The Roaches Have No King

by Daniel Evan Weiss

  "When were you molesting his wife, Ira? You forgot to tell me about that."

  "You know me. Molestation is my middle name." He started to separate the pieces by color.

  "Then tell me, Ira Molestation Fishblatt. What were you after? A kiss? A feel? The whole pie?"

  '"The whole pie'? That's positively pornographic. What's with you today? He is referring to the night the lights went out and I tore my suit."

  But Ira felt guilty; I could see it in his pate. Whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart, if he getteth the whole pie or no.

  "Oh," said Ruth. "Do you think it was roaches in the outlet?"

  "If any animal is stupid enough to fry itself, it's the cockroach. It's got a brain about the size of the head of a pin."

  Oh, Ira, whosoever shall say, Thou art a pinhead, shall be in danger of hellfire.

  Ira reset the board. "Did you kiss her?" said Ruth. "I wouldn't blame you. She's awfully cute."

  "You think so? Then you do it. Hey, there's a knight missing." Ira looked on the mantel, then on the floor in front of it. "Here it is, right in the corner," he said, bending down. Then he recoiled and his voice changed. "Oh, my God. This is disgusting." He trotted into the kitchen and returned with the ammonia and a paper towel.

  "Did the horsie make chips?" Ruth said. He gingerly picked up the piece, one finger on the mane, thumb on the felt, and saturated it. "Careful! You're spraying me!" she said.

  Grimacing, Ira wiped the piece clean. "Do you know what was on it? Roach guts. The body is still on the floor."

  I looked down. It was Columbo. Yet again I had witnessed the last loss.

  "If you think you're disgusted, think how the roach feels," said Ruth.

  Oh, Father, we do Thy bidding and destroy idols that offend Thee. Why dost Thou charge us such a price?

  Ira said, "You kill them and kill them and they keep coming back. It's like they generate spontaneously out of plaster. Would you mind scooping up that body?"

  "I'd love to, but I've sworn not to touch your chess things."

  "Great." He folded the paper towel several times, and with head averted pinched it up. Straight-armed, he walked toward the kitchen.

  Watching Columbo carried off by a wrinkled-nosed, goose-stepping Legal Aid lawyer made something in me snap. I felt as if I were awaking from a long, tortured sleep. As I had on my very first day, I stepped out of the book—this time for good. What love could I ever have expected, however deep my piety and far-ranging my forgiveness, from a human god? As my first friend's remains crepitated between Ira's fingers, I thought of the steer that had been last night's dinner, the sheep who gave his skin to keep Ruth warm, even the alligator assigned to baby Rufus's corns. We were all just sacrificial fodder for this frail, cruel kind. How had I ever thought we could be more?

  By an honest mistake I had wandered into the wrong flock, and now I had to leave. If you have honor, Father, close fairly with me. I have served you truly, if briefly. You say to us: ask, and it shall be given you. I ask.

  FATHER DENIED me the first week, and the third, but I continued to believe in our covenant. After a month my zeal was greater than ever. And on the fifth Sabbath, Father delivered unto me, and I rejoiced. We were even.

  It was Saturday morning. Ira was still getting dressed when the doorbell rang. As he danced into his pants, the polyethylene packet of cocaine he had bought from Rufus the previous night fell from his pocket. The moment Ruth followed him out of the room, I pushed it behind one of the bed legs. The impact of the fall opened one end of the zip-lock seal. Perfect.

  The conversation in the living room concluded with Ira saying, "We'll go with you." As soon as the door closed I got to work.

  I had gone my whole life without tasting a single grain of cocaine. Now I had a trove. From habit I tasted the powder first with my outer sensors, which don't ingest. I detected two substances, one like mother's milk, the other bitter, caustic. This had to be the cocaine. I was amazed that anyone would ingest it, let alone pay so dearly for it.

  The grains of lactose and cocaine were different sizes and textures, so I could easily sort them. The lactose was smooth and luscious, melting on my tongue with little pops, inflaming a hunger in me that I could not restrain. It radiated through me, suffusing me with energy. The cocaine I was happy to set aside.

  I was a believer again—lactose was my new god. A wise and perfect food, I couldn't imagine that my body would ever again tolerate anything else. I dove deeper into the bag. The powder felt like a hundred nymphs massaging my underside. The hundred dollars per gram that Ira was paying for my pleasure did nothing to diminish it.

  My strength was prodigious. I could jump now, really spring. The refrigerator handle, the wall cabinets, the raisin bran box, anything was mine. Bring on the water bugs. Give me a hold of Ira's short hairs and I'd make him mine. My mouth parts continued to move, but I could no longer feel them. I licked my mandibles furiously, compulsively. My heart sped. I rocked back and forth. For the first time since I had bedded Ruth my wing muscles were twitching. How had I lived so long without this stuff?

  Seen through the polyethylene pouch, the bedroom was clouded and distorted. Hadn't I spent most of my life similarly hooded, by the brand of cowardice and confusion Ira and his library had taught me? It was ironic that it had taken a man-made packet of man-refined sugar to make me see the truth—that I, the history of this apartment, was its future. Sure, Ira and Ruth visited a few hours every night, but that gave them no more claim than the shadows which visited each day. My petty rebelliousness had acknowledged Ira's false truth; from this day forward I denied it. I could no longer fear him.

  One last time I climbed to the mantel, thrilled by my fabulous strength. On the stumps of the Sabbath candles I rubbed my forelegs until they wore long gloves of wax.

  Stifflegged I made my way to the bathroom. Behind the tub, up on the window sill, sat a flock of cans and bottles—cleansers, detergents, and disinfectants, Ira's stock in trade. At the very back I found the Drano.

  I had always liked this can, with it's red hemispheric high-security top that looked like a mosquito-tracking radar. Opening it required a hard downward thumb and simultaneous upward tug. Ruth struggled with it every time, spilling powder onto the shoulder of the can, where the raised perimeter held it.

  I picked up a grain of sodium hydroxide with my wax- protected forelegs. It was quite a bit bigger than the grains in the packet. Would Ira be tipped off? No, I could always trust in his need to think nothing ill of Rufus.

  The severe handicap of walking on three legs was more than offset by the power of lactose, as I carried the grain down the tiles and back to the bedroom. I put the grain in the bag and took another hit of the wonderful sugar. The room pulsed with excitement. Lightning shot from the closets.

  Though I spent the afternoon in continuous transport, I hadn't accumulated much of a pile of sodium hydroxide when Ira and Ruth returned.

  While they cooked and ate their fatty, greasy food I buried myself in lactose, to filter out nauseous gases and indigestible prattle. I wasn't about to let Ira provoke me now.

  He tried hard. It was no accident that he perpetrated coitus tonight, when I was right beneath them. It might have been safe to resume my rounds, but I wasn't taking any chances with this mission. The bed groaned and squeaked, and they unleashed their most punishing vocabulary. "Oh God... Don't stop, lover... Never! ... This is so nice... I love you... I love you too..."

  I calmly waited them out. When the snoring began I set out again. My circuit became an exact repetition; I counted every step, thrilled with my precision. The pile of drain opener in the plastic packet grew.

  Shortly after sunup I retired under the bed. Feet descended to slippers, and Ira shuffled to the bathroom. When he returned I sensed that something was wrong. He had looked behind the tub. He knew.

  He thwocked down the hall, and I knew he would return armed with poison. I would not
run. He would have to come get me.

  He returned with two mugs.

  Sleepily, Ruth said, "Oh, thank you, sweetheart."

  "I slept awful," said Ira. "My back is killing me."

  "Poor baby. Did you take Tylenol?"

  Finally they got up and dressed, and the stench of breakfast began. I burrowed deeper into the lactose, my body charging, antennae whipping up a mist of powder.

  I didn't venture out until the front door slammed. By noon I had moved every particle of lye from the rim of the can to the bedroom.

  Together the cocaine and sodium hydroxide made a puny packet. Despite all I had eaten, the biggest pile, by far, was lactose. I could not bear the idea of my ambrosia crusting on Ira's snotty schnoz hairs. I spent the remainder of the afternoon moving grains of lactose to the rubber coaster beneath the bed leg, where they would be safe from the vacuum cleaner. Then I mixed the cocaine and lye. Very puny indeed. But Ira would find Rufus an excuse.

  I pulled the packet into the middle of the bedroom floor and returned to my niche to await the millennium.

  IRA AND RUTH came home late in the afternoon. He approached the bedroom twice, but only on his way to piss. It wasn't until bedtime that he came in. One shoe grazed the packet as he watched himself undress in the mirror. Look down, schmuck! Step on it, and you're out a hundred big ones. He turned, the packet right between his shoes, and sat down on the bed. "I'll be damned." Shaking his head, he picked it up. A few toots before turning in, Ira? Rough day at Bloomie's? But he put the packet in the drawer of his night table.

  The longer the wait, the sweeter. Take your time, Ira. I'll be here.

  But it was not an easy week for me. I lived on the sugar, which left me constantly charged. I paced furiously and slept badly. I was enraged by the way Ira squandered his evenings.

  Friday at last. This was the off Sabbath: no company, no purchase, no responsibilities. After dinner Ruth went to take a bath and wash her hair. While the water was running, Ira appeared in the bedroom. He took the packet.

  The accoutrements were out when I reached the living room. Ira was pouring my treat onto the pocket mirror. Unconcerned, he chopped the different-sized grains into a uniform powder. The razor blade screeched against the glass as he pushed the powder into cemetery rows. He rolled up a bill.

  Would he share the treat with Ruth? I had thought about this. Yes, she was less fastidious, more accepting, more of an animal than he was. But then, she should know her survival was her own concern. What did she care for me? Where was she when the colony was massacred? She was the spirit behind the renovation, and of course the Tupperware. If I had to get her to get him, so be it.

  Ira did call her, but not loudly enough for her to hear. The pig. With a shrug he leaned over the mirror. The powder seemed to disappear into one of Andrew Jackson's ears and fly out the other, into Ira's big beak.

  He shot upright so fast that his chair nearly tipped over. His left hand grabbed the bridge of his nose. He said hoarsely, "Wow!" Eyes shut tightly and teeth clenched in pain, he still managed to smile. What could the fool have been thinking? That Rufus had finally accepted him, given him a dose of the real ghetto stuff?

  Smitten in one nostril, Ira now turned the other nostril too, and his septum began dissolving from both sides. He straightened again, wiping streams of tears from his cheeks. But over the hard, clenched teeth, his mottled lips still smiled. I was enraged! I wanted him to realize exactly what was happening, to know the terror he had so generously dispensed. I wanted to see him pinwheeling on the ground in agony and mortal fear. I wanted him to look up through his tears and know I was his conqueror.

  I was confounded when Ira lowered his face once more, but if this was way to defy me, so be it. As he inhaled, the first drop of blood fell to the mirror, but his tears hid it from him. The second drop landed on his hand. He lifted it to his glasses, then tentatively touched his finger to a nostril. Blood suspended there by surface tension ran down into his palm. His spectacled lemur eyes stared, terrified. Yes, Ira, this time the blood is yours.

  He turned his head toward the bathroom and opened his mouth. Nothing came out. His facial muscles twitched wildly. Bowing his head, he tightened his grip on the bridge of his nose. His face and his pate were dark red. Veins bulged from his neck, and a little curly one rose on his temple.

  Blood flowed down over his lips and chin and dripped onto his crisp white shirt, where crimson tracers grew fat and fuzzy. Ira pawed them, leaving a gory grid. Did he finally understand that he wouldn't have to worry about the laundry anymore?

  Grasping the table, Ira rose like a drunk. His eyes now just running slits, he scanned the room. Blood on the mirror, blood on his shirt, blood on the white brocade of the chair. He looked at his bloody palm, his bloody quivering fingers. He picked up the mirror and shattered it against the wall. Powder dusted the carpet. "Nigger!" he cried.

  "What?" called Ruth from the tub.

  Ira took a step toward her. But the sodium hydroxide was boring toward his brain, and he got no closer. His left knee buckled. He spun and his head plunged for the floor, striking a chord of daring dissonance on the edge of the table. Over the muted bass of skull meeting metal was the percussive tenor of his popping nose cartilage, the high tinkling of postmodern knick-knacks on the tabletop, and the cymbal crash of his shattering glasses. Exultate!

  His head bounced once, and he rolled and hit the floor face up, unconscious. New cataracts of blood from his right eye and the gash across his temple joined the ones from his nose, running to the carpet.

  I heard a soft burbling. Sour, half-digested chicken and rice rose slowly but forcefully into his mouth and ran down his cheek. It would have been just like Ira to hedge, to turn the other cheek too. But he had an even more cowardly and profane act in mind. He coughed, forming bubbles which rose and popped, shooting two droplets from his mouth to his forehead. Already circumcised and bar mitzvahed, he now anointed himself with vomitus, in extreme unction.

  The afterlife would offer him no forgiveness, and I would not give him even the temporary comfort of hoping for it. I climbed onto his forehead and swabbed away the bitter fluid. When the unclean spirit is gone out of a man, he walketh through dry places, seeking rest, and findeth none.

  Spasms convulsed his chest. His hegemony over his body was gone as surely as if he had been sprayed. His seditious arms twitched goodbye when they could have gone to his mouth and saved him. The cough faded into his chest. His left eye was glassy, shocked, perplexed. The other eye, lacerated by the broken glasses, was crusted with blood and humors. Remember, Ira: if thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee, for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell. But here's the rub, old man. Since you can't pluck it, you're going.

  My legs ached, so I went back to the bedroom for a charge of lactose. Ruth was still in the tub, singing: "No handsome face could ever take the place of My Guy..."

  I returned to the living room and took a path of crust up Ira's chin. A stench of lye-burnt flesh and vomit lay over his face. The skin around his lips was turning blue, a great improvement over his usual pasty, pinkish gray.

  Over a dusky cheek I walked toward the glasses. The left eye was glassier still. Now perhaps Ira saw me, huge and hairy, dominating his vision as I dominated his destiny. I jumped up and down on the lens, hoping his optic nerve had survived long enough to take my image to hell. Or maybe I would keep him here, for roaches and worms and mites to turn into shit and progeny.

  I stayed on the lens until all motion had stopped. Blood had crusted to brown ribbons all over his face. The air around his mouth and nose was foul but still. I walked down onto his neck and put my antennae to his carotid artery. Nothing. I was free. The apartment was mine. I climbed back to the lens, and caught a reflection of myself over Ira's dead eye. And I said to us both, "Thou shalt give life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burning for
burning, wound for wound, stripe for stripe."

  The bathroom door creaked. "Ira, honey, could you bring me my bag? It's on the kitchen counter. Thank you."

  I rappelled down a nostril hair, took a bloody trail to the floor, and headed back for a lactose bracer.

  "I need my purse, Ira. Please, honey, I'm wet. Do you mind? Ira?"

  The Kingdom of Heaven

  "WHO ANSWERED THE DOOR?"

  "Sometimes I did, sometimes Ira did."

  "Where did you take him?"

  "We usually had company in the living room when he arrived, so he'd come in and say hello. Sometimes he sat down for a few minutes."

  "And then?"

  "Then Ira and Rufus went into the kitchen to do their business. They always did that alone."

  "This was after dinner?"

  "Yes."

  "OK, we're going to have to cook something. Who was the company?"

  "The Wainscotts, our neighbors. But they had nothing to do with it."

  "You see, Ruth, this is the thing. Everything's got to be normal when he walks in so he don't get raised up and run for it. If he's used to seeing the Wainwrights he should see the Wainwrights. Are they cool? Could they act normal when Rufus comes in?"

  Ruth paused. "No, I don't think they could, to tell you the truth." She wiped her eyes, which were red and swollen.

  "Did you have anything special out that he could see? Candy dishes or anything?"

  "There were pastries and coffee in the living room, but you can't see that from here. Otherwise, just the Sabbath candles."

  "Excuse my ignorance, but is that a Sabbath candle, the one in the glass?"

  "No, that's for the dead."

  "You think we could move it out of sight, just for an hour or so?"

  She put her hand to her mouth. "Yes, I think it would be all right."

  "Do you know where Rufus carries his gun? Have you seen a bulge under his armpit, in his belt, around his ankle?"

  "Well, he never takes off his coat."