Bedbugs

hyperactive elementary school student doing a report: “Bedbugs are parasites, which means they live off the blood of a host — that’s you!” “Every bedbug begins life as a ‘stage one’ and molts its exoskeleton five times before achieving full maturity as a ‘stage five’!” “Bedbugs can live for more than a year between feedings!”

“Great,” Susan muttered. A couple more clicks, and she was engrossed in a fierce debate, ranging over many posts, about whether bedbugs bore a detectable odor: some people were saying no; others were saying that a colony smelled faintly of lemon or lemon-scented candles. One person argued passionately that bedbugs smelled of raspberries and cilantro, a smell that “gets much stronger before/during blood meals!”

Susan went back to the previous page, found the link that boasted “Pictures! Pictures! Pictures!” and clicked on it. She began to scroll down and immediately stopped — the first picture, posted by someone identifying themselves only as “[email protected],” featured a row of three bites, each one red and raised, with a white dot in the center.

“Oh, crap,” said Susan. “Oh, crap.” She reached up and scratched idly at the top of her left cheekbone, just below her eye. Then she clicked the tab for Google on her bookmarks bar and did a search for “Jessica Spender.”

It was, at it turned out, a fairly common name. There was a Jessica Spender in Joliet, Illinois, who owned a pastry shop, but the picture showed a heavy middle-aged lady in a ruffled apron. Another Jessica Spender was in Detroit, quoted three times in a Free Press article about the ongoing struggle to rebeautify that city’s beleaguered downtown. This Jessica Spender was twenty-seven years old, which sounded like the right age, but she was a lifelong resident of Detroit, not to mention black. There was a seventeen-year-old Jessica Spender in a high school in South Bend, a newborn Jessica Spender in a Babble article about jaundice, and on and on and on.

Susan tapped her chin and then tried “Jessie Spender” instead. This time, the first result was a Facebook page for someone named Jess Spender — and this lead, at last, seemed promising. It listed no age or occupation, and the profile picture wasn’t a picture of a person at all — it was an odd-angle photograph of the Williamsburg Clock Tower, with a big handlebar mustache Photoshopped over it. A very cutesie-clever, very Brooklyn kind of profile picture.

This is her, Susan thought.

They had no Facebook friends in common, but Jess Spender’s account was set to allow incoming messages from anyone. Even, Susan thought with an uneasy snort of laughter, people living in your old house, who have created a likeness of you and then covered it with some kind of biblical plague.

She clicked the button that said “Send Jess a message” and typed quickly in all lowercase letters: “hi. if this is the jessica spender that used to live on cranberry street in brooklyn, i have a”

Susan paused, cracked her knuckles. She was going to write “a quick question for you,” but she didn’t exactly know what her question was.

What about “how’s your face?” That’s a pretty quick question, right?

Susan deleted “i have a” and instead wrote “there’s a piece of mail here for you and it looks important. landlady does not have forwarding address.” She signed with her name, her e-mail address, and then, after a brief hesitation, added her cell number as well.

12

“Sue, I have been the worst friend in the world! Do you want to have lunch today? Can you come to the city?”

It was Friday morning when Susan’s friend Jenna called with the last-minute invitation, and Susan accepted it eagerly. The week had passed in a blur: Each morning Alex grunted some muffled facsimile of “good morning” and left, messenger bag slung over his arm, travel mug of coffee in a one-handed death grip. Marni came and whisked Emma away, leaving Susan alone in the house, melancholy and uneasy, too freaked out by the bonus room to do any painting, or much of anything else.

“Can we go somewhere with wine?”

“You bet your sweet ass we can!”

Jenna was an actress, the rare kind who actually made a living, performing frequently Off Broadway, occasionally on Broadway, and the rest of the time doing TV commercials and voice- overs. She was nice to a fault, a habitual self-deprecator, constantly pooh-poohing her substantial accomplishments and professing astonishment at Susan’s life — at her perfect child, at her gorgeous husband.

Susan spent the morning in a better mood than she’d felt in days, enjoying a brisk walk to the Gristedes on Henry Street to get flowers for the kitchen table and then taking her time in her closet, selecting the right outfit for lunch. She looked forward to hearing about Jenna’s latest adventures and to sharing with a sympathetic old friend both her excitement and her misgivings about the house on Cranberry Street. Jenna, she knew, would make her see how silly she was being, how lucky she was with her amazing family and their incredible new apartment.

Susan left the house at 12:30 to meet Jenna at Les Halles at 1:15. The closest A/C station, on High Street, was out of service, so she doubled back toward the stop on Jay Street. This detour took Susan down Livingston, where she walked quickly past the improvised shrine to the Phelps twins: the small forest of white and pink roses, the clutch of woeful wide-eyed teddy bears.

“Oh my God, how is everyone? How’s Emma?”

“She’s great, she’s really great. Here … ”

Susan found the latest pictures on her iPhone, and Jenna leaned across the table to clutch her arm, gasping loudly at each shot. “No! Too cute! Too cute! God, Sue, what an incredible creature she is! I’m serious, I am so in awe of you.”

“Of me? Come on. What about you? Fran sent me the article from Variety, by the way. About the Lillian Hellman festival.”

Jenna waved her hands to dismiss any talk of herself and her own accomplishments. “How’s Alex?

“Oh …” Susan exhaled, took a sip of her Merlot. “He’s fine. Busy.”

“Good, good. Busy is good, right?”

“Yeah.”

There was a long pause. Susan bit her lip, ran a hand through her hair, and looked at her friend; Jenna returned the gaze with wide, empathetic eyes. “God,” Susan said, laughing quietly. “I must look like hell.”

“You look beautiful, Susan.” Jenna reached across the table and took her hands. Susan and Jenna had been friends for about twelve years, since both dated a guy named William Vasouvian. They’d run into each other at DBA one night, after both were through with him, and bonded over draft beers and stories of what a moron William Vasouvian had turned out to be.

“What’s going on, Suzaroo?”

Susan opened her mouth, then shut it again, smiled, shrugged. It was all so ridiculous. Gee willikers! I think my paintbrush is possessed, Jenna! What do I do?

“Not a big deal,” Susan said instead. “Nothing. I think we might have bedbugs.”

Jenna let go of her hands.

“You have to move.” Jenna stared at Susan with an intense, unflinching expression. “I’m serious.”

A prickly shiver ran through Susan, from the base of her neck to the small of her back; the way Jenna was reacting, it was as if she had said her house was haunted, or confessed that she was painting dark visions from the Other Side. She forced herself to laugh lightly and raised an arch eyebrow in reply. “Jenna, take it easy. I said we might have them. We probably don’t. Besides—”

“So why did you say that?”

“Because I … oh, I don’t know. There was this spot on my pillow, and I thought …” She had a powerful memory, of walking through the living room in the silence and darkness, of being