The Roaches Have No King

by Daniel Evan Weiss

  "That doesn't mean anything. Every day at work I see guys who dress like him and are over their heads in debt, being evicted from their apartment, having their furniture repossessed. They feel they've got to show. Ostentation turns them into criminals."

  Ruth rubbed the dark red marks on the outsides of her feet. "I can't see how it's your problem if Rufus decides to buy jewelry instead of pay his bills."

  “He wasn't asking for a handout. He was making me an offer. Why are you assuming he's trying to screw me?"

  "Isn't it enough that your risk you health and endanger your career to give him fabulous amounts of money? Do you owe him more because he's a prisoner of ostentation?"

  He walked back to the mantel. "It's a victimless non-crime, like pornography and prostitution. Politicians play on it for reelection while poverty and discrimination ravage the country. These laws are garbage."

  Ruth softened her voice. "Whatever merit they have, or lack, you have sworn to uphold them. If you want to change them, go into politics." She leaned over and reached for him. "But please don't. I don't want to live with a politician."

  "When I give Rufus money, it goes back into the black subeconomy. That's as it should be."

  Ruth shook her head. "What is? His apprenticeship program for prostitutes and dealers, or his entitlements, to the Cadillac and cocaine salesmen? When you buy drugs, you're just making new victims."

  "She's wonderful," said Bismarck.

  "Would you be so insulting if he weren't black?" Ira asked.

  Ruth laughed. "How could you ever imagine Rufus not being black."

  "Oh?" he said bitterly. "This drug monger, pimp, and car fiend could only be black?"

  Ruth tried to turn his shoulders toward her. "What's wrong, honey?"

  Ira was silent. I hoped that the primary irritant was the image Rufus had left him with: Elizabeth lying smiling on the warm soil, dress pulled up, legs obscenely splayed, her dark pink pussy yielding to his big black member. If it was, Ruth wasn't doing herself any favors by being maternal.

  Bismarck disagreed. "It's the drug thing. He knows better than to defend Rufus. It's guilt speaking, and I'll tell you why. I was there the day Gypsy first introduced cocaine into Ira's life. It was long before you were born. She didn't identify it by name. 'It's an elixir from the old country, which sharpens the senses and heightens the urge for love,' she said. What a woman.

  “Ira said, 'You don't believe in aphrodisiacs?'

  '"Oh, yes, my pet. I've tried this one, and it works.' She showed him a little glass vial.

  '"Thanks for telling me.' He held it up to the light and said, 'I was expecting something earthy, like a root.' His face discolored. 'That's not cocaine, is it?' He whispered the word. Still an associate with a corporate firm, he hadn't had exposure to criminal evidence.

  "She touched his cheek. 'Partner material, I'm sure of it'

  "Ira yelled, 'I can't believe this. Don't you know that possession of that... material... is a felony?'

  "The Gypsy shrugged. 'Who cares? It's my business.'

  '"Who cares? Who cares?' he said, louder and redder. 'I care. I'm an attorney-at-law, remember?'

  "The debate started to mirror the one you just heard, with him arguing the other side. He said, 'I have sworn to uphold the law, all law. You can't just pick and choose the ones you like.'

  "The Gypsy led him to the bedroom. With her free hand she unbuttoned her blouse and unfastened her skirt. 'Ira, if there was a law against scratching, would you enforce it?'

  '"That's ridiculous,' he said. But there was uneasiness in his voice.

  '"I want to know, lover.' She stripped naked and lay down. 'What if the government passed a law against scratching? And then what if I really needed you to scratch me, right here. What would you do, lover? Would you help me out?"

  I said, "And so much for his oath. Human males are so easy. When Ruth tucks him in tonight he'll forget again." Ruth had already calmed him. They were preparing dinner. Elizabeth was never mentioned.

  Bismarck said, "But Ira didn't scratch the Gypsy. He stood there and said, 'You're testing my loyalties.'

  "Through her vulva she ran a finger, which she licked. 'Yes I am.'

  "Still he resisted. His eyelids fluttered as he anticipated her explosion. But she surprised us both by demurely covering herself with a robe. 'We should obey the law. Thank you, Ira. I should have done this long ago.' She sat down at the phone. Ira watched her apprehensively. I had no idea what she was about to do. At first I thought she was bluffing because she didn't dial seven numbers. Then I realized it was 911.

  "She said, 'I want to report a crime.. .in the home of a friend...'

  "Ira waved at her, mouthing, No!

  '"Yes, the accomplice is here, Ira Fishblatt' He put his hand over the mouthpiece, but she tore the receiver away. 'We want to surrender to the police.'

  '"What are you doing?' Ira said in furious whisper."

  I said, "Why didn't he just hang up?"

  Bismarck said, "Hell, I don't know. Maybe he didn't want to violate her First Amendment rights. She was near tears. 'I'm so ashamed. Sodomy. At least a hundred counts. Yes, oral-genital intercourse...'

  "'Oh God!' Ira cried, and pulled the phone line clean out of the wall.

  "Ten minutes later, his legal principles refined, Ira was in bed, drugged and scratching."

  TONIGHT’S RARE conversation had to be exploited. I descended to the floor and trotted to the hallway corner where I had left the hair I'd brought from Elizabeth's pillow.

  Ira and Ruth were seated at the dining table. Embers of conflict were glowing again. She said, "But he doesn't come here from love."

  "I think he likes us."

  "I think he likes our money more."

  "You make him sound evil."

  "That's not evil," said Ruth. "Everybody likes money. But he's immoral in pursuing it. And he's making you feel bad to get more."

  I started up the back of Ira's chair with the hair. I called up to Bismarck, who was still on the ceiling. "Where is she looking?"

  "Right into his eyes."

  "Look at it this way," she said. "When Rufus visits he is always offered good food and good conversation, and he leaves wealthier than he comes. If only you and I had friends like that."

  I climbed onto the back of his navy wool jacket. The footing was treacherous. "Still clear?"

  "Do it now," said Bismarck. "I think she's getting disgusted."

  I raced up his back and draped the hair over his shoulder onto the front of the jacket. The glossy gold leapt from the navy matte.

  "It's not charity," insisted Ira. "I'm paying him for goods and services."

  She leaned across and kissed him on the cheek. I was already back on the floor. "You sure can twang the heartstrings of a capitalist," she said. As she leaned back she saw the hair and brushed it from his jacket. "That's as blonde as Elizabeth's."

  Ira doubled his chin as he scanned his lap. "Why do you say that? It's probably from work."

  "No, dear. It doesn't have a black root."

  He held it out to her. "So send it to forensics."

  "What's wrong with you ?"

  "What is this today, an Inquisition?" He walked from the room. Ruth followed.

  I rejoined Bismarck on the ceiling. "I doubted you, but I see it now," he said. "You, Ruth, and Oliver will get the romance started if it kills all of you."

  "And Rufus."

  The argument continued in the living room. I wondered how blind Ira would be to the pits in her behind tonight. "It's just a matter of time," I said.

  There was a chitinous report directly below us. David Copperfield came through the baseboard opening massaging his head. "I am a lone lorn creetur and everythink goes contrairy with me."

  Cicero came after him, yelling back down, "How long, Catiline, will you abuse our patience?"

  Bismarck and I raced down the wall. Perhaps we were overestimating the matter of the time we had.

  Julia Child's Hottest Reci
pe

  SNOT RAN UP to meet us four feet above the baseboard opening. "It's Julia Child. You're never going to believe this," he said excitedly. "It's safer from here. Watch now. Right at the crack."

  A small puff rose above the baseboard before quickly dissipating. I said, "Has she set the place on fire?"

  As Ira and Ruth returned to the dining room, we ran up the wall to the molding. Ruth said, "Next time he gets to you, tell me, honey. Don't let it churn inside." She shuttled the dirty dishes into the kitchen.

  Ira said, "I suppose you're right." He wiped crumbs off the table. The tension was gone. I would have to give them another dose.

  Meanwhile clouds continued to issue from the baseboard. Snot said, "Julia has gone berserk."

  "Why don't you stop her?" said Bismarck.

  "You can't get near her."

  Ira sprayed the table with furniture wax from a can that looked like a can of poison. Artificial lemon stung our spiracles. Just as he turned toward the wall, on his way out and to bed, a huge burst erupted from the baseboard. Ira looked down.

  "There, that's what I was waiting for," said Bismarck. "Kiss them all goodbye."

  Ira made no immediate move. The fleeting datum had not registered in his mind. Inhibited by man's pride—the oversized brain—his thoughts were scattered, the pathways between them rutted by conditioning. Just as he was more alert to movement in the kitchen, he saw intelligence only in the behavior of his own species. My grand strategy depended on this deficit.

  But Ira bent over to the debris that had precipitated from the baseboard onto the floor.

  "Wotan, keep her still," murmured Bismarck.

  Without a moment of wonder, Ira wiped it up, turned off the light, and left. We ran down the wall, keeping clear of the opening. Kotex and Peach Pit, Julia Child's sisters, were on the floor.

  Now I saw what had been erupting—finely-chopped bits of our scant remaining food. Since the previous renovation we had been living on subsistence rations. I could only guess how many hundreds of meals Ira had just thrown away.

  "I think she dragged through the boric acid without realizing it," said Kotex. "She's poisoned."

  Bismarck and I climbed back up the wall and looked into the baseboard. Julia was sitting in a pile of food up to the first joint of her legs; since it had been stored at the far ends of the baseboard, she must have been quite determined to collect it here. Her head was down as she sifted and sorted.

  Suddenly she shrieked, "Let them reach room temperature!" Two missiles shot from the opening. I ducked one, but the other struck and lodged in one of Bismarck's eyes.

  He swore in German as I carefully extracted the projectile. I had assumed there was some method to Julia's activity. Now I saw that she was not grading stocks; she was indiscriminately eliminating them.

  The toast crumb soaked with Bismarck's tears and blood should have sickened me. But after months of hunger, I devoured i.¶Barbarossa, an animal large beyond his chromosomes, yelled in his commanding basso, "Julia, I am calling for a ceasefire. Should you refuse, we will come for you."

  The room was suddenly quiet. Barbarossa started up the wall.

  Antennae tips appeared from the opening. "Hold on," Kotex said. "She's coming out."

  The antennae grew. But it was not Julia. It was Sufur. He ran up the wall. "Ceasefire, shit!" he rubbed his rectum. "She try to serve me up dinner backward."

  I couldn't understand this. To her sisters I said, "I never thought Julia was imprinted. Was she?"

  "The Gypsy dropped some paprikash between the pages and Julia went in," said Kotex. "I guess the Gypsy didn't use the book much."

  "Why is she acting up now, after all this time?"

  "Just a pinch!" came a shriek, and we were lucky that's all that flew out this round. Barbarossa growled.

  Peach Pit said, "She wasn't out of the book more than a week when she decided everything was too bland. She insisted on spices. Salt and sugar were obvious poisons. But chips of paint, which she ground with her mandibles, look just as good, and I must admit, they do taste better. I only tried them once. They're a staple for her."

  A moth alights on an off-white wall, the apartment's closest approximation of a flower. It eats. Within days it will sizzle itself on an incandescent bulb or flutter against the ceiling until it is killed. Ghetto babies snack on paint chips, which look like the potato chips their mothers feed them. When they get older they alight on gaudy enticements, such as drugs and guns, and are destroyed. Julia, first imprinted, then poisoned with lead, was now starving. What chance did she have?

  "Stir!" A steady motion began inside the baseboard. Julia was lying on the center of the food pile, while her legs, antennae, and palps whirled through it, raising two rows of formidable vortices.

  Bismarck said, "If she goes much faster it will all fly out the top."

  "We have to stop her," said Kotex. "And make her promise not to do it again."

  "Whip!" cried Julia. The piles were approaching the top of the baseboard cavity.

  Bismarck said, "And if she doesn't?"

  "Then we'll throw her out," said Peach Pit.

  "And she'll march right back," said Barbarossa.

  "Break the bitch's legs. That keep her away," said Sufur. Peach Pit struck him across the wings.

  Bismarck said, "She'd molt and return on new legs."

  I said, "If Ira didn't find her first..." For 350 million years our guiding instinct had been a simple self-reliance. But today Julia presented too great a common danger: we could not wait for natural forces to determine her fate. It was a prodigious leap for the colony, discussed and decided almost matter-of-factly.

  Peach Pit said, "The important thing is that we don't hurt her. She hasn't hurt anyone."

  "Go take an enema from the bitch and tell me it don't hurt," said Sufur.

  I said to Kotex, "What about your sixteen other sisters, and your hundred twenty-four half sisters? Julia is putting them all at risk. Only someone like Ira would defend her actions."

  "At least humans punish a crime," she said bitterly. "What do you know, Numbers? She could stop any second, and tomorrow find it was all just bad tofu, with nobody the worse. But you're ready to go after her now. Maybe you, the Prophet, are the imprinted one."

  "If she weren't your sister you'd be demanding her blood," I said. But she had me wondering.

  "What are we waiting for?" said Barbarossa.

  "I thought you were better than that, Numbers," said Kotex. "You're not going to stain me with my sister's blood." She and Peach Pit ran back up the wall. Snot, who had been so shrill, hesitated, then ran after them. Once again, Julia was ejecting food that I had labored to carry from the kitchen. The pile grew, dangerously, on the floor.

  Without another word, Bismarck, Barbarossa, Sufur, and I crept toward the opening, pressed so hard that our sternites, our ventral plates, flipped like playing cards over the bumps in the wall. It filled me with dread that this female, once my intimate, had turned alien.

  On Bismarck's signal we rushed in. Julia shrieked and fired, hitting all of us several times, but no one seriously. We scattered down the baseboard cavity. I looked into the darkness but couldn't see anyone.

  "It's over, Julia," I called.

  "Frappe!" The mounds swirled like angry bees around their queen.

  Bismarck, who was on the far side of Julia, inched toward her. She swung around, springing her labial palps like cobras. Sufur and I moved up. When she turned back toward us, Bismarck and Barbarossa closed. I felt weak.

  But when Bismarck cried, "Now!" we charged.

  I managed only one step before the cry from hell: "Liquefy!" Julia surpassed the critical speed, and the food exploded. Mad but calculating, she had hoarded large, honed missiles that now struck and gaffed us. Large sectors of my vision shut off as pain radiated from one eye to the next. When the end of my right antenna was lopped off, terror sped me away.

  The pain slowly subsided. I saw that I was near the end of the baseboard; I ha
d made good time blind. I knocked myself against the wood to loosen the shards. Pocked with clotting blood, my cuticle burned. I was trapped, scared. I no longer cared that Julia was a victim of hunger; she had made me her victim.

  What delicate shadings of the mind force it to see a different reality? What, for example, pushes aside a vivid dream in favor of a drab morning? I don't know. But just then Julia pushed me into a new reality. As my instincts failed me, Exodus reclaimed me.

  "And all the people saw the thunderings, and the lightnings, and the mountain smoking: and when the people saw it, they removed, and stood afar off."

  Yes, so true. But what to do.

  "An altar of earth thou shalt make unto me, and shalt sacrifice thereon thy burnt offerings and thy peace offerings, thy sheep, and thine oxen: I will come unto thee, and I will bless thee."

  It would be so.

  During the next few hours I acted in the interest of the colony. Did it matter that I was motivated by fables I had engorged by chance as a baby? Without them I might have died instinctively at the end of the baseboard.

  We again moved up to the perimeter of Julia's chaos. At Bismarck's call we plunged in. This time we angled our assault to deflect her shot.

  We each went for a leg. The rear left pounded my head again and again, then slipped away into the black vortex. I was willing to accept the punishment; the end was preordained. When one of my stabs finally caught it, I held on tight. She shook the four of us like maracas.

  Our weight slowed her and the cloud of food began to precipitate. Soon I could see my peers, in a thickening camouflage of bran, wheat germ, pepper, rice, and pasta, each clutching a leg with all six of his own, just as I was. I opened my mouth and harvested a few falling grains.

  Julia Child finally settled us into the soft pile. She was still for a minute, then started kicking her middle legs. Pinned at the corners, she couldn't do much harm.

  Her eyes still raged. "Don't let go, not for a moment," I said.

  "Muthafucka, the bitch done scratch up my new duds. Shit," said Sufur. He looked as if he had slid down a cheese grater.

  Bismarck said, "Let's lock her."