found her and swept her to the front, pushed her head on the block, and the ivory blade came down swift and sure, cutting her in two. She snapped like celery, with a scream that echoed around my pan.
Ira dug a pinky into his ear, then sniffed at the wax that came out.
Rosa still hadn't found her peace. Her severed head, stuck to the front of his incisor, appeared when his lips parted. She stared at me, and I knew she was going to speak. My legs wanted to run, but the weight in my gut held me still.
Without her body her voice was weak and diffuse. I stared at her mouth, and made out her charge: "Numbers! Numbers! Why have you forsaken me?"
I was relieved when the tongue returned and claimed her. I even waited to be sure that when the lips reopened the incisor was blank. Ira whistled as he washed his bowl. A moment later he left.
I stood on the peg board. I was confused. I could not understand why Rosa would be so cruel as to try to knit the responsibility for her death into the woof of my primitive biblical mind. I had to remember that she spoke under the ultimate duress. It was Ira's doing, Ira's responsibility.
How could I live with an animal who would starve my colony, slaughter my love, and still go off to work right on schedule?
"ROSA LUXEMBURG has been assassinated," I said. Most of the citizens in the baseboard ignored me.
"How did she buy it?" said Sufur.
"Ira ate her."
"He ate her?" Barbarossa said. "He doesn't even eat his own girlfriend."
"Maybe we can save her. Like Jonah," I said.
Julia Child laughed. "You get toilet duty."
Bismarck said, "Even if you could find her, she'd be a constipated pebble at the bottom of the bowl."
"She gave great pheromone," I said. "The best."
"Oh?" said Kotex.
"Some of the best," said Bismarck. "But that's in the past."
The morning went, then the afternoon. No one spoke. We were dispirited.
Ira and Ruth returned from work and prepared dinner. Only then did it occur to me to ask what Rosa had been doing in the kitchen the night before.
Bismarck shrugged. "I thought you knew."
"Why would she stay in a cabinet until morning? She must have found something. We have to go find out. Citizens?"
Six hours later, when Ira and Ruth were asleep, I scaled the face of the wall cabinet alone. The opening where I had first spotted Rosa was dusted with her chitin, shaved by the sharp edge. I climbed through carefully and it extracted a painful contribution from my shell.
The food smells in the cabinet were overwhelmed by the stench of wood finish. Here were the ordered edibles, from apricots to ziti. But the neat lines resembled a cemetery more than a garden of earthly delights. Sure, now we could find anything, but to what use? The bottles and cans were impregnable. The cardboard boxes could be mined, but each would take days of boring and digging. If we lived here or in the wall we could do it. But never with a single, treacherous line to safety.
In the old kitchen we had feasted on the boxes and packages. The Gypsy tore them open freestyle and replaced them gaping, covered with thick fingerprints of grease and debris. Even Ira believed that if he meticulously rolled down the inner bag, he could then simply Tuck Tab in Slot. This rare tactical lapse had allowed us to bathe in food.
Today I didn't see any open boxes. When I climbed to the next shelf I found out why: Ruth was on to the tab technique. She had introduced to our turf one of Blattella's mortal enemies—Tupperware. I walked across the cover of a lentil sarcophagus. It was maddening to see those poor dead beans just below me, forever out of my reach, knowing the life I could breathe into them. Pasta, raisins, oatmeal—coffin after coffin. Had Ruth chosen translucent covers just to taunt us?
As I walked along the back shelf, I began to feel uneasy, as if I was no longer alone. I stopped and looked around. What could be in the back cabinet with me? The thing Rosa had run from?
I continued on and still I felt the eyes. I sprang onto the oatmeal coffin and whirled. Then I saw them, peering through spectacles from a convex head lying on its side.
They were Ben Franklin's eyes. These were the same rolled-up bills that Ira had stuck in the old cabinet, the third of his wealth for running away with. No one had told me that he had put them in the new cabinet.
I walked up to the soiled, silky paper. I liked Ben's pleasingly ugly, earthy look, the warm ruts of his forgiving face. He always looked as if he knew something. I suspected that he knew all about Rosa's fatal delay.
Following his eyes I walked across the shelf. On the other side I found a hole drilled through the back of the cabinet, but it was pressed flush against the wall. I could never get through. But why was it there?
Then I remembered: the Asian had drilled his own two holes through the back. Where was the other one? I guessed that this most symmetrical of men would place his holes symmetrically. I counted my steps as I walked back across the cabinet. By my calculation the other hole, which would lead through the gap and back into the wall, our only chance of surviving in this forbidding new kitchen, was right behind Ben Franklin. Was that why he was smiling at me?
I asked Ben to move. When he refused I pushed my head as far behind the bills as I could. Ira had lodged them very securely, as if he were afraid they would run away on their own.
"This won't hurt a bit," I said, as I slid an antenna up the crack behind them. I detected the scent of freshly drilled wood. I felt the slight swelling in the board. The hole was there. This was what Rosa had found, and what had cost her her life.
White Night
"YOU DONT SEEM to understand," I said. "If we can move that money, it'll be as good as the old days. Better, because it's safer."
"So go move it," said Julia Child.
We were in the baseboard, sharing a miserable meal of dried oats.
Columbo said, "He's got credit cards, checks, a cash machine down the block. What is this money for?"
"It's his Jewish paranoia stash," said Kotex.
I felt a stirring in my primitive mind. "If we swarmed over him like locusts, maybe he'd leave."
Kotex patted me on the head. "Yes, dear. He'd pack up his matzoh and go."
"He's never going to budge that money. It's like a mezuzah fixed in his cabinet," said Clausewitz.
Bismarck, who had been eating, now said, "He uses it. I've seen him." We listened. "The last time was during the early days with the Gypsy. She called him on the phone and he grabbed the money and ran out the door. I never found out why. The time before that, with his girlfriend Esther, was also on impulse. My guess is that when Ira feels spontaneously, regressively irresponsible, he likes fast cash. There's something too grown up about credit cards."
"So it's up to Ruth to strike the mood," said Kotex.
"He's already got that bitch," said Sufur. "No way he spend cash on her. That for new pussy."
Kotex struck him across the forelegs. "Pig. Where did you get that?"
Bismarck said, "It's probably too late. Now he's comfortable with her. And I'm not sure Ruth ever lit him up the way the other two did."
"I heard that Esther has three kids," I said. "Are you saying that our only chance is for the Gypsy to show up again?"
"Or anyone else who can make him crazy that way."
I SET OUT to find the one quirk that would bring Ira's spending under our control. Since this quirk had eluded the colony through the years, I had no idea what it might look like.
One evening the following week, Ira and Ruth dined out with their neighbors, the Wainscotts. I was waiting in the hallway molding when they returned.
As Ira held the door, Ruth slid past him. Oliver Wainscott III appeared in the doorway. The threshold cracked under the tall, obese man, whose shoes could fl
atten a Blattella battalion in a single step. He said, "I don't see how you can defend these people when you obviously don't understand them."
Ira said, "I understand that most people do bad things because circumstances force them to."
"Oh, piddle. Is that your Legal Aid Pledge?"
Ira took off his coat and draped it over his arm. Ruth hung hers in the closet Elizabeth Wainscott, tall, thin, blond, pretty, stood silently at her husband's side.
"You'll never believe this, Oliver, but bankruptcy is not the worst thing in the world," said Ira. "Moral bankruptcy is. And people know that."
Oliver formed a cross with his two pointer fingers and held them as if to fend off Ira's words.
Elizabeth shifted on her high heels and said softly, "Ollie, I'm very tired."
Oliver said, "If you handed a ticket to heaven to your clients, I bet every last one of them would redeem it for cash."
"Good night," said Ira. "See you Friday." He shook Oliver's hand and accepted a kiss on the cheek from Elizabeth. Ira closed and locked the door. "He never stops. What a routine."
"She's an angel to put up with it," said Ruth.
"I don't know how she does it. That's quite an outfit she was wearing, don't you think?"
"Yes, it was." She headed for the bathroom. I got Kotex, who was grazing, to join me in her pursuit.
By the time we arrived, Ruth had locked the door. "Something to hide," I said. "A good sign."
"But she's wise enough to hide it," said Kotex.
We climbed up the outside of the door so we didn't have to cross the gleaming ceramic floor tiles. We made full use of the little teals that covered the wallpaper. When we saw Ruth's eyeglasses on the sink we knew we were safe. We climbed to the top of the medicine cabinet.
Ruth was standing several feet from the mirror, with a straighter posture than usual, looking at herself with a critical expression. "That's right, Elizabeth. I was once a dancer. You probably don't think of me that way." She shook her head.
The Roaches Have No King Page 4