Magical Thinking (9 page)

I ordered the video: $9.95 plus shipping and handling. When it arrived a week later, I watched it immediately. And I was crushed. Unlike the infomercial, which featured upbeat, synthesized music and lots of shots of hairy-chested men leaping out of pools, the video had a more somber, homemade feel. It was an assembly of interviews between Dr. Sisal and some of his former “clients.”

Here, there was no fancy, professional lighting, no music track, no busty blonde eager to run her fingers through any man’s hair.

These men sat at their own kitchen tables, beneath overhead fluorescent lights. On the wall behind one guy was a red plastic clock shaped like a cat. The eyes moved from side to side with the seconds. The men spoke in monotone of their experience at Dr. Sisal’s clinic and how “happy, yeah, really positive” they felt now, with full heads of hair.

But the persuasion was gone.

In this video, all the clients looked like what they were: middleaged bald guys who had chunks of hair cut out from the back of their head and sewn onto the front. They all shared the same uniform, half-circle hairline. And while their mouths said words like “happy,” “success,” and “thick,” their eyes were all flat with disappointment.

These were the first men who’d been fooled by the infomercial, just like me. Only, they hadn’t had the chance to order the video for $9.95 plus shipping and handling because there was no video. Now these first men, they
were
the video. They probably got their hairline-rejuvenation surgery for free in exchange for appearing in this video. And they probably had to sign legal forms stating that even if they had regrets, they would publicly say they were
happy, thrilled,
overjoyed
with the results of Dr. Sisal’s procedure. I knew how this shit worked. I did it all the time.

So while my brief fantasy of ever being able to gel my hair into cool, sitcom spikes in the front was over, my interest in my career was suddenly rejuvenated. Maybe I could write these infomercials. And maybe I could write them better and more manipulative than anyone. Surely there was some manufacturer with a toxic facial mask, overheating electric blanket, or recycled aluminum life preserver who could use my services?

So I was standing there in the dark, half-asleep, trying to keep my burn-victim dream afloat, when I heard a vague, dry scratching noise coming from the bathtub.

Definitely not a drip.

I paused midstream to listen, but there was no sound. So I played the alcoholic’s wild card and pretended I never heard anything in the first place. But then as I was getting ready to flush, I
heard it again. I turned on the light and peered into the tub, where I saw an actual rat/thing trying desperately to scratch/shuffle up and outside. It would make a run for the slanted rear of the tub, get halfway up, and then slide back down the smooth, white porcelain.

I was struck with a bolt of distilled horror like I have never known before. Far worse than suddenly finding yourself walking through a prison cafeteria wearing Daisy Duke shorts and a Jane Fonda headband.

And like a campy cartoon housewife, I climbed on top of the sink, crouching under the ceiling and scorching my balding head on the light bulb of the vanity. I am over six feet tall, so this was a very sad sight.

Knowing I couldn’t remain on top of the sink, I climbed down and made my way to my desk, where I sat at my computer. I lifted my feet off the floor and folded my legs up underneath me to think.

Where did the rat/thing come from? Where? And of course, the answer came to me in the same way Jesus comes to those who drink in trailers: as an epiphany.

The rat/thing came from the faucet.

How else? It certainly couldn’t have come from the floor and climbed straight up the side of the tub. Nor could it have come from mere air. It had to have come from the faucet. Which is really, when you think about it, nothing but a steel foyer for rodents to enter your home.

The fact was: if a rat/thing managed to claw its way out of my tub and enter the main area of the studio apartment, I would never be able to locate it. Everywhere there were mounds of foreign magazines, month-old newspapers, a thousand or more empty sixteen-ounce beer cans. I happened to live in squalor that was more than four-feet deep throughout the apartment. If the rat/thing made it into my debris field, it could easily make a nest for itself under the bed in an old aluminum beef vindaloo container or it could simply die beneath an old copy of Italian
Vogue
. It could die and it could rot.

Quite simply, if the rat/thing did manage to make it out of the tub, I would need to move. I would need to simply abandon the apartment. And because this would place me in default on a lease, I would also need to leave the state.

A rat/thing with sinister red eyes and sharp little talons would be quite at home here in my little hovel.

I had to kill it.

I looked around my apartment, scanning for a vehicle of death.
The Secret History
by Donna Tartt? It was on the floor next to my bed. Surely, this would flatten it. But the problem was, there was no way I could flatten the rat with a hardcover book, especially not a first edition. Like strangulation, flattening-by-book was too intimate an act. If I were a serial killer, I would not be the kind that stabs and then eats the victim. I would be the kind that hides in a tree and shoots at the aerobics class.

Again, I heard the scratching. I got out of the chair and turned on every light in the apartment, making it as bright as an operating room. Somehow, the apartment needed to be extremely bright in order for me to think clearly.

Then I saw the red can, Raid ant killer, on the floor next to the toilet bowl. I read the back about how contact with skin can cause damage: “If inhaled, remove victim to a source of fresh air or, if necessary, provide artificial respiration.”

Very slightly, my mouth watered. It was worth a try.

I stepped up to the tub. The rat/thing was cowering near the drain. But cowering? Perhaps planning, perhaps conserving strength. I could see the muscles beneath its dirty white fur. It absolutely looked at me, making eye contact. Its little whiskers twitched. Its tiny claws and feet tensed, ready to charge.

I aimed the can at the rat/thing and pushed the button. Right away, it began to scurry toward the opposite end of the tub, and I followed, still pressing. A moist cloud of toxic, ozone-burning, nature killer filled the tub, and the air became slick with the scent.

I sprayed the rat/thing until it was dripping.

But instead of killing it, the Raid had only emboldened the rodent. Now, instead of merely trying to scamper up the impossible incline, it was charging furiously from the drain to the other end and making it higher up the incline. Because the tub was slick with Raid, it fell back. But had the tub not been slick with Raid, the rat/thing would have certainly escaped. Peering closer, I saw that its eyes were now clouded, the corneas burned away by the chemicals. Blindness had obviously empowered the rat/thing, made it bold and angry and determined.

I held the button down until the brand-new can of Raid was sputtering a drizzle.

And yet, there it was. The rat/thing, running an angry circle in the center of the tub, shaking its coat like a dog, and sending little Raid droplets flying everywhere.

I tossed the empty can on the floor and looked at the beast for signs of impending death. I watched its little chest contract and expand with encouraging speed. Imminent respiratory failure? Tachycardia?

And then I realized it did have a
little
chest, not a large chest. This wasn’t technically a rat/thing. It was, more specifically, a small white mouse.

Still. Now was not the time to ponder semantics. I no more wanted a mouse under my bed than a rat. Both were heinous as far as I and any reasonable New Yorker were concerned.

I was horrified. But also? A little thrilled. Because it was terribly exhilarating to find myself in a primal battle against another animal. It was me, at the top of the food chain, versus It. I was defending my territory. So in this way, the battle was slightly fun. It was slightly fucking fantastic!

But the fumes had become overpowering, and my head was beginning to hurt in a way that suggested toxicity and a future lawsuit. So I left the bathroom and went over to the patio door. I opened this and peered outside at the trees. Then I lit a cigarette.

I returned to the bathroom, waving the fumes away from my face as I walked through the doorway. The rat/thing was still alive. I had to close my eyes and then reopen them again to make sure what I was seeing was fact. The rat/thing was not dead, not injured or impaired. I’d felt certain that once the Raid soaked through its coat and into its skin, the creature would be dead. But no. It was charging from the front of the tub to the back, furious and crazed.

The little fucker
.

Then with hideous, calm precision, I locked the drain and turned the water on full blast and scalding hot. I did this automatically, dutifully, without a trace of emotion. I was simply a nurse administering pain medication to my comatose patient, an electrician changing a fuse. I was somebody from PETA handing out a brochure on the street.

I was going to drown the rat/thing. And while I was at it, I would boil it, too.

I watched as the tub filled with steaming water. “Calgon, take me away!” I joked. This was at approximately eight-thirty in the morning. At nine, it was
still swimming
. The Raid had made an oil slick on top of the water, and the rat/thing paddled through it like a furry little ice breaker. Even more alarming, the water level had brought the rat/thing closer to the top edge of the bathtub. Eventually, the rat/thing would be able to flip itself out onto the floor.

It was simply unkillable.

I needed to think fast.

My Maglite flashlight was by the front door. I could see it if I learned forward and peered around the open bathroom door.

Instinctively, I ran out and grabbed it, then came back into the bathroom and turned off the light. It was a crazy idea that came to me out of thin atmosphere. I didn’t question it; I only complied.

I turned on the flashlight and made a dancing pattern on the water, disco tub. I turned the light on and off, on and off. I made
the light zigzag across the water, and the rat/thing began to tremble. It began to seize.

I choked a laugh out, surprised, thrilled. “Oh my God,” I said. “The light is doing something to it.”

I began making vigorous, complex patterns on the water. I drew crosshatches made of light. I made figure eights. I shined the light into the rat/thing’s eyes, then flicked it off and on again like a strobe.

Miraculously, beautifully, the rat/thing became confused or epileptic. It had what I can only assume was a heart attack. Twitch, twitch, twitch, the little body shaking while the skinny whiskers tapped the air.

And then it died.

Automatically, it rolled over on its back and floated in the oil slick on the surface. I watched, mesmerized. And very gently, it bumped against the side of the tub and then drifted back out to the center.

I said out loud, “Mom? Are you okay?”

Then suddenly mortified by my inhumanity, my seemingly instinctive knowledge of how to kill, I left the bathroom and went back to the porch to breathe fresh, cold air. How had I known that would work?

What was wrong with me that I couldn’t have simply placed one of those humane, nonkilling traps in the tub and then freed the thing outside, in a patch of grass, like a human being instead of a killing machine?

I was filled with sickness, as though I’d just killed somebody and had their body in my tub, limbs waiting to be removed with my mother’s good carving knife. I truly was Jeffrey Dahmer’s long lost twin brother.

I decided to throw on some clothes and go downstairs and have an espresso. I needed to get out of the apartment.

Only in Manhattan can a person go downstairs and find a
market that serves espresso twenty-four hours a day, along with bags of freeze-dried peas and squid, for snacking.

After I got my coffee, I leaned against a
STOP
sign and sipped, pretending it was a normal day and I was only up this early so that I could go running and not because I’d just been on a killing spree.

Across the street was a hardware store, and it occurred to me that I would need to go to this hardware store as soon as it opened. I needed a pair of industrial rubber gloves so that I could remove the rat/thing from the tub. I also needed steel wool to clean the tub.

I returned to my apartment and checked on the rat/thing. It was still dead, the air in the bathroom now warm and moist and toxic.

I turned on the television and watched a little QVC.

As I watched the host demonstrate the George Foreman grill (which actually does seem incredibly easy to clean), I thought about how I would remove the rat/thing from the tub. I wouldn’t be able to touch it, not even with industrial rubber gloves. I figured that what I could do was remove all the paper towels from the role and then flatten the tube and use this to lift the rodent. Of course, I would wear the rubber gloves while I held the tube.