“The Exterminator,” Fiction by Francis Levy
(05/21/2009) Yesterday I penetrated the inner sanctum, which turned out to be just another office, presided over by someone named Laurie who comes to work with her poodle. I had been trying to get through all morning and my calls were either sent to voice-mail or I was told that the chief exterminator was on another call. I was starting to feel paranoid. When exterminators don’t return your calls you begin to doubt yourself. From being an insensitive exterminator who deserved having to spend his life with rodents, he became elevated to the status of one of the script editors I used to try to get through to decades ago when I was making my way in Hollywood.
The chief exterminator had actually taken my first call at 10 a.m. I’d asked if he knew the whereabouts of my wife. I’m a Kafka fan and I was afraid my wife might have awakened to find herself turned into a cockroach. We’d had a bad fight the night before and, while I was still angry at her, I didn’t want her to be exterminated. I employ the extermination company to deal with moles and voles and occasionally they deal with an infestation of ants, but some of the guys can be overly zealous. I knew they been at the house earlier in the morning.
I realized I was being treated dismissively from the start, but I’m not fast on the draw. I had hung up before I had the chance to make the statement about “not wanting to have to turn this matter over to my lawyer.”
I felt more sinned against than sinner though it is true I can see why I might be somewhat persona non grata with the exterminator. I’d been over there before. I drop off my payments to save postage. With the fedora I wear, I look like the figure of death who appears in the rearview mirror of the doomed character in the classic “Twilight Zone” “The Hitch-Hiker.” I didn’t know what evidence I was looking for, but I just wanted to make sure that my wife was not carted away to meet an untimely end — though in fact there was not very much I could do since it was unlikely that any of the exterminators, with their Ghost Busters backpacks, paid any attention to the vermin they killed.
I had little to go on, and showing up at what was hardly more than the shed that the extermination company operates off Route 27 gave me a sense of purpose. It was like going to a job and even though this was about saving the marriage, it was also a way of keeping my mind off of things.
After all, there was the possibility that my wife hadn’t turned into a cockroach and that there was another explanation for the empty space next to me in bed. It’s one thing to gently pick up the remains of a crushed cockroach and another to deal with a messy divorce presided over by one of those aggressive matrimonial lawyers who was like a Cossack ravishing my wife and taking the few worldly possessions I had left. In that event, I actually entertained going to Mr. Gardener, who was president of the extermination company, and asking him for a position. I could even start in the mail room as I once did at the William Morris Agency, where I got my first job coming out of college, and then work my way up the corporate ladder.
There was a period when Hollywood was interested in Kafka and everyone was trying to sell scripts based on “The Metamorphosis” to people like John Carpenter and George Romero. “The Fly” had been a big hit, but there was resistance to a movie about a creature like the cockroach that is held in such low esteem by so much of the movie-going public.
I was trying to work the evolutionary angle, playing upon the fact that the cockroach happens to be one of the oldest surviving species. I even managed to get a meeting with Roger Corman in which we talked about developing “The Metamorphosis” with some sort of time-travel element. Gregor Samsa wakes up to find himself turned into a cockroach, but . . . it turns out it’s not really a metamorphosis at all. He was a cockroach all along, an Egyptian cockroach from the reign of Hatshepsut who was turned into a man, a man who went on to have children and grandchildren, all leading up to the present day, where he wakes up not to a horror, but an inevitability. Gregor was just waiting for the day of reckoning. This Gregor had a stoic attitude.
At the end of the meeting both Corman and I realized that I had to go back to the drawing board since there is no horror in the idea of a man who is reconciled to a transformation that involves the loss of all his human traits. Extending my own conceit, I could assume that my wife having awakened to find herself turned into a cockroach just followed the dictates of Tex Antoine, the famous New York weather man who had been fired after he commented that a rape victim should just lie back and enjoy it. Could I have married someone who was a cockroach all along and was simply coming out of the closet?
Besides barging into Laurie’s office, I hadn’t done anything egregious that could hurt my reputation in Hollywood or anywhere else. I noticed that Laurie’s dog liked me and that every time she took him for a walk he pulled in my direction. This was both good and bad. I felt I was getting an endorsement on the part of a creature who meant something; on the other hand it pointed up my presence. If Laurie and the others thought I was some nut who was stalking them then they would never take my calls or even respond to calls about my balance.
This last was my one ace in the hole. I was still a client, thanks to my wife, who was hell-bent on us having an exterminator, in spite of the fact that we barely had enough money to pay the electric and phone bills every month. Her parents always had exterminators and for her it was a status symbol like owning a fur coat or going to the Caribbean during the winter. We’d had some bad fights in which I’d suggested we could go out and buy mousetraps, insect spray, and mothballs ourselves and now I was thankful we had maintained that account — even though the paradox was that it might have been the exterminator who had been responsible for killing the roach my wife had become.
I fantasized about my wife in the arms of her lawyer and inevitably the fantasy involved some sort of hotel room. But if she had been turned into a cockroach and the exterminator had not succeeded in removing her then she might be staying in another establishment that is my own oversized version of Roach Motel. The real product kills roaches, but the mutation I created was merely a refugee camp, overcrowded but nevertheless safe. At such a point as she was ready to be returned to the human state she would simply break out of the wooden matchbox in which she was hopefully living. I even began to hope that I would wake up one morning and find myself turned into a cockroach so that I could at least be near her.
Questions have arisen in my mind in this regard — like if she and I are both turned into cockroaches would we be able to talk; further, would we be able to identify each other? But it was starting to rain and I figured I’d better call it a day. I didn’t want to end up getting drenched, catching a pneumonia. If something happened to me, who would rescue her from the exterminator or my roach version of Days Inn, in the event I was right and she was turned into a cockroach instead of running off with her lawyer?
I’d parked a couple of blocks away so that no one could trace my plates. There was no real reason to do this. After all, the exterminator knew my name and he certainly knew where I lived, but I always maintained that it was unnecessary to give up too much information. If they came upon a cockroach that was behaving strangely and looked like there was a neurotic woman trapped inside they would know where to find me. I’d also imagined driving her home in a little container and us settling into a normal existence with her still in the roach form. The way I viewed it, she would talk English instead of some roach language, but her words would be so reduced in volume I would have to pick her up in the palm of my hand and hold her next to my ear to make out what she was saying.
One of the things she hated was the way I dismissed all her complaints. Suppose she had a little mark on her arm and asked if I thought it was cancer. I’d tell her that she was being a hypochondriac, which made her nuts. She was a provocateur and I was sure the first thing she’d ask if I ever got her back was, are you going to tell me this was nothing?
I have already rehearsed this conversation in my head. I would tell her that it was serious. We definitely should go to a doctor, but it was going to be fine. In the meanwhile we could still have a good time and even go out to dinner and the movies — which was our favorite thing to do on weekends. On the plus side, she was going to be a cheap date, since I could sneak her into any movie. Logistically, if we had a fight, it was going to be difficult chasing her around the house to make my final point as I always do. Being a cockroach she would easily be able to get away from me, hiding in little crevices where I would never be able to find her. She would be able to taunt me with impunity.
It’s lucky I had the common sense to get the hell out of there, because the rain turned into a veritable deluge. By the time I got home it was pounding against the windows of the house, bringing with it a draft from gale-force winds that was hard to escape. I decided to climb into bed as soon as I went over my most recent bill from the exterminator. I’d been scouring it hoping to find something that was wrong, just one little detail, say about the number of spray treatments or type of treatments (did he use organic sprays that didn’t send hydrocarbons into the ozone layer?), the tax or base monthly fee. Any little oversight would create another excuse to call.
I’d say, “I’m the fellow whose wife was turned into a cockroach.” If he gave me the cold shoulder I might even go on to say, “Let’s see what’d happen if your wife were turned into a cockroach. Let’s see how cool and calm you would be considering the esteem in which cockroaches are held in our society. Let’s see how you’d respond to the don’t call us, we’ll call you attitude.” I’d ask him if he’d like to trade places with me.
Francis Levy is the author of the recently published novel “Erotomania: A Romance.” He has previously contributed numerous short stories and “Guestwords” pieces to The Star. His criticism, humor, and poetry have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The New Republic, and The Village Voice.