Kotex drew her antenna across mine like a foil. The nerves in my back exploded as her pheromones stormed me. I lost interest in Ruth, in reclaiming the apartment, in everything but Kotex. "Do I light you up, baby?" she laughed.
I backed under her, and she slid over me like perfumed silk. I barely felt her on my back, though an equal weight of anything else would have been an intolerable burden.
My eyes focused on the tangled hairy limbs of Ruth and Ira. She was still trying to revive him. What did their charade have to do with sex? Who cared about his money anyway?
My wings had parted, and Kotex was feasting on my fount of pheromones. I could feel her heart pounding against my back. Soon we were perfectly aligned and balanced. I reached up into her snug genital chamber with my phallomere, my erotic grappling hook, which ensured that what happened in the lower orders didn't happen here. Slipping out! What could be a more malign omen for the destiny of Homo sapiens?
Hooked at the genitals, Kotex and I rotated so that we faced in opposite directions. I would not allow my face to distract her from her pleasure, and I insisted on being left to mine. Air from our unimpeded spiracles fed our fire.
Ira and Ruth were fading. "I've got it, Ruth. Oh, God."
If Kotex and I were face to face, could we have sounded like that?
My steel phallus shot into Kotex's womb, solid, secure. Teleology. I couldn't put it any other way.
There is no greater anticipation than sitting absolutely still, knowing that your chemistry is working omnipotently for your ultimate pleasure. With a beatific tremor, I released my spermatophore, a tidy capsule of DNA, into Kotex's womb. The heat rose from me. I was at peace.
"That was wonderful," said Ruth in a soothing voice. "But we have to figure out how to stay together at the end. It's so messy."
How liberating not to have to talk now, when desire was gone. No lies, no exaggerations, no promises. "Why do humans try so damned hard?" I said. "Because they are so sexually inept? Or is their coda the real romance?"
Ruth lay on top of Ira, stroking his thinning hair. Kotex said, "It's the lack of pheromones. How could any species choose, court, or mate intelligently without it's basic chemicals? What is there to rely on? It's chaos. Imagine how pheromones would change Ruth's life."
I could imagine. The chemicals would induce Ira to alter his lifelong ways and propose marriage, within the hour. He would grovel to be her faithful, grateful everything. However, when alone he would still tell himself that their bond, caused by his addiction to her secretions, was instead cultural and spiritual.
But why bother with him? She could stroll around the block and, like the Pied Piper, lead back a pack of hungry suitors. She would hump the ones she wanted and discard the rest, confident that she could find others equally pleasing to her at any time. Ira would shrink in the competition. She would be too secure, too happy.
"I SUPPOSE SHE could make him take his little stash and put it in the bank," I said.
"Or roll up the bills and stick them in his nose. Lady's choice. Who knows what naughty tastes lie suppressed inside the homely girl."
I waved my antennae. "We shouldn't be talking this way. I might as well hope Ben Franklin pops out of the cabinet and goes jogging." Postejaculatory blues were coming over me. "Be serious now. What woman is going to light up that little coward?"
I reviewed the meager list: Ruth, no; the Gypsy, no; Faith, no. That covered my lifetime.
The toilet flushed, and Ruth returned to bed. She said, "Now, do you have anything more to say about Elizabeth's perfume?"
Every eye in Kotex's head looked as if it would pop right out Elizabeth! Blonde and unhad. Of course!
All that remained was letting Ira and her in on the romance.
A Lock Is Picked
KOTEX AND I walked toward the dining room. The cold wood held a dim, flat light that seemed to come from below, as if up through ice.
We reached our new home, a section of the baseboard, which was no warmer. The single opening was provided by a rift in the layers of wall paint that had accumulated over eighty years. The subtle crack was inconspicuous to the human eye, and I often wished I had never seen it either. We used to own the night, when our patrols commanded the far reaches of the apartment. Now the citizens sat hugging the walls and base of the cavity as far as I could see. It was too easy to act demoralized here.
As we entered, Kotex and I had nowhere to step but on the heads. "Sorry, sorry, sorry," she said as they cracked against the wood. Harris Tweed suddenly butted us out of his way and jumped out of the opening, immediately letting off a blast of flatus worthy of a horse. It was considerate of him to go outside.
Kotex and I located the group we had spoken with the previous day. I told them about the events of the evening and offered my conclusion: "Elizabeth is the key to moving the money. She can light him up."
"She's light, that's true," said Reud. "The two women he adored were dark. Like Ira's mother before she became a redhead."
Kotex said, "This one's prettier. And she's a shikse."
Reud shook his head. "Do you think Oedipus would have rather had a shikse?"
"Whatever," said Bismarck. "You just said that even the Gypsy might be unable to dethrone Ruth. Why would faithful, unemotional Elizabeth do any better? Why would she even try?"
Kotex paused. She didn't know the answer.
I said, "The sexual taste of an animal with pheromones can be defined within a few atoms. Ira, who has no chemical guidance, is indiscriminate. His taste can be molded."
"Still," said Barbarossa. "What makes you think Elizabeth can do things the Gypsy can't?"
"Elizabeth is tall and blonde and thin and pretty. Forbidden to him by marriage and by religion she is even more desirable—and unlike the Gypsy she is unconquered and she is right next door."
Bismarck said, "Even if all this is true, how are you going to get them together? The rules of society are all against it, and these are civilized people."
Goethe said, "If you can't convince them directly, get their mates to help you."
It was a brilliant suggestion. But when I asked for volunteers for the campaign, no one offered. Goethe said, "This is between you and Ira."
"You gave me the idea. It's for all of us," I said.
Bismarck said, with an antenna salute, "As soon as anyone believes it's in his interest to do as you do I'm sure he will." The Blattella way.
I left them. It was all between Ira and me—no advice could change that disturbing fact. Could I convince him of anything? I had only to look around the dark, crowded baseboard to see I was dealing with an animal lacking not only normal passions, but also reason and honor. A liberal committed to eradicating discrimination and the wretchedness of the crumbling city cores, Ira had forced us to live in this most straitened of ghettos, where he treated us with starvation, intimidation, and random murder. I wondered if he would ignore or scorn my gentle Blattella ways, if he would show compassion only if I became as savage as a human.
A BIT FARTHER into the baseboard our little ones— nymphs—were playing Bats, a game they invented in the weeks since we had moved there. Thirty of them hung from the wood at the top of the cavity by their back legs, their other legs and stubby antennae swinging free. The object of the game was to outlast the others, to be the only one up—the Mammal.
Touching was officially forbidden, but antennae soon whistled like bolas as the nymphs cut each other down. Adults asleep in the cavity swore at the nymphs landing on them.
The line of bodies was made more and more uneven by the loss of the fallen. As I stared at it the shape became more abstract, and then I had a vision—I thought I saw the edge of a key!
"I'm sick of it," said Julia Child when she absorbed her third fallen contestant. She delivered to the first hanging nymph a fearful blow that brought them all down like a line of suspended dominoes. The small space soon got very loud. I slept outside.
Blattellae grow discretely. With each of our eight molts we
jump from one size to the next. An instar is what we call a nymph, or youth, who has undergone a particular molt.
Early the next morning I returned to the scene of the Bats game to find a complete set of instars, one of each size. After seeing them under fire I knew which ones I wanted to help me begin the liberation of the kitchen.
I picked my group, then spoke to them in general terms. How much could they understand about life outside the baseboard? They didn't even have names.
But right away they knew exactly what I was up to. The seventh instar said, "Like, it's a plan. Why do we need a plan?"
"Yeah, who are you, anyway?" said the fifth.
Skepticism is healthy, I told myself. Grating adolescent whining, too. I said, "Food is dwindling. Something's got to be done."
They looked dubious.
I said to the fifth instar, "Are you molting on schedule?"
"Maybe a couple of weeks behind. No sweat."
I flicked the back of her carapace with my antenna. "Sounds a little hollow to me." To the newborn I said, "By the time you're her age you'll be months behind. You're looking at life as a runt."
"Don't sell me," she said in her tiny soprano. "Go for it."
"I mean, it's never going to work," said the seventh. "Humans can't be that dumb."
The fourth instar spoke for the first time. "Getting food is not all that matters. This plan is imperialistic. We must accord humans the dignity we expect in return."
Insidious Ira had reached this generation. Perhaps his shrill voice had penetrated the baseboard.
"Starvation is the dignity I expect in return," said the newborn to her brother.
The fourth said, "That's why we're always at war. We've been selfish and shortsighted."
His words alerted me to the fact that by trying to manipulate the nymphs with words, I too was acting human. In order to get, I had to give.
"Come with me," I said. The instars followed me out of the baseboard. From behind a radiator leg I pulled out a coveted Blattella delicacy, a Cheerio. "This is mine. I brought it from the old kitchen. Here's the deal: if you agree to help me we'll eat now. But I need you all; it's everybody or nobody. Talk it over."
The redolent Cheerio soon decided it We surrounded it and began to bore through its loud, crunchy volume. Having the biggest mouth, I was first to break through to the central core. The others appeared around me in age order. For one horrible second I pictured us as stuffed heads mounted on a Cheerio-colored den wall. I was roused when the last little plug of cereal fell and the newborn pushed into the cavity yelling, "Go power!"
We backed out carefully so our wing tips would not catch on the rough Cheerio surface. Then I led the nymphs across the dining room floor. They marveled at the dimensions of the room that had housed them their entire lives, but that they were now properly seeing for the first time. They shrank from their first experience of the midday sun. Blatta. Light-shunners.
We walked down the hall and climbed over the threshold and into the closet. My heart pounded at the assortment of carefully paired boots and shoes. I knew that unworn they posed no danger. But I couldn't help thinking of them as the arsenal of my mortal enemy. Not only could I smell rubber and hide, but the powdered chitin and crusted Blattella blood on the soles.
I steadied myself, then motioned to the nymphs, who had frozen just inside the threshold; fear of footwear had made it into our genes. I led them between a pair of galoshes to the back of the closet. I never would have anticipated their response.
"There it is!" screamed the seventh instar. He ran for the door.
I caught up and grabbed him. "There's no danger," I said. "It's dead, like the shoes."
He struggled. The others slunk back under the shoes. My nightmare.
"Watch this." I released the nymph and walked to the vacuum cleaner. I stepped into the metal sleeve, then went up the hose and inside.
"He's dead."
"Good riddance."
"Let's get out of here."
I reappeared.
"He fucking came out!" said the seventh. "I can't believe it."
I said, "The tail is rolled up inside. The humans pull it out and stick it into a hole in the wall. When it isn't in there the vacuum cleaner is harmless."
The fourth said, "You insult us."
Electricity is hard to believe. I walked to the end of the hose. "Let's not go near the mouth, just in case. Let's go into the asshole." I showed them the hole where the cord passed into the cylinder.
"What's to stop it from licking us out of there?" said the fourth. "All animals can do that."
Except for Homo sapiens, he was right. I said, "Look at that little anus. Now look at the size of the mouth." I pointed to the large sleeve and hose. "It could never get us."
"It could shit us out." said the seventh instar. "What a trip that would be."
Just as exasperation set in, I got some unexpected help. "Go power!" said the newborn. She raced up the cord and disappeared into the hole. A moment later she peeked out. "Piece of cake!" I think it was shame, not honor, that forced the others inside. They soon became comfortable exploring the cylinder and were captivated by the potpourri of odors.
Ira was terrified of electrocution, and replaced cords and fixtures at the first sign of wear. ("He doesn't want to risk becoming a lampshade at this point," Oliver once said.) A length of the cord which passed into the motor of the vacuum cleaner was the only exposed wire I knew of in the entire apartment.
I made the initial bend in the fine copper strand which had unwound from the others. I positioned the four larger instars to run a relay race, bending the end of the wire back and forth as they ran. The nymphs began to lick their legs as the strand heated up. Soon it broke off.
Looking up at the swollen dust bag, I shuddered at the tortures this appliance had seen. "Come on, come on, move it. We have a long way to go." We carried the wire strand down the cord and through the hole.
We went the length of the hall and under the front door of the apartment. Harsh fluorescent light from a naked fixture in the outside hall stung our eyes. A fourth-floor door slammed. A crosswind rippled our antennae. These were unsettling new stimuli for the young ones.
"Look at this," I said. A gray strand of fetid cloth lay on the floor. "The mopping has been done today. The super won't be back to bother us." Still the nymphs slunk down the edges of the tiles.
It wasn't far to the Wainscotts' door. The three largest instars and I carried the wire up to the handle and rested it on the lip of the lock.
"Yale?" the seventh instar said hesitantly, dragging his foreleg around the incised trademark.
"Don't worry. Getting in is a lot easier than you think."
The seventh instar took the end of the wire and stood at the keyhole. "This is really dumb." I kicked him, and he climbed in. He didn't get far before he stopped and squeezed back out. "There. Satisfied?" He preened a little graphite from his legs. The sixth instar went into the keyhole, moving the wire a little deeper. When she came out the fifth took his turn. About ten minutes later the first instar proudly announced that he had left the wire just outside the first tumbler.
"You remember where to lodge it?" I said to the newborn. "If you get it right, the lock won't turn." But I was anxious about sending her in; she had grown on me.
"Piece of cake," she said, and disappeared into the hole.
Though I knew the route was long and paved with slick graphite, she still seemed to be gone a long time. I would have to rescue her. For the first time during this long, hazardous day I thought about the Blattella breakaway principle: we have fourteen points, two on each leg and one on each antenna, where we easily break; in danger's grasp, we can escape and leave the limb behind. But where the newborn was going, into the lock tumbler, one of her breakable parts might be all a rescuer could reach. We can regenerate lost limbs when we molt, but we could never regenerate this precious nymph from her leg.
I called into the keyhole, but I got no response. Smalle
r heads than mine did no better. What was it with humans, that even something as benign as a door lock had to be designed as a mortal peril?
Now who would come first, Elizabeth or the newborn? The agonizing wait began.
Some time later I heard adolescent voices downstairs.
"I'm dying. He made us do twenty sets of 220 sprints."
"Why do you do that shit? Why don't you quit?"
"I don't know. What would I do after school?"
"Maybe you could get laid... On second thought, you better stay on the team." They laughed. School was out. It was late in the afternoon.
I had to limit our losses. "Citizens, we're going back."
All of them were willing—almost too willing—except the fourth instar. "What about her? You sent her in. You're not going to just leave her there."
"There's nothing we can do. She'll make it."
"No," he said. "She's going to come out filthy and exhausted. She'll need our help."
"You don't risk nine lives for one," I said. I heard that from one of our pragmatists, whom the colony treated as borderline brain-damaged.
The nymph said, "We'll risk your life for hers. We'll go back. You stay."
"Go, get away from me." They soon disappeared under Ira's door.
The shadow from the lock plate was too small to hide me, and the door was industrial green. I felt naked.
The downstairs door opened again, and the wind brought the scent of garlic and onions. I knew this would be Hector Tambellini, the postal inspector who lived down the hall. I didn't bother to hide. He trudged past the door looking so distracted that he wouldn't have noticed me if I were an orangutan.
I kept calling into the lock. I had visions of Elizabeth's blonde head rising into my view, one step at a time, I heard the delicate tapping of her high heels on the tile floor, I smelled her perfume, I saw her reach for the handle… What was I doing here? I was going to get killed!
I raced down the door. As a reached the floor I heard a wee voice. “Where is everybody?"
I ran back up. The nymph sat on the lip of the lock, a graphite blob with legs. I scraped her back to ease her breathing. "Where have you been? I've been calling you for hours," I said. I was glad her vision was blurred; my face burned with cowardice.
The Roaches Have No King Page 6