48) Quit Bugging Me

There was a sudden flurry of activity… life that had gone unnoticed was now teeming in the rich soil, swarming upwards toward the light.

“Oh fuck… You have got to be fucking kidding me… So frickin disgusting.” You quickly pulled the zippered mesh flap back over the raised indoor gardening bed doing your best to keep the gnats from flying out and into the wide expanse of the basement… possibly infesting all of your other plants.

“Spent a damn fortune on soil only for it to be filled with these fuckers… no wonder the plants aren’t doing well…” You and the kids had started an indoor garden a few weeks ago in hopes that you could establish a continous bounty of vegetables year long. So far you hadn’t had much luck. So little luck in fact that you decided had you been born before modern conveniences like grocery stores, your lineage would have ended before it even began. You might not be farmer material.

“Now what?”

The kids went out and hunted for earth worms. Your eldest had looked up how to get rid of the gnats and found that worms will eat the larvae and destroy the invasive population. Ten minutes and one and a half earth worms later and your kids were over digging in the rocky compacted soil.

“We’ll get more worms when it rains and they come out…”

That never really happened. The gnats continued to multiply.

“I think we’re just going to have to get rid of all the soil Vaness… it’s not like we’re going to be able to eat anything that comes out of there if we’re dousing everything in pesticides…” David offered.

He wasn’t wrong. You went in and pulled out a bunch of the seedlings, not sure at that point what was what… and you brought them outside to plant. When you were finished you weren’t quite sure if you had planted carrots or parsley… at this point you didn’t think it mattered too much.

You held off on emptying all of the soil out of the planter. You were really hoping that the one and a half earth worms would finally rally and take care of this shit for you, but you weren’t betting on it.

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“NO. NO. NO… PLEASE GOD NO. I CAN TAKE A LOT OF SHIT… THIS I CAN’T TAKE.”

At first you weren’t quite sure if you were really seeing with your own two eyes what you knew you were seeing with your own two eyes…

You did a double take… and then a triple take…

And when your brain still didn’t want to process what you knew was lying in front of you like some sort of Kafka-esque nightmare, you went and got your glasses. At first you had grabbed your reading glasses… but then hastily returned them to their case when you realized you’d have to get a lot closer than you intended on getting. You plucked your bifocals from the basket by your bedside and slid them onto your face - everything instantly becoming crisp and clear…

Including the German cockroach on the stair.

It was dead.

Of that you were certain.

But where the fuck did it come from?

Dead or not all you could picture were thousands of its relatives teeming in the church walls like the gnats in the planter box; growing exponentially more problematic with each passing day.

You knew all about German roaches. These were the type that you did NOT want to get in your home. Once inside they were incredibly difficult to get rid of. Not to mention the thought of them making themselves comfortable in your 7,000 square foot church, your sanctuary, made you physically ill.

Then there was the cost. What was someone going to charge to come out here and treat the whole place? All you could hear in your head was The Tiger King’s Joe Exotic, “I’m never going to recover from this financially…” granted he was dealing with a tiger that had just ripped an employee’s arm clean off, but at that moment the severity of your potential situation was, in your mind just as detrimental as a missing limb: both financially and mentally.

“This can’t be fucking happening right now… we keep everything so clean and I check EVERYTHING that I bring into this place.” You said to David after you had gotten your phone and taken a photo of the upturned exoskeleton still lying on the steps in David’s office. Just as you had thought: German roach. Sometimes, not often, you hated being right. This was one of those times.

“Maybe it just wandered in from outside… We’ve been having a lot of rain,” David offered.

“That’s not how that works. Somehow, someone, or something brought these fuckers into the church… There’s no way that they were here since we got here… we would have seen something…”

David shrugged, “Honestly Vaness, I wouldn’t be too concerned…”

“Well I am. I’m actually very concerned… If there’s one… there are thousands… that’s how it works.”

“Welp, I’m not going to worry about it…”

“So are we just going to pretend that we’re not looking at a German roach and wait until the entire church is fucking infested or?”

“I just think that you might be…” he chose his words carefully, “maybe putting more into this than there needs to be…”

“Oh my god…I am not making a big deal about this! All I’m saying is that we should stave this problem now before it gets completely out of hand… I mean you see what the bee issue was like…. Maybe someone thought that it wasn’t an issue at first… and left unchecked… well we had a fucking catastrophe on our hands… and it wasn’t a cheap catastrophe either…”

“Alright… well… then call the pest control guy and have him come out here… I don’t know what to tell you…”

“That’s it? Just call the pest control people?!”

“I don’t know what you think I can do about this Vaness… because aside from telling you to call someone… I can’t do anything about this… Figure it out and do what you’re going to do… I’m not taking this on.”

By the time you had both disengaged from the cockroach conversation both of you were slightly annoyed. David because he didn’t understand why you were making this an issue and you because you didn’t understand why David wasn’t making this vile invasion, this desecration of your living quarters, this foul perversion of not only your physical dwelling but also your mental well being… an issue.

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“Maybe it came in on one of the pieces of furniture I brought in,” you said. Ever since you found the dead roach on the stairs of David’s office you couldn’t let it go. You felt that if you could just figure out the origin, that you could solve the problem… somehow… and without spending a couple grand to have the whole church treated.

“Again Vaness… I don’t know…” David wasn’t biting. He wasn’t getting sucked into your obsessive compulsion.

“Well I’m just trying to figure it out…”

“And maybe you’re wasting time…”

“I’d hardly call trying to solve a German roach problem a waste of time… I’m really afraid that if left unchecked, this place will be fucking crawling with them in a few months and then what…”

“CALL. THE. EXTERMINATOR. VANESSA.” David said walking away.

You went and inspected all of the furniture that you had bought in the last few months again. Nothing. Everything was just as roach free as it had been the first time you checked it. There was no way you would have missed anything the first time and there certainly was absolutely no way that you had missed anything now.

Nothing came in on any furniture or shelves… you were 100% positive.

You wondered if maybe one of your kids’ friends had a hitchhiker come in on their backpack…

When you first moved to Florida and David was going to school to be an electrician’s apprentice, you had both taken a job at a Steak n’ Shake restaurant down the street. When David had gone in for orientation he was taken to a little alcove in the back where he watched C rate corporate training videos about everything from sexual harassment to not mixing cleaners together. While there another employee walked over to the little area where David was sitting and watching the small flat screen tv mounted on the wall. She put her backpack on the counter in front of David and grabbed her apron from a hook behind him. Out of the corner of his eye David noticed movement… when he looked down there was a steady stream of roaches hastily evacuating his coworker’s backpack.

“Jesus Christ…” he had involuntarily jumped out of his chair and practically crashed into the backpack’s owner…

“There’s roaches!” He said pointing to the scurrying of insects that disappeared under the counter and into any crack or crevice they could find.

“Ha! I know… they crawl into my bag… I got them from this shit hole… so I just bring them back here when I come into work,” she snorted, making light of the infestation that had been brooding in her JanSport.

When you considered the possibility of a roach coming in on someone’s backpack though you quickly ruled it out… none of the kids’ friends ever brought backpacks over to the church. Just to be certain that one of your children’s backpacks weren’t the source of the intrusion though, you put on a pair of nitrile gloves and carefully checked. Aside from the loose raisin that almost gave you a heart attack when you found it at the bottom of your daughter’s bag, there were no bugs.

“I still don’t get where that fucking thing came from…” you took a long drag on the joint that David had rolled for you. He lit his and tossed the lighter onto the workshop’s sawdust speckled counter and took a drag from his as well. Wispy tendrils of blue grey smoke swirled in the late afternoon light that streamed in from the two small windows.

“You’re not still talking about the roach are you?”

“I mean… I was…”

“Vaness… I’m not doing this. I’m not. Call the exterminator or let it fucking go. Please.”

“I’m just afraid that the church is going to be overrun, that’s all.”

“Again: CALL THE EXTERMINATOR.”

“I’m just trying to save us some money…”

“To what end Vaness? Huh? To what end…”

“Till this gets solved.”

“What is ‘this’ that needs solving? You found one dead fucking roach that could have come from anywhere and all I’ve heard about since then is you obsessing over that one dead roach… I’m gonna be honest here: it’s exhausting.”

“Your apathy to this entire situation is alarming.”

“Oh. My. God… Please just let it go…”

“Pffftt… like that’s going to happen.”

“Yeah! I know!” He said stubbing out what was left of his joint.

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Hey John, was wondering if you could take a look at this… I found a roach in the church and I’m freaking the fuck out… 1:25 pm

You quickly typed into messenger. John was a friend and exterminator that you and David had become friends with many years ago.

John would definitely get back to you. You just weren’t sure when. All you had to do was maintain some degree of sanity until he could either confirm your worst suspicion: the church was infested and you probably had to have it razed… or all was good and it wasn’t a roach… just some sort of German roach imposter.

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Lucky for you it’s a dead roach and that’s the best kind of roach to have… 2:10pm

John later wrote.

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Ok… great. But could there be alive ones? Should I have someone come out and treat? 2:11pm

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I don’t think it’s a German roach (John sent a picture with his text of a chart showing all the different types of roaches)… 3:45pm

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Ok well that’s good then! I knew I’d feel better after you looked at this. Thank you. Glad I didn’t call the exterminator yet lol. 3:46pm

Relieved you looked at the photo chart again… you were no expert but your picture certainly looked exactly like the German roach in the picture chart he had sent…

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I was looking at the picture that you sent me again… and I’m thinking that the roach is in fact a German roach. 6:45am

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Ok. I thought it looked like one… Oh fuck… now what? 6:46am

You were panicking. Not a way to start your day off. Your worst fear had been confirmed.

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After the last hurricane had just barely missed a direct hit with St Petersburg, instead spilling a deluge of water into your studio, you began noticing German roaches in your space. First you’d find one and then the next day there would be two. You were horrified. It took you months before you finally figured out that they had been introduced to your studio via the sleeping bag you had borrowed from a friend. You later found out it had been stored in his dirty garage… You had brought the sleeping bag to the studio in case you had to evacuate your home. You had figured that if need be, you could all run to your space if your neighborhood started flooding. This way you wouldn’t have to waste time looking for something to lay on while you rode out the storm.

When you came back to your studio and found it filled with several inches of water and later the roaches though, you were so thankful that you hadn’t hunkered down there… the thought of water pouring in from the roof as you tried to slip into a sleeping bag filled with those things made you want to puke.

At first you had tried to get rid of them on your own using store bought pesticides… and while you may have slightly quelled the invasion, those fuckers were relentless. Just when you thought they were gone you’d be painting and notice one dart out from a crack in the wall and disappear behind some boxes.

This went on for quite sometime. You had become so terrified of introducing the problem into your home that you began leaving your bags outside whenever you came in to work. When your offer was accepted on the church though, and you were going to be packing up the entirety of your studio and putting it into the moving truck with all of your worldly possessions you became panicked. You pictured getting to the church, opening up the moving truck’s roll down hatch and seeing a hoard of those abominations running out of the truck and straight into your dream home.

Not on your watch.

You had called John and he came out the next day and treated your studio. Meticulously spraying everything and setting traps to monitor activity level. The two of you talked and smoked and laughed and when it was time for John to go… a few hours later (the two of you had gabbed on about pretty much everything), John wouldn’t take a dime and told you to give him a call as soon as you had the moving truck in your possession and he would come over to help you and David out. Didn’t matter the time of day… or night… he said he’d stop what he was doing and fly over there to spray the entire inside of the truck. That way if there were any lingering survivors they’d be DOA when that truck was opened again. You and David wound up driving the moving van over to John’s and he did just that. “Going away present,” he had called it. He was a good friend. You missed your Florida friends terribly.

And just as John had said… there hadn’t been any issues since then… at least not up until now. None of that made sense to you either. You had seen no roaches for nearly a year and now here was a dead one randomly popping up on your staircase.

*************************************************************

“So the roach I found was in fact, a German roach.”

“Oh my god Vaness… are you really still on that? You found the thing almost a week ago now… let it go.”

“I’m just bringing it up because John brought it up. He texted me. Told me it was a German roach…”

David had his back towards you, he was standing up over his desk leaning forward as he wrote on something that you couldn’t quite see. He had already been out of bed when John had texted you. While you had been getting ready for the day upstairs, he had been down in the kitchen making tea. It was very easy to go long stretches of time without seeing David or the kids.

“I’m bringing it up because John brought it up this morning and I thought it was a pretty pertinent bit of information, all things considered…”

“All things considered?” David said still hunched over his desk, his head now slightly turned towards you, “You found one dead roach a week ago and you’re still carrying on about it… Have you seen any since then?”

“Well no… but like that hardly matters? I could easily go a long time without seeing any one of you here and you’re a full grown human being… I mean a bug would just be so easy to…”

“CALL. THE. EXTERMINATOR.”

“Well fine then… maybe I’ll do that toda…” you trailed off, David had turned towards you with a cardboard box in his hands. He had been writing on the box. He had been addressing it.

“Hey.. do you have any packing tape,” he said changing the subject when you had trailed off…

But you weren’t thinking about tape. You were thinking about that box. It wasn’t any box… it was a small box that you had packed up at your studio almost a year ago. It had sat, slowly picked through over the last eleven months as you needed the art supplies and materials inside, until it was nearly empty; perched exactly where it had sat ever since it was placed there on top of all your boxes on the sanctuary’s north wall. And while the box had been generic the little box was unmistakeable: the scrawled, hurried lettering - “Vanessa’s studio stuff - brushes and paints,” of someone who had probably waited way too long to start packing and was down to the wire.

“Huh? The box? Oh last week I needed a small box to mail some stuff to Rick (a friend and former neighbor back home). This one was the perfect size and it was just about empty. I took the couple things that were in here and put them right there in the other box… I knew you wouldn’t…”

“That box came from my studio!”

“Well yeah… it was over with your studio stuff and it says right here,” he said turning to point to your hastily written identifier, “Vanessa’s studio… “

“Right. You grabbed it a week ago you said???”

“Yeah, I just hadn’t gotten around to weighing it out or addressing it… “

“No I mean you grabbed this… a week ago… from my studio stuff… and walked it over here…”

“Yeah…. And…”

“That’s where the roach came from!!! It was probably one of the ones in my studio that John killed when he sprayed. It must have been in the box and when you grabbed the box and brought it out here, the carcass fell out. That’s why we’ve only found one and it was dead!”

“Well,” David considered that for a moment, “It makes perfect sense…”

“It does! That has to be it.”

“Good. Then I guess we can stop worrying about the roach and move on now?”

“I feel better now. I know how it got there and I’m not freaking out about an invasion anymore.”

“Case closed.”

“Yup.”

His tone had changed, there was no longer a ‘roach issue exasperation’ type tone to his voice, but rather a mischievous one… the tone of someone who felt validated, “Do you wish that you had just listened to me and not worried for an entire week about this?”

But you were his counterpart and you loved a good volley, “No… because if I had listened to you I would have called an exterminator to treat our entire home for a problem that was dead before it even got here.”

“You’re not going to give me the win here are you?” He laughed.

“Let’s call it a draw.”

       ************************************************************

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