Bedbugs

Well, Susan thought. So much for keeping it nice and not- insane.

“Yes, Alex. This house is cursed. The book uses the word “blighted,” but it’s the same difference. And the thing is, now I’ve … I’ve got it somehow. I’ve got the blight. I think I know how to end it, but it’s …” Her voice descended into a rasping whisper. “I don’t know if I can do it.”

Susan looked searchingly into her husband’s eyes, looking for some glint of understanding, of empathy. They had met eight years ago and had been married for five. They had honeymooned in Finland, after putting sixteen countries in a hat and both swearing to abide by whichever came out first. Finland had been amazing, a wonderland of saunas and smoked fish and dreamlike bogs.

Please, just let him — let him understand. Let him try to understand.

Alex’s mouth opened slightly, and then, after a moment, he said, “Did you pick up the Olanzapine prescription?’ ”

Susan squeezed her eyes shut and groaned, and in the silence that followed, she heard it, loud and vivid: a terrible deep hissing, a sibilant thrum in the back of her worn-out brain pan. The badbugs were laughing, a hideous insectine laughter, the devil’s own gleeful laughter. They were all around her now, in their colonies, in their swarms, massed and ready to strike … beneath the floorboards, under the sink, in the closets and the mattresses. Waiting. Susan gave in to the need to scratch, dove her hand into her lap and worked urgently at the fiery itches on her thighs.

“No, Alex, I didn’t pick up the prescription.”

“Why not?”

“Why—” Susan interrupted herself with a dry and rattling cough and shook her head. She raised her hands from her lap to drag her nails across her prickly scalp, and dry white pieces of skin tumbled onto the table. Alex looked down at the floor.

“Susan, please,” he murmured, and Susan thought, This is useless. Useless … “The medicine—”

“Alex, we are in serious danger. I am in danger. Can you understand that?”

Alex spoke slowly, choosing his words carefully. “I understand that you believe that you are in danger.” He reached across the table and took her rough, twitching hands in his own. “I am going to help you through this. You have an illness, baby. You’re sick.”

She jerked her hands away. “I’m not.”

“The landlord said we do not have bedbugs. The doctor said we do not have bedbugs. The bedbug exterminator, the amazing Kaufstein, the exterminator to the stars — I’m quoting now—”

“I know what you’re doing.”

“OK, well, she said we do not have bedbugs.” Alex’s voice was hardening, growing louder, and he shook his head as he spoke. “Look, I am not upset with you. I’m not. But you have a problem. And you have to deal with it.”

Alex rose from the table. His big hands were balled into fists, the fists pressed into his sides. Susan got up, too, and stared defiantly into his eyes. “I don’t care what anybody says. We have bad — we have bedbugs, and they are not going away. ”

Alex stepped backward, closed his eyes, and said nothing.

“I need you, Alex! I need your help.” She put her hands on his shoulders, peering up at him until he opened his eyes. “I need you to believe me.”

“Oh, Susan.” He roped his arms around her, gathered her into his chest, and rested his chin on her head. “Oh, baby. The doctor said—”

“Please, Alex …” She spoke into his chest. Tears streamed down her cheeks. “Please …”

“—the doctor specifically said that a symptom of this, this Ekbom’s syndrome, can be a belief that the insects are persecuting you, and you alone. He said that rejecting the reality of the condition can itself be a symptom of the condition.”

Susan pulled away from him, scowling. “That makes no sense.”

“Well, it makes a lot more sense than supernatural monster bedbugs.”

Susan didn’t know what else to say. A miserable silence welled up in the room between them. Alex leaned against the doorframe, held his face in his hands, and let out a low grunt of frustration. Susan paced between the kitchen table and the stove, her mind pinwheeling: she thought of waiting until tomorrow morning, when Alex took Emma to ballet, and setting the building on fire. She contemplated following the example of the late, great Howard Scharfstein, wandering down to that creepy basement and blowing her brains out.

At some point, Alex turned, shook his head, and slipped out of the room. As Susan watched him go, one of the tiles of the pressed-tin ceiling fell abruptly from its place and clattered noisily onto the wooden floorboards just behind her. Susan wheeled around and gaped at the ceiling. The square of plaster now exposed was like the space under a rock that’s been turned over, writhing with dozens and dozens of tiny brown and black bugs. As Susan watched wide-eyed, the badbugs began to fall, dropping in uneven, weightless rows to the kitchen floor, where they landed like paratroopers, scurrying off to the corners, alone, in pairs or little groups.

Susan watched, frozen, as the bugs ran off in all directions, and then she heard it: a cheery knock from the front door.

“Susan? Yoo-hoo? So sorry to bother you, dear.”

25

Andrea Scharfstein, as it turned out, was having some trouble with her phone.

“I am so sorry to be a pain in the tush, Suze, but I am supposed to talk to my sister Nan at ten, which means seven o’ clock in Portland. If she doesn’t hear from me right on the dot, she gets nervous. You know how old ladies are.”

She gave Susan one of her broad, teasing winks, slouching with theatrical casualness against the doorframe.

“Oh,” said Susan.

“Anyhoo, you said if I was ever having trouble with this silly thing …” Andrea sighed, holding up the phone with a playfully apologetic smile. “So, but I’m barging in. How are you, kiddo?”

The absurdity of the question, considering Susan’s surreal and terrifying circumstances, rendered her speechless for a moment. She thought of the bugs on her kitchen floor, scattering in all directions from the fallen ceiling tile, like soldiers preparing for an ambush. She thought of bugs in the hall closet, just behind her, slipping in and out of coat pockets. Bugs wreathing the air shaft, clinging to the cracks.

“Oh, I’m just fine, thanks,” she said tonelessly. “Just fine.”

“So, can you take a look at the thing? I just hate to think of old Nan fretting away, thinking I’ve been crushed under an armoire or something.”

“Sure. You bet.”

Andrea was wearing lavender leggings, a long flowing nightgown, and an old-fashioned robe, tied loosely with a sash. Her hair was piled atop her head, in curlers. I am under assault from an army of demonic insects, Susan thought, the notion drifting untethered through the buzzing fog of her mind, and Mrs. Roper is here for tech support.

“Oh, you’re a lifesaver, dear. Absolutely a lifesaver.” She stepped past Susan, toward the kitchen, and the front door closed behind her. “Shall I put up the kettle for us?”

Susan sat at the kitchen table with her hands folded in front of her while Andrea busied herself in the kitchen, pulling open drawers, rummaging for teabags, sugar, spoons. The aggressive normalcy of the situation began, against all odds, to steady Susan’s nerves: it seemed impossible that these two worlds could exist simultaneously, that a cheerful old woman could be fixing a pot of tea in the same apartment — in the same universe—where Susan was being tormented by a shadow species sent from some circle