19

Murielle watches out the window. He has called from the airport, saying he will stop in at corporate headquarters and then call her when he’s ready to swing by. Now she wishes she had more time to prepare, nursing Julie and trying to cope with her dad, it’s been too much; she hasn’t had a chance to have her nails done, nor attach new false eyelashes: these things take hours, not including getting rid of crackling black body hair, almost impossible really with her rampant hirsutism. Fortunately the last time she saw him, A. Jesse seemed to love it.

How absurd at her age to be in love. Love at any age really, but at least when you are young you don’t know any better. Just to think how in a brief instant her whole life changed, at a time when she truly felt as if nothing would ever happen to her again!

Two men are in front of her house cutting off the tree branches.

“Hey!” she shouts. That tree is the only one for miles! It’s true, it is kind of dead. She and the kids pasted some artificial leaves and flowers on it, when the girls were little. But who gave permission? “Stop! What are you doing?” By the time they can hear her over the noise of the chainsaw, it’s too late: both branches have been lopped, only the leafless trunk remains. “Who told you you could do that?” But they are gone.

The sun burns down, there is no breeze, the ground is baked; here and there through the cracks protrude cans, hubcaps, the edges of heavy-duty trash bags. Transmission fluid and used oil welter out from the substrata. Pre-Columbian pottery, Tang statuary. The planet’s garbage is on the move.

A man wearing one of those compact helicopter backpacks circles overhead and lands on the drive. The man, prawn-pink and glossy with importance, ducks his head as the blades of the heli-pack putter to a halt; he undoes the straps that harness the equipment to him. Wait a minute! Is it…

“Oh my gosh! Jesse! What are you doing here?” She runs into his arms; not exactly, but she has to be careful not to knock him down. He seems somehow different. My goodness, he has really gained weight! Yet, at the same time looks younger. He’s the same but not the same, it must be she who has gained weight, she can barely get her arms around him.

“Hey, little lady!” he says. “Whoa, there, I guess you really are glad to see me.”

“When did you get here? Why didn’t you call? How’s Tahnee? I’m not quite finished packing.”

“Now, uh, Murielle, it seems like there’s been some changes. You see, in addition to my job as President and CEO of Bermese Pythion, I recently agreed to aid the Department of Homeland Environmental Security Issues and Regulations, and I am in charge of the Annual Survey – apparently this area is having a SloMoFly infestation, this could be a really bad situation.”

“What? Darling, what are you talking about! What’s wrong with you?”

“Just stopped by to check up on you and see how you are doing, special lady!” he says. “How’s your…” He seems to be glancing at something in his hand. Notes? “How’s your daddy, I know you’ve been concerned about him.”

“Jesse, why are you acting so formal? Is everything okay? Have you met someone else?”

“Not exactly.” Jesse struggles with his words. “Murielle, do you mind if we talk somewhere private?”

“Let’s go inside, do you want some ice tea, or something stronger?”

“Whatever you’re having.”

She has never known A. Jesse to have anything alcoholic before. So this is it then, the breakup. Never again to lie in a steamy room, consumed with passion, the animal frenzy of sticky bliss. All that, for her, over. Finished. Never again to stumble into a room, a fan thumping softly overhead, desperate, wanting, pulling at clothes, a couple of frantic kids. And after, lying entwined, exhausted. Who else is there going to be for her? The whole thing has to be about something else, she has been conned, but why?

She whips up a couple of fiery Bloody Marys, trying to make some pleasant chitchat as she does so; maybe he will relax after a drink. “So, um, how’s Tahnee doing?”

“That hot little chick? As far as I now, she’s doing okay. My dad really seems to have taken to her.”

“What?” She pours in half the bottle of Just-Like-Tabasco; she can’t seem to stop shaking the canister of artificial red pepper juice. “I thought you told me your parents were dead?”

“Oh right. My, um, my step-dad.”

“Murielle, is that you?” Her father is calling from upstairs. He wanders out to the top of the stairs, naked except for a plastic rabbit mask over his face and his glasses over that, only upside down. “Look what I found from Halloween –” He doesn’t even see she has a visitor.

“Dad, what are you doing? Put some clothes on, you’re stark naked! Where’s Cliffort, anyway, isn’t he supposed to be looking after you?” Dad doesn’t move. Murielle rushes to get him back to his room. This is so embarrassing.

“I only came out to tell you goodbye. I met someone on the hologramovision. A lonely lady in van Hoek. I’m going to meet her – the Lady Juan Aishat – and we’re going to help those poor, sad children who are enrolled at her day care center. They speak Dutch.”

“Of course, Dad.” She pushes him through the door “You can take the bunny mask with you.” Jesse is fiddling with the drinks. “Sorry about that. My dad is –”

“I understand,” Jesse says as he hands her a Bloody Mary drink. “Ah, Murielle, things have changed.” He hoists the drink. “Here’s to what once was.”

She is horrified with herself but tears slide from her eyes. Hot crystal beads, she really should be saving them in a vial, there are all kinds of tests they can do based on tears arising from a traumatic event such as this, which it is, apparently; he is either out of his mind or just plain having a hard time breaking up with her.

She sits heavily and pours more vodka into her drink. How could she have been so stupid? She had been so happy, how could she have pinned her hopes on something she had only imagined, she had been tricked! Or, rather, she had tricked herself, once again.

“No, no no,” says Jesse, sounding even more nervous. He sips the Bloody Mary and his nose begins to turn red. “You see, I wanted,” he glances down at the papers in his hand. “I use paper and pencil rather than a Burberry-pod, because you know, anything you jot down onto one of those remains in cyberspace, somewhere, forever. At least with paper, you can shred it! Anyway, as I was saying what I am about to tell you you, must swear to me not to repeat to nobody. Alright?”

She nods. “Who would I tell, anyway, Jesse? It’s not like I have any friends!”

“I can’t bring you back with me just yet, Murielle, because the two of us have some work to do here. The government – my old friend from college, the President, has recruited me to become further involved in Environmental Security because apparently there’s been a lot of ‘leakage’ from my laboratories. I can’t figure out how this has happened honestly – I have top security men over there, former FBI agents and trained storm troopers; Wesley was ready to shut me down entirely, but I assured him it would be my responsibility to track down all the genetic material.” Jesse sighs. “I really can’t go into detail at this time… If this is inconvenient for you, though, would you mind just telling me… have you noticed any odd swellings on your person lately?”

“Odd what?” Murielle says listlessly. “Oh, Jesse, what happened to us? Just be honest.”

“Oh, darling, how can you expect me to be honest? I’m one-fourth Scottish, one-fourth French, one-fourth German and a quarter Native American. My God, you have the most luscious, full lips! Talk about inviting!”

She blushes but she is also irritated. “I’m not doing so well here, Jesse. You’ve been so cold on the phone; now you’ve come back. To paraphrase Roald Hoffman, Nobel Prize winner of the last century, who provided today’s calendar quote, ‘You’re the same but not the same’.”

It doesn’t really matter, however, when he stares at her so stupidly.

On the other side of the lawn the two men have returned with a large metal case and seem to be removing various electronic devices and surgical-looking implements from the ground.

Nervously Jesse (B.!) glances at his notes. “We spoke on the phone the other day? Ah, I’m sorry about all this, but it had to happen. I don’t know how much you people were told, following the plane crash, but at this point it’s become pretty much containment and health-related safety issues. Again I am not supposed to talk about it, but it’s related to the Partnership of Reference Policies.”

“Terrorism? Health-related? Should I be alarmed?” Murielle can’t control herself any longer, she bursts into tears.

“There there, don’t cry, my special lady, I tell you what, let’s keep in touch.” He’s strapping his heli-backpack on and twitching, no wonder, looks like he’s over the weight limit as he starts up the motor; the blades can barely lift him off the ground. Appears he’s about to hit the roof of the house, the heli-pack blades dip, hesitate, but finally with a mechanical stutter shift into gear. He is barely above the rooftops, his legs smash here and there, but slowly the damn thing lifts him and he disappears from view.

At least it is Sunday, her day off, she doesn’t have to go to work. What is happening with Tahnee, anyway; she wishes she had asked him that! Julie’s sitting at the kitchen table. “Oh Julie, I hate men,” Murielle says. “Never have anything to do with them!” She opens the door to the refrigerator, there must be something; rummaging, she finds cold old Tripac EZ Mac, okay, maybe a little green at one side, just chuck that part.

Julie’s vision goes in and out. Awake, briefly, she stumbles into the kitchen and watches in horror as her mother plops the coils of macaroni into her mouth leaving next to nothing for anyone else, not that anyone would want it, that stuff is gross! It’s that darned Sue Ellen, Julie thinks before her sight fades once more.

“My head! My head!” Murielle suddenly screams.

“What?”

“My head! Get it off me! It’s stuck.”

“Oh, Ma it’s supposed to be there. You’re just like Miss Fletsum, she was always thinking somebody else took her stupid head. I kinda miss her, actually. Am I ever going to be well enough to go back to school?” Disgruntled, Julie wanders back to her room. Can’t her mother ever think of someone beside herself?

Her head, Murielle thinks, what is it doing perched up there? She goes off to her room, maybe she can nap. The whole thing is too much, Jesse’s weird behavior, so disappointing to say the least; fooled again, fooled again, you’d think by now she would have learned something, at her age it is worse. But what happens is never the same thing, exactly.

She will try to sleep. If she is going to have insomnia, why does she have to have it at night? Why can’t she at least have it during the day, when she is so tired and always falling asleep on her feet?

So it’s to be like this then, her life coming to an end with nothing to show for it but musically inclined glow-in-the-dark cockroaches and the shocking glimpse in the mirror. She looks down at herself in the bed and sees a floating belly, bloated like a cadaver, how the hell did that get there? Whose is it? Once, time had been slow, her childhood had lasted forever and she felt no identification with the old people – old, to her, might have been twenty-one! It seemed a country which she would never even visit. Now all of a sudden she is in the middle of it, transported, only she doesn’t feel any different except when she sees her deterioration. Now when she talks to kids she thinks of herself as their age and keeps forgetting that when they look at her it is with that same sense of distance – distance and horror – that she had once had when she looked at adults.

The next day she is so miserable over Jesse she leaves work early. There, in front of her house, a line has formed; she can’t understand what is going on. Some kind of yard sale nearby? An open house? Now she sees it is her house they are waiting to go into! Is Julie up to no good? “What the hell?” she says, and makes a dash up the front steps.

“Oh, um, Miz Antrobus –” It’s some Indian guy.

“What’s going on here? Who the hell are you?”

“Um, just a minute, I can explain –” He shouts out to the line. “People! That’s all for today. Keep your number.” He looks at Murielle and seems to give up, his voice weakens. “If you get here by seven in the morning you can keep your number and position in line, otherwise you have to start over! Coffee and donuts available until we run out. Allow me to introduce myself, madam, I am Khem Singh, a friend of the Patel family.”

The crowd, disgruntled, shuffles off. “You tell the Boiling Girl I love her!” shouts one gimpy woman twisted with arthritis. “I brought her a teddy bear! You tell her!”

A man comes to the steps. “Hey listen, bud – how about five hundred bucks to get my wife in tonight? She’s real sick – I’ll pay the girl extra, too.”

Khem Singh looks reluctant – he glances down guiltily, then quickly at Murielle… “Um… I don’t know what you are talking about; in any event, Boiling Girl is very tired…”

“What is going on here? Who is ‘the Boiling Girl’?” Murielle yelps.

“That’s, ah, you know, that’s what Julie Fockinoff’s known as. Sorry, the Patels didn’t think you would mind. We always ask the clients to park down the block and most of them arrive on foot, so I do not think it is going to cause trouble.”

“But… what are they doing here?”

“Oh. They’ve come to see Julie, she is known as a diagnostician and perhaps more importantly, she can cure people by a simple laying on of hands to the person’s aura…”

“Julie? But why?”

“Um, allow me to explain.”

She doesn’t wait for an explanation but bolts in. “Julie? Julie?”

“The Boiling Girl is busy right now,” says a nurse in the hall.

“I don’t care, that’s my daughter!” She pushes past the nurse and shoves open the door. “Julie?” The room is dark. There is a man sitting in the armchair. The room smells stale and dusty.

“You have Derwent Chuff’s Syndrome, Stage 1,” Julie is saying from bed. Her eyes are bandaged and a strange buzzing, not audible, but something different, like electricity, emanates from the bed. “Ma, oh, Ma, what took you so long! Mama, I can’t see, I mean, without the bandages, hardly at all, and it’s getting worse.”

“But tell me about me,” the man says. “You can speak to your mother in a moment, what am I supposed to do? Is there any cure you can give me? You know, I have been to a dozen doctors.”

“What are you doing here?” says Murielle to the man. “Who are you?”

“Don’t worry, madam. I will make sure your daughter is well looked after. See those flowers?” He points to a lavish display on the windowsill; they must have cost a fortune. Beside it are boxes of chocolates from the most expensive confectioner’s, pink, tied with gold bows; bottles of perfume, stacks of music disks – where could it all have come from? “Now will you please leave us alone for a minute; I can see she’s distracted by your presence and it took me forever to get this appointment…”

Puzzled, Murielle goes out to wait in the hall.

Outside, one of the Patel boys is shouting through a megaphone, “There are inexpensive rooms available at the Patel Vastly Superior Inn, turn right on Kobe Bryant Drive, you must take the back roads, the highway is blocked.” Another son is handing out maps. “If you want to be here first thing in the morning, Patel’s is your best bet.”

She spots Rima Patel. “Rima, what is going on here?”

To her surprise Rima does not immediately start screaming about dog shit, or Tahnee. Instead, she sounds utterly nice. “Murielle – you don’t mind if I call you Murielle, do you, such a lovely name. Wouldn’t you like to stay and have an onion bhaji? For you, no charge.” Rima holds her by the wrist.

She pries loose. “I came home early to see my daughter.”

“Yes, you caught us all off guard I am afraid.” She laughs a tinkling-type laugh. “Perhaps for the best if you do not see Julie just yet, until I have prepared you.”

“What are you doing to her?”

“You know, we have been so worried about your little girl! And one day my husband and I rang your bell, with some food. She told you this, I am certain.”

“No, she didn’t.”

“What a remarkable child she is, Murielle!”

“You’re talking about Julie?”

“I hope you are not minding, but after she spoke to my husband, she says the tremors are due not to Peplum’s Scourge, which is what our doctor thought, initially, but a prostate complaint due to an environmental contaminant! Yes, here in our own back yard, can you believe it! And, as I had been saying to the doctor, surely it cannot be Peplum’s. Yet with a simple remedy: fondling his aura, your daughter cured him! Then, I could not help myself, you see, I have a friend who is very ill and – the doctors do not know what is wrong with her!”

Murielle doesn’t have a clue what the woman is going on about.

“I knew how worried you must be, there she lies in that dark room, alone all day, I promise you we will look after her while you are at your work. You see, we have almost lost our motel franchise, but it is thanks to Julie we are able to save it now, with the additional clients! Oh, it had been so terrible! As you know, they said we were not keeping up the standards and we said, ‘Why do we need your name when you, the Superior Inn Franchise Corporation, simply take our money and offer no assistance at all, only to overcharge us for your required products?’ So we left the corporation, and they forced us to change the name of the hotel, now we call ourselves the Vastly Superior Inn, but they are threatening to…”

“But what is going on here?”

“Have a lime soda. Isn’t it wonderful!” says Rima, “So refreshing and delicious, I have made it myself from citric acid the flavor of kaffir limes – and you must try the onion bhaji, it is a kind of little fritter, I hope you do not find it too spicy.”

She had not known what a talker Rima could be. “No, thanks.”

“I am so glad we are friends now, I have longed to have someone to confide in. You see, it was the representatives from the Superior Corporation who came in, secretly, a few times a year, to visit the various franchises, and discovered that we were not using the correct oil paintings and bed linens: hideous mustard-tone acrylic blankets and brown patterned bedspreads! But you must see, they charge a markup that is twelve hundred times as much as what these things are worth! And my husband, he has gotten so lazy – do you know, that scoundrel has completely lost his mind, he is smoking opium or some synthetic substitute? Yes, believe it or not, I found him in the linen closet, with sixteen customers waiting to check in and no one there! ‘I will divorce you,’ I told him. ‘Have you lost your mind? You are such a dork!’ I had just not known nor understood how isolated I would be in New Jersey. The scum next door, hanging out on their front lawn, the trashy girls, the drunken husband, the bad smells of roasting pork.” She pauses, realizing this was not perhaps the right thing to say. “Now of course I know better! To think that all this time I might have thought the better of you. My family is not here, except for my younger ungrateful sons! Locu has gone, simply disappeared, I am distraught! And now, my husband has finally driven the Patels’ hotel into the ground, adding chili powder and things that he knew were not supposed to be adding to the complimentary buffalo wings. ‘These people want bagels,’ I told him. ‘They do not want spicy food, many of them are Orthodox Jews, go to the day-old store and get them some old bagels for the complimentary breakfast.’ But does he listen?”

Obviously the woman is out of her mind, Murielle thinks, does she even realize how rude she is being to rant on and on like something has come unstuck? “I still don’t understand what is happening here, the people lined up; my daughter.” Murielle says.

“I am telling you, Murielle, although our relatives in India send us money each month, it is not enough, I wish my family had been allowed back to India The Homeland! But they said after three generations you cannot return, you are no longer Indian. India is so rich, this would not happen there! In India, even the poorest person has a lovely home, medical care. Here, for my son Locu all I can hope for is that he can obtain a position as a geisha to the rich in Nature’s Caul.”

She is never going to get an answer from this woman, Murielle thinks. At least the crowds have dispersed, the block for now is quiet. “Listen, you really have to go.”

Grandpa is watching hologramovision.

“It appears that a few of you have been following the World Cup soccer,” the President is saying. “And I know that some of you are curious as to why the US is not participating. For that, I have a good answer –” He glances quickly at the prompter. “Not only are very few Americans interested in soccer, it not being a particularly American game, but in addition Congress has stated they feel the US must preclude itself because we would undoubtedly win, and the other countries would be angry and even more jealous of us. So for those of you who have a warm and generous spot in their hearts, you should be happy that as always we are showing American kindness to –”

“Baboon-bottom breath.” Grandpa spits in a paper napkin and turns to the advertisement channel.

Some nitwit broad takes a couple of steps forward, she’s yammering away as she practically climbs into bed with him! “For a limited time you can have direct delivery, straight from the bubbling subterranean system of Brooklyn directly to your door! And because we use a special patent-pending method of purification, our water is so clean it’s even better than the first time around. Because while water doesn’t grow on trees… a tree grows in Brooklyn water.”

Now what the heck is that supposed to mean, he thinks. There aren’t any trees in Brooklyn. Besides, who wants someone else’s recycled… On the other hand it is cheap and probably – by law – has to be okay. He decides to order the service, on line for only the next fifteen minutes act fast now! To his delight the blonde broad who has somehow gotten into his bedroom starts jumping up and down, now he realizes he can see through her shirt! She’s shouting, squealing as she jumps up and down on his bed. “I can’t believe it! This kind of thing never happens! It’s unbelievable! Guess what: you’ve won a round-trip first-class trip to the destination of your choice.” There are bells and whistles going off and other people outta that weird HGMTV machine have started crowding around him, it looks like they want to shake his hand but whenever he reaches out his hand goes right through theirs, like they’re some kind of ghost? “Congratulations! Please say yes or no to one or more of the following offers – Almuncle Antrobus, would you like to have a degree in Criminology? A half-gallon of enzyme-enhanced peptides with sparkling oxygen crystals? Treat foot fungus! Fast and safe effective treatment in three easy payments. Learn more about brewing beer at home?”

“Well… maybe.”

“Sweetie, in order to be eligible for the free first-class ticket to the destination of your choice, you are obliged to say yes to at least three of our valuable offers. Do you have one or more mortgages? What about applying for refinancing of your home?”

Four hours later Almuncle is still clicking off boxes when someone new cuts onto the screen.

“What? Who the heck is this?”

“It’s me, Papi – Dyllis! I hear little Hulia is getting sicker, how is she doing?”

“Who?”

“Julie? Your granddaughter.”

“Oh. Yes. That is what has been troubling me. Listen, I’m almost out the door, the taxi should be here any minute.”

“Where you going, Papi?”

“I’ve won an all-expenses-paid first-class ticket to the destination of my choice! It’s all been recorded and I’ve signed the necessary papers!”

“Why, Papi? Why you going?”

“That bitch Murielle won’t put me in the nursing home! All I ever wanted was for her to sign me into that darn nursing home – they have a gym, a sauna, nightclubs! – but instead she’s got me trapped in this cockaroach-infested hellhole with Frogboy and my granddaughter who’s got a line of people around the block coming into the house. I don’t know what she’s doing in there, some kind of brothel?”

“Listen to me, I don’t know what’s going on, I will come over and try to help.”

“That’s fine with me,” Grandpa says. “The taxi should be here any minute and I’m off to Amsterdam. First stop, the Red Light District; then on to van Hoek to meet my love, sweet Lady Juan Aishat! I was supposed to look after Julie while Froggy went out, but I ain’t sticking around here!”

Though Julie is still barely able to walk, and bandaged over virtually every part of her body, she’s managed to get out of bed to sit on a chair in front of the living room window. “Grampy – he’s gone, Dyllis.”

Dyllis pulls up a chair and sits down beside her. “I know, little mommy, he told me. That’s why I come here, to see you, but I don’t wanna leave you alone. Your granpappy, he tell you goodbye?”

“Yes, Dyllis. He gave me this to watch when I’m better.”

It’s an antique ZVD3, maybe a half century old, labeled Death, Doom and Disaster, Or, How We Brought Destruction On Ourselves. “Ju know, when I was a little girl,” Dyllis says, “people always talked about how there used to be all kinda birds. Sparrows, pigeons, Mister Robin Redbreast, some leetle kinda of blackbirds, alla them die of the bird ’flu. They must have been pretty, right? Birds flying around in the trees, chirp chirp, picking up worms from the grass…

“It’s probably good the birds all died,” Julie says, “since there’s no trees or grass any more either. The only birds I’ve seen around here are those seagull-vulture kind of things and most of them look pretty sick.”

“I feel pretty sick too! And jour dog, did you have a look at heem? She’s losing all her hairs, you got jourself a bald dog there.”

It is true that Breakfast’s fur has dropped off in huge patches and he looks quite miserable, pinkly gray, and constantly scratching. “He looks the way I feel,” Julie says. “If I could just get these bandages off and scratch. I feel like I’m going out of my mind. What the hell’s wrong with me, anyway? Why won’t anybody tell me?”

“Nobody tell you? You got the boiling pox.” Dyllis almost forgets she has a Spanish accent. “My gawd, Julie, I don’t know why they didn’t let you know, that’s terrible. I’ve always believed in telling the truth. It’s some kind of variation on smallpox, you know, a mutant strain or something: that’s why the injections they gave you when they first took you in didn’t work, or made it worse or something. They think there was a vial of the stuff in the plane crash, they’re gonna level the whole area, turn it into a memorial. I mean, they don’t normally do that for plane crash sites.”

“But Tahnee and Cliffort were there and they didn’t get sick…”

“Some kinda immunity, I guess… or maybe they never touched the stuff, you only get sick from direct proximity… Well, one good thing: you got yourself a boyfriend, didn’t you?”

“You mean Cliffort? Oh Dyllis, I think so; I hope so, I love him so much but now look at me, how fat and ugly… Dyllis?”

“Jes?”

“I was responsible for that plane crash,” Julie says miserably.

“What chu talking about? You had nothing to do with it.”

“Yes, I did. Cliffort was teaching me how to shoot, you know he has some guns, and I wasn’t paying attention and when the plane came in overhead, it was my shot that hit it.”

“It was an accident. If it was anybody’s fault it was Cliffort’s – you’re just a child. I think you should get rid of him.”

“You’re not really helping me.”

“If you wanted to be punished, you’ve got your wish by getting smallpox or whatever it is you have. Why do you think all these doctors and scientists keep coming over?”

“I didn’t know. Nobody even told me who they are or were.”

“Come on. Eet a nice day. I help you outside, you get some fresh air.” Dyllis puts her arms around Julie and carefully ushers her out the back door. Slawa had built a barbecue pit, years before, out of cinderblocks; it takes up half the yard, which had mostly been concreted over. The rest is dust. There is a metal table and chairs and Dyllis seats Julie in one of the chairs before unfurling the umbrella.

“I’m gonna go get you a hat; and I’m gonna get you something to drink, you gotta keep drinking liquids.”

“I itch all over, Dyllis.”

“That the pustules. Try not to scratch… Sh-sh-sh-sheet! I stepped in dog sheet!”

Breakfast at long last has managed to defecate and now prances around looking pleased with himself. In the corner of the yard a large insect, the size of an overgrown watermelon, emerges from under a pile of refuse.

“Breakfast!” yells Dyllis. “Get over here! Goddamn it, that look like one of the bugs escaped from the lab. I don’t like that, that shouldn’t happen, we don’t know nothin’ about what it can do. You got a rake or a shovel some place?”

“Maybe in the garage. What are you going to do? Don’t hurt it!”

“You don’t understand. If it’s what I think it is, it have a stinger with, like, poison ivy kinda fluid, you be scratchin’ something fierce!” The insect, with a large striped carapace, is unafraid. When Dyllis approaches it with a trowel, whitish fat squirts from the hole in its back. She hammers it and she keeps hammering at it until it topples over in a greasy heap, legs and antennae still twitching. “Lemme get a bucket soapy water, some lighter fluid maybe clean up this spot, I dunno… Okay, Julie, I gotta go. You wan’ me to help you back inside?”

Julie’s eyes are beginning to burn. She lets Dyllis help her up the back steps of the house and into bed; once she is tucked in Dyllis has to go home.

The hours pass in quiet exhaustion, each second carrying with it a tick of pointy pain. Her eyes are worse and she keeps the bandages on all the time; to remove them, even for an instant, is needles in her eyes.

She eagerly awaits her mother’s return, but when Murielle arrives she says she has a migraine and goes right to bed. In the middle of the night the phone-screen starts to ring, she should have turned it off before going to sleep: it’s that little disappointment, A. Jesse.

Why is he still pestering her? He has no business calling her this late. “What is it?” she says, though not without hope, perhaps after all he has snapped back to the old Jesse, or he has news about Tahnee.

“Actually it’s more than just the SloMoFlies we’re looking for,” he says at last.

“What now?”

“Let me explain something to you. We have reason to believe your husband is a terrorist.”

Was it possible? No, Slawa was too fat and feeble. The whole thing was ridiculous…

“Murielle.”

“Oh, Jesse. What is it?”

“Murielle, I want you to leave. Get out. Now.”

“Get out? What do you mean?”

“The place is going to be bulldozed and quite frankly, they don’t care if you’re inside or not. In fact, they hope you will be.”

“They? Who is they?”

“Who is they? Murielle, you know how I feel about grammar. I’ll let it go, for now. In any event, I can’t reveal that.”

“But how can they do that? Just bulldoze my house?”

“It’s not just your house. It’s all the houses in the area.”

“But why?”

“It’s going to be a memorial. They say this comes from the Federal Department of Homeland and Abroad Acme Construction, though it’s actually because the contractors have such a powerful lobby: they control everything, kind of like the Masons. They need to enlarge the highway.”

“But the highway is already twenty lanes wide, and the houses aren’t anywhere near the road.”

“They’re going to say it’s a contaminated zone. A danger area, slated to become a memorial site for the victims of the terrorist attack.”

“What terrorist attack?”

“The plane crash, it was an act of terrorism.”

“I just don’t –”

“I didn’t want to have to tell you but it’s your daughter.”

“My daughter? She’s thirteen years old! You said it was my hus – my ex-husband.”

“It’s both. Murielle, don’t argue with me. I’m giving you a warning. That’s all, take it or leave it. Get out while you still can.”

The guy is nuts; on the other hand, what if he is right? But how is she supposed to get out with her boiled daughter, still slowly cooking from the inside out. And the dog. And Dad. They can’t drive, the main roads are permanently blocked by traffic, most people have either moved into their cars or long since abandoned them. It is all too absurd.

Hours have passed when Murielle wakes with a jolt. Her sleep has been so deep that for a moment she cannot remember where she is, opens her eyes: a lady’s fan appears on the ceiling, folded white light, shuffling open wider and wider and then dreamily flicking shut: the reflection of a passing car’s windshield. But it can’t be a car, what the heck is it?

There is a tremendous noise going on outside, on the streets the neighbors are staggering this way and that; nobody seems to know what is going on, overhead the lights of a huge flock of helicopters whirr angrily as they come lower, lower, almost touching the roofs of the houses and then buzzing off again… What is happening? A secret celebrity wedding is her first thought, two famous and important people must have purchased a house in this dingy little development in order to hide from the press but then decided to have it leaked. There have been rumors that Stella and Colin are about to tie the knot. Also, Lottie and Russell were seen canoodling in New Hollywood’s hippest nightclub. Brandy Crowe is pregnant, who could be the father? Alien invasion, spacecraft in the swamp? Another plane crash? Or, as had happened once before, a cell of terrorists renting a nearby house to manufacture bombs?

Anyway, here is Mrs Patel, squinting in the bright white stream, up to the window. “Have you heard from Tahnee? I call and call, they say Locu was with her! Where can he be?”

Murielle shakes her head. She knows with certainty something is about to go wrong or at least something is about to happen that is not going to be good. Luckily Breakfast is back, slurping from his water dish. “We’ve got to get out of here,” she tells him.

“Les’ go,” the dog says. His words are slurred, she hopes he hasn’t been lapping up that antifreeze again.

“I wish you’d try to enunciate more clearly! Oh, what am I saying? Julie! Julie! Dad! Grab your stuff, we’re getting out of here.” A sense of something like deja vu comes over her, or maybe this really has already happened?

“Ma? What’s going on?”

“They’re coming in tonight.”

“Who?”

“I’m not sure, exactly, but what I do know is that they plan to wait until we’re asleep and bulldoze the whole place down, and they’re going to say later that they told us we had to be out, but we refused to leave – something like that. We’ve got to go – now. Where’s Grandpa?”

“He said he was going to Amsterdam, something about rescuing Dutch children. A taxi picked him up a while ago.”

“What? We’ll have to go without him. And Cliffort?”

“Oh, Mom – we had a little fight and he’s really not around most of the time any more, he just stops by once in a while but I think he must be living with someone else. He hates me!” There is a banging at the front door. Julie staggers to answer it and comes back shouting, “Mom, Mom, they’ve cordoned off the roads, I think we better get out of here, at least for the night, they are saying they’re going to fumigate or something.”

“How can we go, are they letting people out?”

“No, it’s a road block, but we can go through the swamp.”

“Take what you need in a knapsack!” At random she throws things into her canvas shopping bag, which reads on the side Old Farm Security Homestead Organic Non-Engineered Heritage Food Produce. A bottle of water? Some diet pop? A can of dog food? Mosquito repellant?

She doesn’t know where they are going, nor for how long. Or even why, except that it’s the sort of thing the sensible people do in the movies, escaping just as the rest of the village, town, city, culture, is getting wiped out, exterminated, sent to the camps, put on the long march, quarantined and left to die, decimated by fire, flood, famine, you hadda get out or perish! Let’s go go go!

“Breakfast! Breakfast! Here, get in,” Julie whispers to the dog and stuffs him in her bag, which barely has enough room, stuffed full as it is with HoneyBumble’s Pure Lip Balm; Maude Lauder #12 Extra Volume Taupe Mascara; Maybelline Daisy Fresh Centomax Face Wash and a plethora of other items without which no thirteen-year-old can live without. “Come on, let’s go,” yells Murielle.

“Wait, wait!” Julie quickly runs to the basement to release the various fluffy, clawed pets, shoos them up the basement steps into the yard in the hopes that somehow they will survive. As they head out into the swamp Julie can’t really believe that anything much is going to happen to them. They hear the explosion. The blast is so loud and bright the sky behind them is white.

For a moment they stop and turn to watch. It appears to have occurred right where their house was. And then Julie, followed by Murielle and Breakfast, continue out into deeper water.