Bedbugs by Ben H. Winters Page A

couple. The previous tenants, I mean. Jack and Jessica, though she went by Jessie. Sweet names, right? I liked to tease them about it, tell them it oughta be up in lights: Jack and Jessie! Jessie and Jack! In their twenties, I think, and not married. ‘Living in sin,’ we used to call it, not that it was any of my business.”
    Susan thought of the photograph of the sweet kids, posinggiddily for the camera. The picture was currently lying on her kitchen table, faceup.
    “Jessica Spender was her name. His surname, I must say I never knew. She signed the lease and wrote the rent checks, too—again, not that it was any of my business. And they had a cat. It was the sweetest little thing, barely more than a kitten. Catastrophe, they called her. Catastrophe the cat.”
    Susan smiled faintly at the name, sipped her tea. Naming a cat Catastrophe, a gesture at once mildly ironic and sweet, the hallmarks of the generation just younger than her own.
    “Anyway, Jess and Jack were not to be, apparently. They seemed very loving to me, very happy, but I guess appearances can be deceiving, because one day Jack abruptly departed. As in, one morning he was just, you know, poof. Gone. And I found poor Jess on the stoop outside, crying and crying. I mean—she was—couldn’t even speak. It was really something.”
    “Yikes.”
    Andrea took a deep, ragged breath, coughed drily, and shook her head. “Well, before you get too sympathetic. Jessie left, too, shortly thereafter, stiffing yours truly for a month’s rent. Only reason I knew she was gone was because the check never showed up. A couple days I don’t mind, of course. Between you and me, I won’t starve. But two weeks, then it’s three weeks, it’s a problem. And you know, as the days go by, I don’t see her, I’m worried. So I knocked one day, then let myself in. And … ”
    Andrea stopped, shaking her head with tight, birdlike jerks. A watery pain had entered her voice, and Susan leaned across the table and stroked the older woman’s rough, papery hand—all the while dying of curiosity.
    “And …” she prompted.
    “And the poor cat was dead in that little room. I guess, in her hurry to get out, Jessica had—had forgotten and closed that door … no food, or no water. And this was July, remember. It would get extremely hot in there with the air off and the window closed. The poor animal … ”
    Andrea squeezed her eyes shut against the memory, and Susan found herself a bit choked up as well.
Poor Catastrophe! Poor little kitten! How could anybody … God. People are horrible
.
    Andrea honked loudly in a napkin. “Anyway,” she said firmly, as if to clear the air of the unpleasantness. “Louis and I cleaned the area thoroughly, but I guess not thoroughly enough. I will certainly have him come up and take another pass.”
    “That would be great. Whenever he gets a chance.”
    “No, not ‘whenever he gets a chance,’ ” said Andrea, and then craned around, raising her voice. “Louis?”
    “Just one moment,” came the booming reply. Susan, startled, half rose, looking around. The whole time they’d been sitting there, she’d heard not a sound from anywhere else in the apartment, and Andrea had given no indication they weren’t alone. Now Louis, in thick black boots and a denim work shirt, emerged from the front of the apartment.
    “What’s up?”
    “That nasty odor is still hanging around the little room upstairs.”
    “You’re kidding me. Really?”
    Susan nodded. “Sorry.”
    “No, no, don’t be sorry.
I’m
sorry.” Louis stroked his chin. “OK if I come by tomorrow?”
    “Sure.”
    “What time works?”
    “Early is good, just in terms of—”
    “Early is fine,” he said. “What time are you up and about?”
    “We have a three-and-a-half year old, so, I mean, we’re up at seven. But—”
    “No problem. I’ll be there at 7:30. Just gotta put it in the old bean.” Louis chuckled, tapping at his forehead, and then headed