Bedbugs by Ben H. Winters Page B

back down the hallway, murmuring to himself. “Seven-thirty … seven-thirty …”
    “He’s working on the sink in the bathroom, which is clogged like you wouldn’t believe,” Andrea explained and then leaned forward and adopted a confidential, just-us-ladies tone. “Hairballs.”
    “Ah,” said Susan. What else could one say to such a thing? Andrea rose with a sigh to clear away the teacups.
    Susan thought about poor Catastrophe, and about Jack and Jessica, who had so thoughtlessly left the animal behind. Who, Susan wondered, had stuffed that picture in the window frame, before their abrupt disappearance? Who had clutched that photograph with a bloody thumb?
    “Enjoy that gorgeous hair of yours while you can, dear,” said Andrea wistfully from the kitchen, and Susan self-consciously brought a hand up to her dirty-blonde curls. “Because when you get old, it will fall out in clumps. In
clumps.
”
    Susan rose abruptly, thanked Andrea for the tea, and went back upstairs.

7.
    Susan had forgotten entirely about the faint pinging sound the cable man had brought to her attention on Tuesday morning. But on Thursday night Alex heard it, too. Dinner was over, and the whole family was smooshed on the leather living-room sofa, reading
Amelia Bedelia
, when he paused midsentence and said, “Do you hear that?”
    “Hear what?”
    “Dada? Read, please.”
    “One sec, hon.”
    “Hear what, Al?”
    “Read the book, dada.”
    Then they all heard it, faint but distinct, sounding from somewhere and nowhere.
Ping
. And then a few seconds later, again:
ping
. They slid off the couch, all three of them, and started meandering around the house searching for the source of the noise.
    “Could it be the smoke alarm?” Susan ventured. “Carbon monoxide?”
    “No way,” said Alex, glancing up at the light on the smoke detector, which glowed an unbroken green. “Alarms better be a lot louder than that.”
    Ping
went the noise again, so soft you almost couldn’t hear it. Emma said, “Ping!” in return and then started bouncing up anddown, yelping, “Ping! Ping!”
    “Ping!” shouted Alex, and then the noise sounded again, as if in response:
ping
. “Weird,” he said. “It’s like sonar.”
    Ping
went the house, and Emma went, “Ping!” and they all giggled.
    Their search was fruitless, and the noise stopped, and Alex chased Emma up the stairs for bath. Later, after their daughter was asleep, Susan was about to tell Alex about the cat-pee smell, and the awful story of Jack and Jessica and Catastrophe the cat, and the photograph with the bloody thumbprint on the back. But she checked herself, realizing with a prickly flush of shame that the story would have to begin with an explanation of why today was the first time she had set foot in her “studio” since they moved in.
    She stood in silence, leaning on the kitchen counter, watching Alex gather lettuce, cucumber, tomato, and red onion from the fridge to start on a salad, imagining his response:
    “Well, honey, I thought the whole point of moving was so that you could have your own space to paint?”
    “Well, honey, if you’re not painting and you’re not watching Emma, then what are you doing?”
    “Well, honey, what the hell?”
    Susan shook her head clear, pulled a knife from the block, and helped him cut vegetables. During dinner she related a funny gossip item she’d read on a fine-arts blog, about one of the big Chelsea gallery owners and his ever-changing lineup of buxom “assistants.” But Alex’s responses were polite and peremptory, and as soon as they were done eating he turned to his computer and the barrage of e-mails he needed to send to prepare for tomorrow. Apparently there had been a screwup that day on the Cartier shoot, when a watch face wasscratched by a worthless lighting assistant that Vic had hired for cheap. It was a major setback, and Susan could tell that Alex was deeply worried.
    When she went upstairs to sleep, Alex remained in