The Idiot Girls' Action-Adventure Club (12 page)

Waiting for
the Bug Man

We were waiting for the bug man.

Again.

This was his second visit to our flea-infested home, since whatever it was that he’d sprayed around the first time possessed the killing power of an aromatherapy candle.

But we still liked Fred, our bug man. He was a simple fellow, short, squat, with skin color that indicated he was one quick, vigorous motion away from a stroke and teeth that looked like Indian corn.

Our first introduction to Fred was delayed by seven hours, since he didn’t arrive for our 9:00 A.M. appointment until the sun had officially set. I had completely given up on him, taken off my bra, and was picking at my face when I heard a knock at the door. His forehead was an oilfield bubbling with sweat. Salty puddles gathered at the points where his thick trifocal lenses rested on his cheeks in cracked, dry, brown eyeglass frames. His face took on the appearance of a genetically enhanced strawberry, except for those corn teeth, and he was breathing as if he had just left a porno theater.

“Would you like something to drink?” I asked, trying to be kind. “I have iced tea, water, or I could make you some Kool-Aid.”

“Yep, sure,” Fred speed-stuttered. “Need somethin’ cold.”

“Okay,” I said, opening the cupboard and reaching for a glass. “I’m out of ice, but everything’s been in the refrigerator. Is that okay?”

“No,” Fred said quickly. “I need something cold, I’d better have something cold, I shouldn’t drink nothin’ hot.”

“Oh, it’s cold,” I assured him. “I just don’t have any ice.”

“No, no,” he said as he shook his head. “Better stick with something cold.”

Okay, I thought, realizing right away that my experience with Fred was just a spontaneous freak encounter. Fred apparently had his problems—he indeed had some issues on his plate—but far be it from me to provoke a weird, stuttering stranger in my living room who happened to be holding a big tank full of poison.

So I showed Fred where we were having our flea problems, and he began pulling the trigger to his canister. I retreated to my bedroom when I got a long-distance phone call from friends on vacation that I needed to pick up from the airport the next day.

As I was taking down their flight information, I felt a tap on my shoulder, and as I turned around, I saw my boyfriend and Fred standing behind me next to the bed.

“Honey,” my boyfriend told me, “Fred needs to use the phone.”

“Right now?” I mouthed. “I’m on long distance.”

“He says it’s an emergency,” he explained.

Okay, I thought, maybe my flea problem is so extensive that Fred needs to call for backup, or maybe he’s spilled something toxic in my house and needs to call a biohazard SWAT team. I ended my call and handed him the phone.

He dialed. “Hello,” I heard him say. “It’s Fred.”

Silence.

“
Fred.
Fred the exterminator. I’m running a little late. I wanted to call and let you know. Okay. Bye.”

My boyfriend and I looked at each other.

“That’s an emergency?” I asked.

“It must have been his ten o’clock appointment,” he replied.

Fred hung up the phone, finished spraying around the house, and then left without even saying good-bye. Just jumped in his truck and drove away.

But the fleas didn’t.

As soon as he walked out the door, complete familial colonies of fleas that had been in temporary hiding sprang out of the living room carpet and bit our ankles, executing bitter revenge, and it didn’t stop there. I’ve never been bitten in such private places by anything that didn’t at least pay for dinner first.

A week later I couldn’t take it anymore, and I had to call Fred to come back. I scheduled the appointment, again, for 9:00 A.M.

We didn’t expect him to be on time, we really didn’t. We decided to spend the day waiting for Fred and watching TV trash talk shows.

The doorbell didn’t ring until
Oprah
was on, which made Fred a typical seven hours late. It was OK. I kept my bra on and left my face alone. I was ready for him this time.

I opened the door, and Fred was oozing bodily fluids.

“Come on in, Fred,” I motioned. “I have ice for you.”

I poured Fred a big glass of iced tea with four Sweet’n Lows, and as he gulped it down, I could tell that there was something different about him. His teeth were still brown, but I could see all of the nubs he still had. He was smiling. Fred had taken to us.

He was amazed that we were still having flea problems and ran out to his truck to get a special canister of potent insecticide that would “actually kill them this time,” he said. I could hear the gust of powerful spraying as he pointed it at the couch.

When Fred was done in the living room, he came into the kitchen and stopped in his tracks when he saw our dog.

“You know,” he said to my boyfriend, “it ain’t legal, but my son asked me to spray his dog when he had flea problems.”

I thought he was joking. “Oh, we don’t need to spray her,” I laughed. “We’re just going to burn the fleas off of her with a blowtorch after we dip her in gasoline.”

“Well, I’ll tell you,” he informed us, his eyes steadily glued on our whining Labrador, who was obviously sensing Fred’s dishonorable intentions. “After I sprayed that dog with a good coat of Diazinon, the flea problems were gone.”

“That’s because a dog needs to have
skin
before it can have fleas,” my boyfriend said in disbelief.

“All right then. Suit yourself. I guess I’ll spray in here,” Fred said, and my boyfriend and I decided to go elsewhere in the house to leave the man to his work. We brought our dog with us, just in case.

We went back into the bedroom and smoked until Fred started on the hallway and bedrooms. It seemed to be taking a while, but we didn’t want to rush him, so I flipped through a magazine, my boyfriend picked up a book, and we smoked some more. I had gone through the entire magazine, and Fred still hadn’t finished in the kitchen.

“Go see what he’s doing,” I said to my boyfriend. “Maybe he finally inhaled too much and has gassed himself or swallowed a loose corn tooth and choked to death.”

He got up and quietly went down the hall, then turned around and came right back.

“He’s all right,” he said.

“Is he done spraying?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” he said.

“You don’t know?” I pressed.

“He’s sitting down,” he explained. “He’s watching
Oprah.
”

“He’s watching TV? Fred is watching TV? Do you think he’s retarded?” I whispered. “Because I think he’s retarded. That man is retarded.”

“He’s not retarded,” he insisted. “He can’t be. He drives a truck.”

“Oh, yeah,” I nodded.

So we waited until
Oprah
was over, Fred finally finished spraying, and he left without saying a word. Just got in his truck and drove off.

It wasn’t over. I knew I was going to have to call him as soon as the fleas came back in an hour. That is, until I looked at the canister sitting on the kitchen counter, full of the potent spray stuff that Fred had just left us for absolutely free.

I gasped. I was so excited. The stuff was straight from the manufacturer, which meant no dilution, no sparse spraying. It meant no more fleas. No more bites. No more itching. No more scabs, only cancer!

I cried I was so happy. It made my heart jump every time I thought about it. A flea-free life sounded so beautiful. I planned to spray everything on my next day off. It felt like Christmas.

Until the next day when the doorbell rang.

It was Fred. He looked sad.

“Hi, Fred,” I said as I opened the door. “You’re late!
Oprah
was over fifteen minutes ago!”

“I lost my bug spray,” he said lifelessly. “Did I leave it here?”

“NO,” I said, trying to be a good actress.

“I’m pretty sure I left it in your kitchen,” he added. “You didn’t see it?”

“NO,” I expounded.

“I really need it,” he expressed. “I need to find it. Will you call me if you find it?”

“Yes,” I said, without offering him anything to drink.

I shut the door. I flew back to the bedroom, where my boyfriend was waiting, after he’d hidden the canister under the bathroom sink.

“I can’t keep the bug spray, can I?” I said sadly.

“Who are you kidding?” he replied. “I know you already made plans to meet Jeff and Jamie by the Skin Pit when you get to hell.”

“Fine, I’ll give it back,” I pouted. “But not before I’ve had my crack at it.”

I took the canister from below the sink and headed into the living room, aimed and pulled the trigger, keeping my finger firm and determined until I had sprayed enough that I was gagging and had to open every window in the house for ventilation.

Only when the gagging cloud had dissipated and cleared did I find my way to the phone to call Fred’s exterminating company. I left a message saying that my boyfriend had found the canister, but had mistakenly identified it as hair spray—though the doctors were hopeful that some of his sight might return with transplants.

I did not feel good about telling on myself.

I did not feel that my conscience was clear.

I felt that I needed to spray some more.

I sprayed until my boyfriend yelled that I should at least leave
something
in the can for Fred, even if it was just a rattle, and that I was going to kill all of us with that stuff.

Well, he was right, at least partially. I did kill some of us, and for that, I’m glad.

I haven’t been bitten by a flea since.

I Have a Note
from My Mom . . .

On my diet that I started in 1977, I was starving and nothing was happening.

So when my friends Jeff and Jamie began mentioning that they were going to sign up for the fitness center at a local community college, I listened.

After all, I figured, the reason I never joined a gym was because of what was
at
the gym: big, bushy-haired blond girls with eighteen-inch waists and five-thousand-dollar bustlines. Thick-necked jocks wearing neon tank tops who grunted when they lifted things that were heavier than my house. People who had two high-fashion wardrobes, one for regular life and one for their gym life, clothes that they washed after they sweat in them.

I certainly couldn’t deal with that. It would be just like high school, I imagined. Girls with perfect bodies lolling about the locker room, whispering that my bra had a Sears label hanging out of it and that my panties could double for a parachute, before they lined up for an impromptu Vegas-style kick dance, singing, “Who wears short shorts?”

It would be horrible. I hated PE in high school and paid the tallest girl in my class to forge a note with my mother’s fake signature on it that read, “Please excuse Laurie from all future activities involving sweating, perspiring, or getting hot. She has extremely weak pores, and perspiration will send her into cardiac arrest. Her doctors are working on it. Thank you, Mrs. Notaro.”

But the fitness center was different, Jeff and Jamie said, they had been there. It wasn’t like PE at all. You didn’t have to go into the locker room if you didn’t want to, and there were no uniforms. You could do what you wanted for however long you wanted, and no one bugged you. The more Jeff and Jamie talked about the fitness center, the more I became convinced it was a good idea. Plus, I thought, if I went with my friends, it wouldn’t be so bad. They were slugs just like me. We could all leave slimy trails on the fitness center equipment together.

So I did it, I joined. I was proud of myself as I made an appointment along with my friends for our evaluation and orientation session.

On the appointed day, I was late getting home from work and tried frantically to get ready for our first day at “my gym.” Jeff called the minute I walked in the door to tell me that he’d pick me up in ten minutes.

I dug through my closet and found one sneaker without a mate. I grabbed a pair of leggings off the floor and threw them on, only to find that the seam in the crotch had ruptured all the way to my inner thighs. Shit. A T-shirt is what I needed, I thought, a long, big T-shirt to cover the hole in my precious parts. I spotted one in the hamper, flung it on, but it didn’t come close to covering my map of exposed skin and unshaven areas. In the hamper, under the T-shirt, rested a pair of a former boyfriend’s dirty boxer shorts. I hesitated for a moment, then snatched them, sprayed some Glade in the crotch, and I was suddenly poppin’ fresh.

I still had to find my other sneaker, which I did just as Jeff pulled into the driveway. I put it on, grabbed a water bottle, and was out the door.

Our instructor hadn’t been quite so diligent about arriving on time, however, so the attendant showed us into a small lounge area where we were to wait for him.

“Make yourselves at home,” he told us with a healthy, robust smile.

“Okay, thanks,” I replied. “Could you get me an ashtray?”

His eyes got real big and his mouth fell. “Uh” was all he said.

“She’s kidding, she’s kidding,” Jamie jumped in as she shot me a dirty look.

The attendant’s face returned to normal, then he left the room.

Jeff and Jamie
both
shot me looks. “You promised you’d be good!” they cried together. “We haven’t been here for three minutes, and you’ve already gotten the blacklist ball rolling. We agreed that we wouldn’t tell anyone here that we were smokers!”

“Fine,” I said. “I didn’t realize that it was such a mission.”

After a while, our instructor came in, made us watch a film, and had us fill out a questionnaire about our health. After I answered all the questions, he looked at it, reached for my ID tag, and slapped a big black
B
on it.

“Um,” I said, pointing to the letter of obvious shame on my card, “what’s that for? Bulky? Behemoth? Biohazard? Babbler?”

“It’s for your back,” he answered, pointing to a section on the form in which I’d detailed the problems with my slipped disc. “You can’t do the same things that the other people do. You need to work at your own pace, take things easy and slow.”

What he was saying, essentially, was that I was special. I was different. I was in the slow group. I was going to be the last one picked for teams, just like in grade school.

Already I was the fitness center flop.

After all of our forms were filled out, another instructor, Brian, appeared to show us how to work the equipment properly. We entered the gym, and the very first thing we saw, the initial sight that we encountered, was a woman, although I’d rather call her a bunny. She was complete with perfect, flowing hair, a glowing, seamless tan, ripped muscles, and upper arms that didn’t have a trace of the skin swag that swings when you wave at people. She wore a brightly colored, multipatterned shiny leotard with coordinating tights, socks, and wristbands.

“Hate her,” Jamie and I said as we turned to each other.

Brian started us off on the leg push or pull thing, I’m not sure what it was, where we placed our feet on a pedal of sorts and extended our legs until we had lifted our weights. Jamie went first, and it looked pretty easy. Then it was my turn.

I got on the machine, put my sneakered feet where they were supposed to be, and I pushed. I watched my feet as I went push, extend, contract, extend, and that’s when I saw it: a brown oval spot on my shoe, right at the very tip of it. I gasped at myself.

Cat poo. The cat had shit on my shoe—not that this had been the first time, but every time is equally as horrifying. I couldn’t do anything at all, I couldn’t do anything, except insist that the instructor show us how to use another piece of equipment that hid my feet.

“We can’t do that,” he explained to me. “You have to follow the order.”

“Then I think I just pulled a hamstring in my knee,” I added quickly. “If I continue in this exercise, I might need a lawyer.”

He brought us over to the next piece and showed us how to use it. On this apparatus, we had to lie on our stomachs with our heels underneath a bar, which we had to bend our legs and lift.

Brian climbed on and off the thing with the skill of a pro, which I guess he was. So I tried it. The bench that we were supposed to lie on was waist high, too high for me to lift my leg over and straddle. I tried it. I looked like an old boy dog with a misplaced hip trying to pee into a kitchen sink.

“Try getting on from the side,” Brian coaxed.

So I went to the side and attempted the climb, groping and pushing myself up and onto it, as he and Jamie watched.

“I can’t do this,” I told him. “I feel like I’m mounting a sea turtle.”

He nodded. “Your friend told me that you thought you were a comedian.”

There was no way I could do it, for me it was physically impossible unless I took a running start, circled the gym several times to build up momentum, and when I got to the belly-flop leg-lift thing, flung myself onto it.

“Let’s try something else,” Brian said, to which I agreed and picked up my backpack to move onto the next thing.

Suddenly, something shot out of the side pocket and went sliding across the floor, stopping only when it hit the tip of Brian’s Nike.

A gold, half-empty pack of Camel Lights.

“So,” he said as he picked it up and handed it to me. “You’re smokers. Comedian smokers.”

“
She
is!” Jamie shouted, pointing at me.

“Oh, don’t be ashamed!” I snapped at her. “It’s a cigarette pack, not a crack pipe.”

“Might as well be,” Brian sighed. “I don’t think it would be a wise idea to attempt the StairMaster today.”

“You promised,” Jamie whispered.

“I’m also wearing some boy’s dirty underwear,” I shot back.

I should have made copies of that note from high school, I thought. I just should have made copies.