Slice Spotlight Author: Alex Littlefield
Losing It by Alex Littlefield
September 6, 2008
Georgia is crying in her bedroom. I can hear her muffled sobs through the wall. She could be on the phone, whimpering her woes to her mother back in Texas, but it's equally possible that she's alone like me, wracked by shame and trying to impose sense on this utterly senseless loss.
Fuck, I say, to no one in particular. The wall, perhaps, since I can't seem to focus on anything else. Or maybe I'm saying it for the benefit of Parsnip, our cat, who sidles into my room and nestles into a heap of plastic bags, purring delightedly as she rubs her frosted chin against the shrouded remains of my New York life. She's found a particularly massage-worthy cache of hastily packed CDs and, not wanting her to rip the already-strained plastic, I nudge her away with my foot. She arches her back and settles daintily atop a pile that, judging by its soft, lumpy contours, was once my shoe collection. Parsnip, that I had your composure.
We found a bedbug three hours ago. Well, not us, exactly; Georgia found bites—on her thighs, the small of her back—and the exterminator, a wiry Dominican with a keen eye and a howitzer of pyrethrin, uncovered the culprit. Just one of them: the advance guard, hunkered down next to Georgia's bed, staking out the feeding ground from a safe striking distance. The exterminator had already checked the bed itself with happy (read: no) results, and I was tempted to think that was the end of the matter, given the etymology and entomology of the bugs. But, as if driven by some kindred insectivorous instinct, the exterminator laid down a punishing volley of poison along the crack where the wall meets the floor, and a single bronze-colored bug—not much longer than an em dash—staggered out from cover and keeled over, dead.
New York beats some people. It batters them with a unique arsenal of urban bludgeons: astronomical real estate prices, exhausting scene-mongering, misanthropy and murder and a variety of other societal and career-related hazards. I have known people who were driven from the city by the most mundane of its day-to-day stressors—mainly weak-minded types for whom a neighborhood derelict or a restaurant's recurring fish heads suddenly became grounds to pack up their possessions and ship off to their childhood home or other, softer locales: Boston, say, or Phoenix.
I pride myself on having survived this city for two years and am determined to make it another two, or ten—however long it takes to reach the sweet realization that I have, if not mastered this city, then at least reached a functional détente with it. Defeat is not an option. My self-respect is on the line. And besides, where else would I go?
This bug, though, presents a serious problem. After it gave up the ghost, the exterminator hunched over the corpse and poked at it with the tip of his finger. Yeah, he said, you got 'em. That's a bedbug. And he's been here for a minute.
Losing It by Alex Littlefield
September 6, 2008
Georgia is crying in her bedroom. I can hear her muffled sobs through the wall. She could be on the phone, whimpering her woes to her mother back in Texas, but it's equally possible that she's alone like me, wracked by shame and trying to impose sense on this utterly senseless loss.
Fuck, I say, to no one in particular. The wall, perhaps, since I can't seem to focus on anything else. Or maybe I'm saying it for the benefit of Parsnip, our cat, who sidles into my room and nestles into a heap of plastic bags, purring delightedly as she rubs her frosted chin against the shrouded remains of my New York life. She's found a particularly massage-worthy cache of hastily packed CDs and, not wanting her to rip the already-strained plastic, I nudge her away with my foot. She arches her back and settles daintily atop a pile that, judging by its soft, lumpy contours, was once my shoe collection. Parsnip, that I had your composure.
We found a bedbug three hours ago. Well, not us, exactly; Georgia found bites—on her thighs, the small of her back—and the exterminator, a wiry Dominican with a keen eye and a howitzer of pyrethrin, uncovered the culprit. Just one of them: the advance guard, hunkered down next to Georgia's bed, staking out the feeding ground from a safe striking distance. The exterminator had already checked the bed itself with happy (read: no) results, and I was tempted to think that was the end of the matter, given the etymology and entomology of the bugs. But, as if driven by some kindred insectivorous instinct, the exterminator laid down a punishing volley of poison along the crack where the wall meets the floor, and a single bronze-colored bug—not much longer than an em dash—staggered out from cover and keeled over, dead.
New York beats some people. It batters them with a unique arsenal of urban bludgeons: astronomical real estate prices, exhausting scene-mongering, misanthropy and murder and a variety of other societal and career-related hazards. I have known people who were driven from the city by the most mundane of its day-to-day stressors—mainly weak-minded types for whom a neighborhood derelict or a restaurant's recurring fish heads suddenly became grounds to pack up their possessions and ship off to their childhood home or other, softer locales: Boston, say, or Phoenix.
I pride myself on having survived this city for two years and am determined to make it another two, or ten—however long it takes to reach the sweet realization that I have, if not mastered this city, then at least reached a functional détente with it. Defeat is not an option. My self-respect is on the line. And besides, where else would I go?
This bug, though, presents a serious problem. After it gave up the ghost, the exterminator hunched over the corpse and poked at it with the tip of his finger. Yeah, he said, you got 'em. That's a bedbug. And he's been here for a minute.