Kockroach (22 page)

And yet, it all does not feel the same to him as it once did. Working with Mite, cruising the Square in his brown
Lincoln, feeling the power flow from his very being, the fear, the crush of human flesh in his hands, that had given him a purer satisfaction. And so had the world before that, the daring rushes to feed his greed in his old arthropod body, the stench of the colony, the grit and violence, the life-and-death victory over an adversary.

He misses his old lives.

It is why he took care of Mite all these years, waiting like a patient spider for Mite to come home. And now he has. It is good to have Mite back, like old times, but something is still missing. Mite is back and his colony is growing and the world outside falls building by building under his dominion, but still something is missing. And the something that is missing has a name.

Celia.

He was willing to support her, but he wants nothing else to do with her, ever. The very thought of her fills him with an uneasy dread. She has a child now, a boy, and everything in Kockroach’s being screams at him to stay away from a female and her nymph. It is why he reacted with such alarm when he learned Mite had brought Celia here, that she was outside this very room. And what about the boy? Was he here too?

The fear overwhelms him and he lets out a yelp.

The door opens, Istvan steps inside. “Is everything okay, Mr. Blatta?”

“Fine, Istvan,” he says without turning from the window. Istvan quietly closes the door again.

Celia.

Kockroach had thought the world of business would give
him less opportunity for sex than the world of prostitutes and violence, but he was wrong. Money, he has learned, draws women like flies to feces. There is a parade of women into his bed, Cassandra of course, and the wives of his business opponents, and the girls Istvan finds for him in the Square, and the writers and the realtors and the ambitious young things. He is gorging on sex as he once gorged on gloop from the Dumpsters in the back alleys. What more could a cockroach want? But something gnaws at him.

Male cockroaches know only sex, they care nothing of the result, have no interest in the act of breeding. Clever as they are, male cockroaches still wonder where all these annoying white nymphs have come from as they go about their business of screwing every female in sight. But Kockroach has begun to imagine Celia’s long pale body, and as he imagines it, in the ribbons of possibility that flow from the present to the future, he sees her eyes turn dark and her stomach swell.

And in those moments he can’t help but think of the boy.

This is all wrong, this is a corruption of his character. He thinks of all the corruptions he has tolerated so far. The taste for roasted meat, the use of impersonal mass violence, the use of words, the curse of thought and its bastard cousin, regret. He has allowed himself to change so much, is this another change he must abide?

No, this is too much, a connection like this would alter him too fundamentally. This would be worse than thinking, he thinks. He must never allow Celia and her nymph back into his life.

And yet, as he stands before the window to look out at the
world, he can’t stop imagining her body, long and pale, supple, her dark hair, her tears and devotion, her stomach swelling to enormous dimensions with his progeny. The image of it touches some strange place in his belly even as it fills him with a familiar desire.

“Istvan,” he calls out.

The door opens.

“Mr. Blatta?”

“Send in Cassandra,” says Kockroach.

Celia moved
through the days after her visit to the Empire State Building as if the dancing edifice had been the reality and it was her life that was the dream.

Yonkers felt as if it were deep underwater, slow, cold, colorless, distant. She stopped taking her afternoon walks, she resisted her husband’s entreaties to perform the rudimentary duties of the faculty wife, no cocktails at the chairman’s house, no dinner parties for the young bucks of the department. Gregory sat her down and told her he was worried that she had become depressed, but she didn’t feel depressed, instead she felt detached. Nothing made an impression, the sidewalk beneath her feet, the laugh track on the television, the touch of her husband’s hand on her arm. Only the golden flecks in the brown of her son’s eyes seemed to burn with life. And it was her son, her lovely Norman, with the chubby limbs and mop of brown hair, that revealed to her the truth.

“Who are we hiding from, Mommy?” he said one afternoon.

“We’re not hiding,” she said.

“Then why don’t we go out anymore?”

“We don’t?”

“Not since those two men came. The short one and the big colored one.”

“We’re not hiding. Do you want to go out now?”

“No.”

“Are you sure? Come on, let’s go.”

“I don’t want to. I’m afraid.”

“Of what, sweetheart?”

“Who were they, Mommy?”

“Old friends. Just that.”

“I think it’s good to hide. Sometimes at night I slip under my bed. I like it there for some reason. I feel safe.”

“Norman?”

“But who are we hiding from, Mommy?”

Who indeed? Because Norman was right, she was hiding, and she realized now she had been hiding for the last eight years. And it wasn’t from that grubby policeman who had given her the business after it all went to hell, and it wasn’t from Mite or the other gangsters, and it wasn’t from Jerry. She reached out and patted her son’s hair and saw again the bright golden flecks in her son’s eyes. It was a familiar color, that gold. When she closed her eyes she saw it, a streak of that same golden color, like a flaw running through her soul. It was this that she was hiding from, this part of her, this flaw. It had seemed to shrink in her years in Yonkers, it had blended in. She could almost imagine that it had disappeared, but no more. Now that golden flaw vibrated with color, it glowed as if on fire.

And what was it really? The thrill she felt from her proximity to the raw exercise of power? A sensuality that left her weak
and clenched at the same time? A taste for shrimp? A desire for more than that of which she was capable of dreaming? How ridiculously shallow it all was, and yet. Take away the flaw and what was she? A mother, a wife, a daughter, a member of the PTA. Wasn’t that just as shallow, to be nothing on her own, someone only defined by the others in her life. The one thing that was truly her own, the one thing that was truly her, was the flaw. And so maybe it wasn’t a flaw after all, maybe it was the truest expression of her deepest yearnings.

Maybe what she had been running from all this time was her one true self.

The phone call came four weeks later in the middle of dinner. She had made a meat loaf with ketchup on top, mashed potatoes. She could barely muster enough energy to open the can of green beans. Gregory was talking about the most recent faculty meeting when the phone rang and she knew, immediately, what it was.

She stood, answered it, listened to the message. Then, pausing only long enough to depress the button and get a dial tone, she spun the dial of her phone, called the cab company, gave her address.

“I have to go,” she said to her husband.

“Who was it?”

“I have to go,” she said simply.

“Where are you going?” said Gregory. “Why? Who was it?” But by then he was talking to her back as she slowly climbed the stairs to the bedroom.

She wasn’t up there debating, weighing her options, she wasn’t trying to figure out what to do. Instead she pinned up
her hair, applied the base to her cheeks, the blush, the eyelashes, the lipstick. And all the while Gregory was talking to her. He had followed her up the stairs, into the bedroom, had asked, commanded, pleaded, yet she barely heard the words. She put on the long black gown that pushed up her breasts and hugged her hips and hid her leg. She draped her pearls around her neck.

Gregory was demanding an answer, but he would never understand it if it came. It lay in that glimpse through the open doorway, in the huddle of the drones dancing and writhing around a source of great power. Dancing and writhing around him. That was where she belonged, there.

When the horn blared from outside, Gregory stood in the doorway, blocking her path. “I won’t let you go,” he said. “You’re my wife.”

“I’m going home,” she said.

“This is your home.”

“Why didn’t you tell me how we got this house?”

“I did tell you. It’s from the college.”

“He came to you, the lawyer. He made you an offer.”

“Celia.”

“Tell me the truth for once, Gregory.”

“The truth is I love you. And then the lawyer, he showed up at the college and gave us a beautiful house, rent-free. The only condition was that you shouldn’t know. What was I supposed to do?”

“You were supposed to tell me. What else did he give you?”

“Nothing, I swear.”

“Well, don’t fret, dear. I expect you’ll be getting something soon.”

“It’s happening again, isn’t it?” he said. “After all I’ve done, you’re doing it to me again.”

“I am what I am.”

“And what’s that, Celia? What kind of woman runs away from her husband and child?”

She looked into his eyes, saw the pain, the fear. The sight filled her with both pity and triumph and the combination gave her a familiar thrill.

“Norman has school tomorrow,” she said. “You’ll have to take him and pick him up in the afternoon.”

“Celia.”

“I don’t know when I’ll be back.”

On the way out, she leaned over to kiss her son goodbye. She thought she’d feel a tinge of guilt here, at this moment, but there was none. Was she imagining that the look in his eyes was full of understanding, as if he sensed what was happening, what was driving her, where she was heading, and what it would mean for both of them? Was she imagining that he wished he could go with her?

The address given her over the phone was on the Upper East Side. A large brownstone. It was Istvan, in his chauffeur’s uniform, who opened the door. He smiled when he saw her. And behind Istvan stood Champ, wearing a tailored black suit, shiny black shoes.

“Lovely to see you again, Miss Celia,” said Champ. “Welcome. I’m sorry that Mickey is out on business, he would love to have been here for you. Are you ready?”

“I think so.”

“Upstairs,” said Champ. “The door all the way to the right.”

“Thank you,” she said.

She made her way up the wide stairway, past the old paintings and the paneled walls. The space was bigger than it appeared from outside, three houses had been combined to create a single, glorious mansion, elegant and rich and shiny. The carpet beneath her feet was thick and red, the scent of the place was of polished wood and cigars. At the top of the steps, a long hallway led to the right, with a dark door at the end. She stepped slowly, almost reverently, toward the door, knocked lightly, closed her eyes.

It glowed white hot, her flaw. She could see it now in the darkness beneath her lids, watch it flow like a river of lava, widen, she could feel its heat. And slowly all the steady darkness around it burned away until it was no longer a flaw, until it was all there was in her soul. This, her.

She opened her eyes again and the door was now open and he was now before her. In a brown smoking jacket and ascot, in brown velvet pants and patent leather slippers. His dark glasses were on, his smile was bright. One hand held a cigar, the other was holding something large and pink and doused with thick red sauce. He raised it toward her.

“Shrimp?” he said.

She bowed her head, snapped a bite of crustacean in her teeth, passed him as she made her way into his bedroom.

Kockroach is ill at ease.

Possibly it is the outfit he is wearing, a cacophonous clash of stripes and diamonds, a riot of color that makes his skin crawl. Kockroach is only comfortable in brown, he has closets full of suits, racks and racks of them, all in brown. Brown wingtips, brown socks, brown hats, brown ties. Only the shirts are white. But today there is no brown on him, except for the shoes. He must admit he likes the shoes, the way they dig into the carpet, the way they crunch on cement. Yes, the shoes he very much likes, he should wear them all the time, but the rest of the outfit leaves him slightly nauseous.

It was Mite who bought these clothes for him, it was Mite who told him to put them on. “It’s what the fat cats will be wearing out there, I’m telling you, Boss,” he had said. And Kockroach had gone along. This wasn’t pleasure, this was business. So he had put on the colorful socks, the short green pants that buckle below the knee, the yellow shirt, the vest, the hat, not his usual fedora but a slouchy herringbone cap. So maybe it is the clothes that have him ill at ease, but he doesn’t think so.

He has felt this before, this unease, and is feeling it now, more and more often. Something has gone astray. For a while,
after Mite and Celia came back into his life, he found once again that the simple satisfaction of buying pieces of the city and providing for his colony was enough for him. But Mite and Celia came back years ago and the satisfaction has worn off and now he can’t escape the gnawing sensation that something is missing in his life. Which is why he agreed to this meeting. When something is not right in Kockroach’s life, he knows what to do. He is a cockroach, he devours.

And today he will devour a company.

“Drive around the side,” says Mite, leaning forward from the backseat to get a view.

They are somewhere in the country, everything is green and tidy. The building before them is overly grand, with a tall flagpole in the front. The Stars and Stripes. It is tasty, that flag, like a great cake ready to be eaten. The sight of it stirs his hunger.

Mite isn’t wearing the funny colors, the stripes and diamonds, just his normal green suit. And Istvan, driving, is dressed in his normal uniform, and Champ, sitting beside Istvan in the front seat, is dressed in his normal black. Only Kockroach is wearing the ridiculous outfit. He knows in some animal species the strongest male is clad in the gaudiest finery. Maybe that is why Mite had him wear these clothes. So be it, if that is what it takes.

They are meeting today with a man named Gorman. Gorman is the boss of the company Kockroach wants to devour. This is supposed to be just a friendly face-to-face, Mite had
told him. Kockroach isn’t sure what is friendly about a face-to-face. Business is business, the only question is whose face is going to get chewed off. Gorman started his company from a single dry cleaning store. Now he owns newspapers, magazines, a motorcycle factory. Gorman’s cash flow, Mite has said, is like a great green river.

Cash flow. Kockroach has always loved those two words. The sound, the taste. Cash flow. It fizzles on the tongue like champagne.

“Keep going,” says Mite.

“The drive ends here,” says Istvan. “You want I should drive on the grass?”

“Why not? Let’s announce our presence to the swells.”

The car lurches as it drives over a curb and then rocks softly across the lawn, coming to a stop beside a closely mowed area with little flags all across its curvy surface. A number of men are bowing down with sticks in their hands, as if praying to the white round fetishes at their feet.

As Kockroach steps out of the car, all the men straighten and stare, their jaws dropping. Kockroach takes a cigar out of his pocket. Mite pulls out a lighter, flicks it alive.

“What do they do here?” says Kockroach, waving at the huge expanse of long green meadows and tall trees.

“It’s a golf course,” says Mite as he lights the cigar. “It’s where Gorman plays golf.”

Kockroach rolls his cigar over the flame, sucks in a mouthful
of smoke, lets it out slowly as a little man in a suit rushes at the car, waving his arms.

“What’s golf?” says Kockroach.

“It’s good to finally meet you, Blatta,” says the elder Gorman, shaking Kockroach’s hand with great enthusiasm. Gorman is one of those humans with a deep chest and a ruddy complexion who squeeze hard when they shake hands. Kockroach has learned not to squeeze back. “I’ve heard nothing but grand things about Brownside. Our people say your books are shipshape.”

“We do our best,” says Kockroach.

They are on a flat area overlooking one of the long green meadows. In the distance is a round circle of green with a flag planted in the middle. Gorman is there with his son and two men with green vests who are carrying long bags with metal and wooden implements sticking out of the top. Champ, in his black suit, is carrying the same sort of bag, holding similar implements.

“So what’s your number?” says Gorman. “I’m a six. Herman here”—he thumbed at a tall handsome young man with dark wavy hair—“my son, is a scratch.”

“Number?” says Kockroach.

“Your handicap.”

“Handicap?”

“You don’t have a handicap? Where do you play?”

“Play?”

“Golf. Where do you play golf?”

“I don’t.”

“I was told you played golf,” says Gorman, looking now at Mite. “Was I mistaken?”

“He’ll do fine, Mr. Gorman,” says Mite. “Don’t you worry. What say we make a little wager?”

“But he doesn’t play,” says Gorman.

“That’s the beauty of it. He never played before, but I figure he’ll pick it up quick. Let’s just say he’s a natural. No bad habits, right? What about a hundred a hole, against each of you,” says Mite. “Even up?”

“Even up, when he’s never played before?” says Gorman. “That would be like stealing thirty-six hundred dollars.”

“What?” says Mite. “It ain’t enough?”

Gorman’s son steps up. “Let’s not be pikers then,” he says, his easy grin showing his even white teeth. “A thousand a hole. Ties carry over.”

Kockroach grins back at him. “Sweet pea,” he says.

“Herman, stop this,” says Gorman. “Mr. Blatta is our guest. This isn’t right.”

“But of course it is,” says Gorman’s son. “We’re all sporting men here, aren’t we?”

“Sure we are, sport,” says Kockroach.

“See?”

“You gots a game,” says Mite. “Step on up and whack it, why don’t you.”

As Gorman the younger steps between two large blue balls pressed into the flat ground, Mite sidles up to Kockroach. “Champ used to caddy in New Orleans growing up,” says
Mite in a soft whisper. “You listen to Champ and you’ll do just fine.”

Kockroach watches carefully as Gorman’s son takes a stick out of one of the bags, places a little white ball on a small peg of wood in the grass, steps up to the ball, and swings the stick. The little ball sails into the sky and lands far off in the meadow, about two thirds of the way to the green circle in the distance. The young man turns and grins. Gorman sends his ball also into the sky, landing it short of where his son’s ball lies.

“Want me to show you how to grip it, Blatta?” says Gorman.

“I can figure it out,” says Kockroach.

Champ takes a stick out of the bag, hands it to Kockroach. It is metal, long, with a big blob of wood on the far end. Champ takes a ball, sets it on a small peg in the ground. “Hit it down the middle, Boss,” says Champ.

“How far?” says Kockroach.

“See that flag?” says Champ. “That’s the target. Right where that flag is, there’s a little hole. You want to hit the ball into that hole.”

Kockroach steps up, places the wooden blob behind the ball as he saw the two other players do. Swaaaaack. The ball flies as if being chased, rises high, sails long, and then falls far far far beyond the other two balls, before rolling onto the circular green area, stopping just short of the flag in the distance.

“I missed,” says Kockroach.

“Well, now you knows to hit it harder for next time,” says Mite.

“What do I do now?” says Kockroach.

“You go on up and knock it into the hole,” says Champ.

Kockroach looks at Gorman and his son, who are staring at Kockroach with their jaws dropped and something lovely in their eyes.

“You mean I get another chance?” says Kockroach.

“Yes you do, Boss,” says Champ, shouldering the bag.

“How sweet is that?” says Kockroach as he tosses the club to Champ and strides off toward his ball, the Gormans staring after him.

Kockroach doesn’t understand this thing about humans and their games. The ritual of chess he understands, an exercise in controlling the future, but these other games make no sense to him.

The humans take it so personally, like it is combat, when it is exactly the opposite. Combat between arthropods is a life-and-death affair where everything is on the line, that morsel of food, that attractive female with enlarged glands, leadership of the colony. The beauty of combat is that the stakes are so high. But after the human game is over, everything is the same. And yet humans take it all so seriously. Like this golf. There is a bet, but it is air. A few thousand dollars. The number means nothing to Kockroach, it means even less to the Gormans, who are wealthier. And yet, to watch the Gormans play their game with
this paltry amount of money on the line is to watch some awesome weight bear down and crush them. The way their lips press one against the other, the way their knuckles turn white as they grip the sticks, the way their heads drop as Kockroach, on the closely mowed greens, steps up to the ball without the least preparation and smacks it into the hole.

“I’ve never seen anything like it,” says Gorman after Kockroach sends his ball skittering across the green until it drops into the cup. “You’ve never played before? Really?”

“Really,” says Kockroach. “But how hard can it be? It’s just a game.”

“He hustled us,” says Gorman’s son as he steps toward Kockroach, the small flat-faced stick still in his hand. The boy’s features are twisted in anger, his throat is close enough for Kockroach to grab hold and crush if he so desired. “You’re a goddamned sandbagger.”

“Herman,” says Gorman, “stop it.”

“I’m definitely a bastard,” says Kockroach, grinning into the boy’s face. “And if being a sandbagger’s a profitable thing, then I’m that too.”

Gorman’s son raises his stick into the air like a sword.

Kockroach doesn’t flinch.

Champ steps forward, but before he can reach the raised stick, Gorman’s son brings the stick down with tremendous force so that its face buries in the soft green ground.

“Herman, enough.”

“He cheated us, Dad. Don’t you see? You better triple-check his books. He’s a swindler.”

“You’re being rude to our guest.”

“Soon enough he’ll be an employee,” says Gorman’s son as he pulls his stick out of the ground and stalks away.

“Pleasant guy, ain’t he?” says Mite. “And a good loser, to boot.”

“Does this mean the game is over?” says Kockroach.

“I’m afraid so,” says Gorman, watching the boy’s exit with a pained expression on his face. “And I must apologize for my son’s behavior. He’s always been quite competitive.”

“Aren’t we all,” says Kockroach, handing his stick to Champ. “So, enough pleasantries. Let’s talk business. How much?”

Gorman’s gaze snaps back to Kockroach, his face turns impassive. “We haven’t gone over all the figures yet, but our accountants have put a preliminary price on the whole of Brownside Enterprises, one I think you’ll be pleased with.”

“Sweet pea,” says Kockroach, “there’s been a mistake.”

“Excuse me?” says Gorman.

“A mistake. You’ve made a mistake. You’re not buying me,” says Kockroach. “I’m buying you.”

“I like the shoes,” says Kockroach.

He is in the backseat of the car. They are driving away from the golf place, driving toward the big house in the city. “I want to wear them all the time.”

“They’ll be hell on the wooden floors,” says Mite, sitting beside him. “You’ll have to get that by Celia.”

“But they’re my floors.”

“So they are,” says Mite. “Still, you be the one to tell her. She likes them floors. What do you think of the rest of the outfit?”

“It makes me want to throw up.”

“Don’t it though? But you was noticed, wasn’t you? That Gorman wasn’t so happy with the idea of his company getting bought. He near to burst a vein when you told him what you had in mind.”

“He’ll come around,” says Kockroach.

“Don’t think so, Boss,” says Mite. “Not the way he was acting out there. I think he wants to keep the business for that son of his to take over.”

“The sport.”

“Yeah. He wants to keep it in the family. They get like that, fathers do. At least some of them. And the son of his has a son of his own to get the company in turn. So it don’t look to me like Gorman will be willing to sell, no matter how much we offer.”

“He’ll sell,” says Kockroach. “Get the goods, Mite. Get the goods and we’ll convince him.”

“How, Boss? I already looked into the guy. There ain’t nothing there.”

“There’s always something.”

“I tell you, Boss, I asked around, did the sniffing on my own. Gorman’s clean.”

“You’re looking in the wrong place.”

“Where should I be looking?”

“Not at the old man,” says Kockroach. “At the sport.”

There is a moment of quiet. Kockroach watches as Mite and
Champ glance at each other, and in that moment Kockroach senses that Mite had found something and is holding back. He can feel it in the air, what he felt before, the misty scent that always swirls around Mite like a sour pheromone. Betrayal.

Is that where it comes from, this unease that has once again come over him, is it from Mite? No, nothing there is out of sorts. With Mite there is always a whiff of betrayal in the air. It is part of him, he can’t help himself. No, the unease comes from someplace else. For the time he was with Gorman he had lost it, business always puts his mind at ease. But the business now is concluded. After playing the game with the Gormans, he knows it is only a matter of time. They will sell, he saw the weakness in their knocking knees as they tried to roll the ball into the hole. They will sell, willingly, and be ever grateful. And so it is as good as over and Kockroach once again is ill at ease.