Bedbugs

Susan cleaned the spilled coffee and the broken mug, gathering up the shards into a paper bag and mopping the floor on hands and knees with a wad of paper towels. Down here on her knees, she could still smell it, even under the rich bitter smell of the coffee: that abandoned cat, its dying reek of piss and rot. The painting stood on its easel above her, still and silent. The truth was, Emma couldn’t have messed with it, even if she’d gotten it in her head to do so. She would have had to drag in the stepstool, drag it back when she was finished, not to mention mix the colors and clean the brushes and.…

I did it. I painted that picture that way, and I don’t know why.

Susan felt a darkness welling in her veins. She rose from her cleaning crouch and stepped to the painting, ran her hands over the three dots marring Jessica Spender’s beautiful cheeks.

I’m sorry, Jessica, she thought, as if she’d vandalized not the painting but the girl herself. I’m sorry.

Twenty minutes later, Susan was out the door and on her way to the Brooklyn Heights Promenade. She would, she had decided, sit with her sketchpad and charcoal pencils, watch the stream of joggers and the middle- aged Caribbean nannies pushing their strollers; she would set her artist’s gaze on the Manhattan horizon and sketch the magical skyline. She hustled down Cranberry Street, feeling the September sun on her cheeks. Turning right onto the Promenade, she dug her iPhone out of her coat pocket and called Alex.

“Hey, hon,” he said tersely. “What’s up?”

She could picture him, staring like an X-ray technician at his computer screen, running the pixelated magnifying glass over an enlarged JPEG of a diamond, searching out its flaws.

“Nothing, just a random question for you. Did you by any chance do something to my painting?”

“Did I what?” She heard his fingers rattling over the keys.

“My painting, Al, the painting I’m working on in the bonus room.”

“I’m sorry, Susan, could you hold on for just one sec?”

“Sure.”

She was halfway down the Promenade now, and she tossed her bag onto a bench and sat beside it, looking out at the Statue of Liberty and Governor’s Island. A few feet away, a knot of tourists was posing at the railing, framed by the view, leaning on one another and laughingly hoisting an Italian flag.

“OK. Sorry, babe. What is it again?”

“I—careful!” One of the tourists was bobbling a toddler up on his shoulders, and Susan had a lurching sensation of the boy tumbling over the railing, down into the rushing traffic of the Brooklyn- Queens Expressway below.

“Susan?”

The boy was fine. His father had his legs gripped tightly, one in each hand. Susan closed her eyes and opened them again, resumed breathing.

“When you got home on Friday night, I was working on a painting. In my … in that little room, behind the living room. Did you, by any chance, do something to it? Over the weekend?”

“Did I do something to it? Yes, dear. I baked it in a pie.”

“Alex.”

“I have not stepped foot in that room since we moved to Brooklyn.” She heard rapid tapping: he was sending e-mails while they talked. “I seriously don’t even know what the room looks like.”

“Huh. It’s the weirdest thing … ”

“Susan? I am so busy today. Can we—”

“Yes. Of course. Get back to work.”

Susan held her sketchbook in her lap for half an hour, staring out across the river.

* * *

When Alex came home that night, it was as if the easygoing, eager-to-please doofus with whom she and Emma had spent their weekend had been kidnapped and replaced with his sullen, irritable twin. He barely said hi, barely acknowledged the painted pinecone Emma had spent all afternoon making for him.

“You don’t seem up for dinner,” Susan said, trying to get a read on him. “Should I do grilled cheese?”

“Sure. Fine.”

While Susan dug around to find the cheese for their sandwiches, he reached over her head and helped himself to a beer.

“Want to hear some great news? There was some old dude hanging out on our stoop just now, perched on the front step, smoking a cigar. I said, ‘Excuse me?’ as in, ‘Can I help you?’ but he didn’t say anything. He just shifted over and gave me this big, extra-polite grin. Like he was doing me some big favor, you know, letting me into my own house.”

Alex stalked over to the front window, pulling on his beer, and glared outside.

“If he’s still out there in ten minutes, I’m calling the cops.”

Susan was slicing cheese on the cutting board. “That’s just Louis,” she said.

“Louis? Who the hell is Louis?”

Alex’s voice was too loud. Susan stopped slicing. Emma, at the kitchen table, looked up from her coloring book and back down again quickly.

“Remember, when Andrea told us she had a guy who did stuff around the place for her, like unclog the toilets and stuff? That’s him.”

Alex rolled his eyes, let out a derisive snort. “You have got to be fucking kidding me.” Susan gave him a look—language—but he ignored her. “What is he, a thousand years old?”

Susan shrugged, heard herself parroting Andrea. “He doesn’t look like much, but he gets the job done. Seriously.” Alex sipped his beer and grunted. “So what’s going on? How’s work?”

“You don’t want to know.”

But he told her anyway. From all appearances, their hard work the previous week on the Cartier shoot had been for naught. Richard Hastie, the potential rep, was using the watch-face snafu as an excuse to pass them over on the Cartier contract in favor of a large Diamond District outfit called Stone Work.

“It’s just classic. They’ve got more experience, he says, so Cartier feels more comfortable with them, but of course we can’t get more experience without a big-time client. So we’re stuck with the penny-ante stuff, and I’m spending half my time writing invoices and payment reminders, instead of taking pictures.” He snorted. “At least when I’m taking a particularly stylish picture of a ring, I can tell myself I’m a real photographer.”

“I’m sorry, honey.”

Susan made the right sympathetic noises, but beneath the surface her anxiety blossomed to bright and busy life. She could hear every word that Alex was thinking but not saying: This is all your fault, Susan. All your fault. He was struggling, handcuffed to a sinking business, stripped of his artistic identity, and she got to stay home and make art?

Or sit uselessly on the Promenade and people watch, not making art at all?

“Come on, Susan, don’t use the santoku knife to cut tomatoes.”

“What?”

“We have a cheap tomato knife. Use that. I’ve told you, save the good knives for when you really need a good knife.”

Emma went to bed early that night, and Alex and Susan watched Hell’s Kitchen in silence. If Alex remembered her odd phone call, questioning him about her painting in the bonus room, he didn’t mention it. Given his mood, Susan saw little point in reminding him.

11

The next day, Susan made no effort to paint. Once Alex had left for work and Marni had arrived and taken Emma to a 9:30 story time, she walked, with her umbrella open against a damp and drizzly autumn morning, to a Court Street coffee shop called Cafe Pedlar. She ordered a cappuccino and a pretzel roll, settled at a table in a back corner, and contemplated the recent unsettling events.