Kockroach (25 page)

There was a moment when they stood face to face, Jerry and Mite, father and son, and their future together seemed to tremble.

“Sweet pea,” said Jerry as he reached out a hand.

Mite didn’t step forward, Mite didn’t grasp the hand or hug
the man before him or turn around and bolt. Instead, he looked at the outstretched hand, and then Jerry’s face, and then he slipped down again into the chair, as if something had collapsed inside him.

“So it is settled,” said Jerry.

“You’re a son of a bitch,” said Mite.

“I never knew my mother,” said Jerry, “so you’re probably right. Now, boys. What’s the word?”

“Harrington is scrambling to stay alive,” said McGreevy. “But our inside sources tell us he got a call this morning from the m-m-mayor. He’s being pressed to drop out.”

“He’ll be gone by the end of the week,” said Gladden. “They’ll draft Paglia.”

“Is that trouble?”

“Paglia is popular in the outer boroughs,” said Gladden.

“I’ll need you again, Mite,” said Jerry.

But Mite didn’t respond. Still slumped in the chair, his chin resting on his chest, Mite was lost. The men continued their discussion, walking to the wet bar at the end of the room to plan and plot. Cassandra went into the hallway to answer the ringing phone. Celia held the wedding dress on her lap and waited for Mite. When he looked up, finally, his lips were quivering and it was as if his eyes were focused on some distant shore.

“You never got around to telling me,” he said softly.

“The boat’s called
Mick’s First Mate,
” she said.

“Damn,” said Mite.

“Should I tell Cassandra to get the tickets?”

“Three words and he’s routed again,” said Mite, softly, to himself. “It shouldn’t be so easy.”

“I’ll have her get the tickets,” said Celia Singer, the soft glow of satisfaction warming her.

This wedding was going to be so special. It was going to be the physical manifestation of everything for which she had ever dreamed, and for which her mother had dreamed too. It was going to create for her, permanently, the family she had always truly wanted. Jerry, yes, and Norman, and Mite too, because he was part of it, surely. And now even Champ would return and join them again. He wouldn’t stay on that old boat of his when Mite beckoned him back. This wedding, she knew, was going to be the greatest day of her life. And then, at the edge of her vision, she spotted something swaying in the doorway, all in white.

It was Glenda, in a gauzy white dressing gown, her feet bare, an empty glass in her hand, swaying, as if the slightest of reeds swaying in the wind. Her skin was pale, her blue eyes watery, her lips swollen red. Her beautiful heart-shaped face seemed to float above her narrow shoulders, which in turn seemed disconnected from her thin waist, her slim hips, her long slender legs which showed through the gossamer gown. She looked about the room as if comprehending nothing.

“I don’t…” she said. “I can’t…”

“Jerry dear,” said Celia, “it’s Glenda.”

Jerry turned to her, lifted his arms wide. Glenda rose on her toes, staggered slightly to the left.

“Look, Jerry,” said Celia, standing now, with the dress in her hands. “Look how exquisite she’ll be.”

She stepped over to Glenda and lifted the wedding dress so that its shoulders were at Glenda’s shoulders, its arms at
Glenda’s arms. The pattern of beads traced along Glenda’s waist and the hem of the skirt just barely brushed the floor at Glenda’s feet. Glenda staggered again, as if under the weight of the garment.

“Lovely,” said Jerry. “Just lovely.”

Celia was filled with an exultant joy. She leaned forward and kissed Glenda on the forehead. “You’ll make the most beautiful, beautiful bride,” she said. And she meant every word of it.

Kockroach stands
at the center of his world. He can feel them all around him, on every side of him, rubbing him and patting him, grabbing him and hugging him. Since his strange molt, it is the closest he has come to feeling, among the humans, the purity of the colony as it huddles and writhes together. There are shouts, shrieks of jubilation, there is a shiver of exultation running through them all. He can smell all of them, each one of them, as they clamber about him. Celia and Glenda, Norman, Cassandra, Champ back from Mexico, Istvan and Gladden, McGreevy and Mite. His colony.

In the distance, the chanting of a name as if it were the name of a god.

Blatta. Blatta. Blatta. Blatta.

The excitement sparks all about him like the burning of a fuse rushing toward some great pile of explosives. The enthusiasm puzzles him, the prize seems so small. To be a senator is to be a barnacle on the rear end of a whale, a parasite along for a pointless ride. Senators are cheaper to buy than buildings. Better to sit on a toilet seat than in the Senate. But every rise needs a first step. In the world of crime, he first was an enforcer. In the world of business, he first was an exterminator. In the world of politics, he first will be a senator.

As he stands in that room behind the stage, surrounded by his colony, he closes his eyes and watches the ribbons of possibility float like writhing snakes into the future. He sees a chessboard of white and brown squares that stretches beyond the city, beyond the country, that spans continents and bridges oceans. His pieces move forward in brutal ranks along columns and diagonals, thwarting attacks, smashing defenses, always advancing. And slowly, magnificently, the chessboard itself begins to change. The white squares shift and darken until the whole board is one huge surface of brown. The brown of his chitin in his earlier life. It will cover the world, he can make it happen.

“It’s t-t-time,” says McGreevy.

Kockroach knows what to do, as if he were reborn for this moment. The colony parts. He grabs Glenda’s hand, steadies her, and then pulls her from behind the curtain and onto the stage. There is more chanting, there are bright lights, there is music. A writhing mass of people stand before him, clapping and jumping and shouting. At the lectern, with his human name emblazoned in red white and blue, Kockroach raises his hands, fingers splayed into twin V’s, and quiets the crowd.

“Tonight,” he says in a voice that resounds through the ballroom and races across the night sky to the televisions of an entire nation, “tonight is the dawning of a new and glorious era for America.”

For their brilliant assistance with, and support for, this novel, I wish to thank the following:

David Roth-Ey;

Carolyn Marino;

Amy Robbins;

Will Staehle;

Lisa Gallagher;

Michael Morrison;

Wendy Sherman;

Larry Gringlas;

Nate Allen;

My wife; and

My dog.

For any failures of substance, craft, or taste, blame the dog.

My primary entomological reference was an apartment in the East Village, where I was able to study at close hand the fauna of New York City. Among a host of other sources used were
The Compleat Cockroach,
by David George Gordon, a series of Insect Morphology Posters produced by B. K. Mitch
ell and J. S. Scott at the University of Alberta, and a quite peculiar paper on the effect of parasitoid wasp venom on cockroach grooming behavior, written by Aviva Weisel-Eichler, Gal Haspel and Frederic Libersat at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Israel. Less well known than the cockroach is the common cockroach mite, found within the genus
Pimeliaphilus
, notable for its small size and deficient grammar.

T. Knox