A Case of Bed Bugs

I can have the house cleaned or fumigated or demolished. Or exploded or burned.

I say, I’m quite partial to the explosion. Or burning.

The serviceman pauses. We don’t really offer that Sir, he says.

Why not, I say. I’ve seen it in the movies. In fact there's a scene at the end of - is it the second or first season of Mr Robot or maybe it's in Fight Club, where a whole city of buildings gets demolished. I quite like that image, even if I can't pin down its ancestry. It's burned into my brain. That's my vision for this thing.

He looks at me wearily. Like I said Sir, in most cases like these--

I stop him right there. Cases like these? I ask. You’ve seen cases like these?

Of course Sir. I’m in pest control. We see bed bugs all the time.

But he has it wrong. This is not just a simple case of bed bugs of course. Bed bugs I could deal with. This is about betrayal, duplicity, prevarication, and finally yes, bed bugs. So I want to tell him, you haven’t seen a case like this at all.

But I’m being unfair to him. That’s all anyone ever sees, the symptoms. The rising waters, the summer snowfalls, the burning forests, the freak storms. No one, except the scientists see the carbon dioxide. I’m that scientist.

*

I’m the kind of guy who notices the little things. Some guys, they won’t notice when their wife has cut her hair. They might say, Oh there’s something different about you today, without a clue of what it might be. But I’m not like that. I notice everything. When Lara has a hair out of place, I notice. Not that I’d put it in a different place. I just know every facet of her face, from the slope of her eyes, to the curve of her mouth, the regal point of her nose to the flare of her nostrils, from the thick forest of her lashes to the brown irises of her eyes.

So I noticed when she started to stop by at the cafe for a coffee after work. Lara never has a coffee after work. She’s sensitive to caffeine. It keeps her up at night. Also: no coffee breath.

Other things I noticed: her eyes, burning extra bright, her step, including now, a skip, her gaze, not meeting mine.

When I made enquiries about these discrepancies, she gave up the coffee and took up going to the gym. Lara’s never had a gym membership in her life. Rake thin, she makes calories disappear en masse like David Copperfield with a large plane. Poof! It’s one of her skills. One that I admire.

But the final nail in the coffin of fidelity was when she took up showers upon coming home. You don't have to be a detective to know what that's all about. I almost wanted to make her a gift of 'ABCs of Having an Affair.' Then I began to wonder, did she want me to know? That's dangerous. There's no going back after that.

These are things that are easy to add up. I can do math, I can do the more complex additions. This one was the simplest. Grade three.

*

Silence from her, no confessions. I held my breath. I was willing to let this pass. It wasn't like I was not jealous or hopping mad. I was all those things and more. I wondered who it was, who was on the other side of that equation, who'd taken her body and at least half her mind. But I showed nothing.

*

Then one day, we got the bed bugs.

I woke one morning in our marital bed, a whole canyon between us, when once there was nary a fissure, and I gazed at her, asleep, for a few minutes. Still outwardly the same Lara, creature of beauty.

Then she awoke with a start.

We had the same symptoms: our legs were itching, our bodies covered with tiny red bumps. For a moment I just felt joy, at least we shared one new thing, even if it was a blood sucker. Did we have a particularly vicious strain? The bedclothes were dotted with red.

We jumped out of bed, and performed our dance in harmony, a duet rusty and out of practice. Each grabbing our side of the mattress, turning it over to find the final damning evidence. And there it was, the brown stains, remnants of our blood, having gone through the digestion process, somewhere else. As Lara put it more eloquently: Yuck.

Then she stuck her pretty face right near the mattress to see the tiny vermin up close, and I yelled, Careful. I thought they might jump into her eyes. But by then it was too late, her vision was already clouded.

At that point, all I thought we needed was a fumigation.

Perhaps you brought them back from Rome, she said. After all I had just returned from overseas. I had been gone a week.

Roman bed bugs, how exotic, I thought, rubbing my calves for a moment of respite. I can be terribly naive at times.

*

I saw him on the way out. Mike, our neighbor, all American good looks, six foot two. Handy with a toolbox, always seemed to have a wench or hammer with him. Did I say wench? I meant wrench. I know Lara called him over once to fix our sink. Now that I think about it, he also came over another time to fix our shower.

He had a couple of suitcases with him.

Going on a holiday, are you Mike, I said.

More like an exile, he joked. I have the worst case of bed bugs.

Everything makes sense now, the sole missing piece has fallen into place. So you see, the only way I can deal with all this is if I get rid of the scene of the crime entirely. Explode this house, burn it down, expunge it, and start again, from scratch.

The only question is Lara. I'll have to see if she wants to come with. The state she's in, she's not saying much, it looks like I'll have to make that decision.