Bedbugs

like that. Like it’s some kind of death museum.”

“Jesus.”

“Yeah. Now, look, Susan. We’re keeping this between you and me? Understand?”

“Sure. Of course.”

Louis was smiling again, but there was coldness behind his smile, and force. It was not a request.

13

The thundercloud that had hung low and heavy all week over Susan and Alex’s marriage erupted with ferocity on Sunday night, just after Alex came down from putting Emma to sleep. Though he’d already had two beers with dinner, Alex went straight to the fridge, opened a third, and drank half of it in one long swallow. Susan, at the kitchen table finishing her dinner of salad and sliced roast beef, looked up and said — simply, casually —“Thirsty?” It was the kind of little bantering tease that would normally earn a comical assent (“As a matter of fact I am!”) or, at worst, a dismissive and weary, “Ha, ha.” But Alex, sullen and discontented as he’d been for days, stared back at her, bottleneck gripped tightly in his fist, and said, “What? What’s the problem?”

Susan pushed her chair away from the table. He was spoiling for a fight, and Susan, in her own dark and unsettled frame of mind, found herself itching to give him one.

“What’s my problem? Come on, Al. Something’s making you all pissy, but guess what? You share your life with another person. Two people, in fact.”

He made a sour face. “You don’t have to tell me that.”

Susan’s steak knife trembled slightly in her grip. “What the hell does that mean?”

“Nothing.” He exhaled, turned his face away from her and gazed down into the sink. “I’m just anxious about money. I have to write the rent check, and it’s going to be a tough one.”

“Oh.”

As soon as he softened, Susan relaxed, too. This was all she wanted, for Alex to open up, to share what was eating him, instead of moping around like a human black cloud. Now she could do what spouses did, say all the right things about how it was going to be OK, how they were a team, how they could figure it out together.

But just as she said “Alex …,” he turned back around and said the magic words: “Especially since you’re not working right now.… ”

“Oh, for God’s sake,” Susan said sharply, tossing the steak knife onto her plate with a clatter. Over the baby monitor, Emma made a discontented moan in her sleep.

“What?” said Alex, with obnoxiously exaggerated innocence.

“I am just so sick of hearing you say that.”

“Why? You were the one who decided to stop working.”

“It wasn’t unilateral. We talked about it a thousand times.”

“Exactly. You talked me into submission.”

Susan’s jaw dropped. She felt like she’d been punched in the stomach. “And, by the way,” Alex continued, jabbing his finger at her, his nostrils flaring, “You were the one who decided that we needed to spend several thousand dollars to move. To move to a more expensive apartment … ”

“OK, well, once again, I didn’t decide anything by myself.”

“Oh, come on.”

“You agreed with me!”

“I went along with you.”

Susan snorted. “Please.”

Alex shook his head angrily. She could see him building steam, convincing himself of the accuracy of his own memory. She felt aware of how much bigger he was than her, of his thick torso and big arms. “No, I did, I went along with you. I knew it was a stupid idea, but I gave in. That’s different from agreeing.”

“That’s not fair, Alex. It’s not fair and you know it.”

All the while an accusing voice was chattering in the back of Susan’s mind, an insistent and taunting whisper: he’s right, he’s right, of course he’s right. It was Susan who had dragged them from their cozy nest off Union Square, it was Susan who saddled them with this new burden, with this new apartment— which, by the way, she thought crazily, is very possibly haunted and/or infested with—

She shook her head violently, wrestled her mind back under her control.

“So your business is tanking?” His eyes widened, and she liked it; she liked to see that she’d wounded him. “So I’ll get a job! I’ll go to a firm. I’ll be making three times as much as you by next week.”

“Great. And then you’ll be wandering around here whining, every night, how miserable you are … how hard things are for you …”

“Oh, like you’ve been doing for the last two weeks?”

The fight carried on for hours, the kind of interminable and miserable argument that would peter out into brutalized silence, then flare suddenly back to life, worse than before — another round of recriminations and accusations, snorts of derision, unrelated grievances dragged out to be aired and re-aired. When they fought this way, Susan imagined them as two mad and vicious dogs, tearing at each other’s throats, charged with pure animal hatred. Later, lying awake, her heart pounding and her chest trembling from the exertion, Susan thought that without question it was the worst fight in the history of their marriage, the worst since they had known each other.

Beside her, Alex lay sleeping peacefully, his flesh gently glowing in the moonlight, a line of spit running down his fleshy cheek. Like a child. Like nothing had happened. Susan stared at the cracks in the ceiling. She resisted the urge to shake him awake, scream in his face, go for another round. His easy slumber was just one more attack on her, one more way of making her feel bad.

Christ.

Every night, it seemed like there were more cracks in the goddamn ceiling.

The dream came again.

It began, this time, at the shrine on Livingston Street. She was sorting through the wilting pink roses and dirty teddy bears, trying to find a good one to take home for Emma. These bears had been out on this grimy street for so long, surely the fleas and maggots had had their way with them? But oh, Emma wanted one so, so Susan lifted the dilapidated toys one by one, looking into their dead black plastic eyes, running her hands through their matted fur. Until a throaty voice called watch out, and she looked up, up along the dizzying height of the building, and saw the massive double stroller tumbling down, faster and faster, spinning in the air, the twin girls screaming and screaming in their seats. The stroller slammed against the pole of the awning and hurled outward in a long final arc, sailing over Susan’s head and bursting on the sidewalk beside her. Blood gushed out in all directions, great horrid fonts of blood, pouring down over her, running into her eyes and filling her mouth as she screamed and screamed—

— and woke, panting, with Alex shaking her. “Honey? Honey,” he said, “It’s all right.” His eyes glowed with love and tenderness, and she collapsed into his bare chest, ran her hands desperately through his hair. He shushed her, cooed into her cheeks. “Your pillow is soaked,” he said, and went to the linen closet to fetch a fresh pillowcase.

“No,” she whispered, tried to whisper, but found the word lodged in her throat like a marble, round and hard. NO. He unfolded the pillowcase and flapped it once, neatly, and bugs went flying, like sand shakes out of a beach towel, thousands and thousands of bugs, their antennae twitching in the darkness, bugs coating the sheets and the floor. She could feel them, rushing in every direction, disappearing into every crack and corner of the room.

We’ll never get them out — never get them out now.…

Her eyes shot open and she was awake this time, really awake. Quiet darkness. The ceiling. The cracks. It