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On second thought, I think I'll stick with the A.C. I started writing at 5am this morning. At 7am I had a breakfast meeting. Then at 9:30 I got back to writing -- later every minute, farther behind deadline, wrestling a monster subject that's too technical for me by a long shot... I'm still not absolutely finished. But at 1am I gave up and went to bed. One of my last thoughts, here in this tiny studio apartment 26 floors above midtown Manhattan, with the perfect view straight up Central Park, was that the place was mercifully devoid of invading insects. No ants like at home in California. No cockroaches like we had in nearly every place I lived in North Carolina... even the nice ones. The heat let up a bit today, so I finally turned off the A.C., trading the noisy New York outside for a freshly quiet inside. It took a while, but I finally got to sleep, lulled by the horns and sirens rising from Fifty-Seventh street. Then I woke up. Something large and creepy was on my bare back. I shook it off and it landed with a heavy sound -- for an insect -- on my pillow. Even in the dark I recognized the biggest damn cockroach I had ever seen. This thing was a mother. I couldn't let it get away. I had to kill it, or I wouldn't sleep the rest of the night. I didn't flip on the light for fear it would scurry out of sight. The bed is wedged on two sides into a corner, and the beast was there... almost over the edge. I couldn't let it fall to the floor behind the bed, which weighed more than a refrigerator. I grabbed a couple of kleenex, certain I could grab the thing up and crush it. With the quickest motion I could muster, I went for it. WHAM! I bashed my knuckles into the wall, and ... failed to get the cockroach, which fell down behind the bed, a bit wounded, I hoped. I pulled the bed, which sits on a metal frame and must have logs inside, away from the wall and turned on all the lights. There it was. Still. Dead? I couldn't be sure. It looked a bit damaged. I looked around and found a broom, positioned it carefully straight above the thing, then broght it down like a pile driver, sure that the stiff bristles would perforate the thing. I missed. It was very alive, and very quick. It scurried under the bed. I lifted the bedskirt and looked underneath. It wasn't there. That meant it went all the way under the bed to one of the walls, under the edge of the rug, or up under the bed itself somewhere. So I pulled the bed away from the wall another two feet. Now it bunched the rug up. To get this straight again, I would have to lift the bed up and flatten the rug down again. When I did, the wheels fell off. Clearly this thing was not built for speed. So I thought, okay, I'm going to give this bed a rectal search and at least make sure the cockroach isn't anywhere under or on the thing. So I pulled of f the mattress and lifted up the box spring and the frame so all three stood vertically on their side -- like I was getting ready to move out or something. While it was up I looked all around under the rug. The cockroach was nowhere. Then I looked all over the bed parts. Still nothing. Then I reinstalled the wheels, and set the frame down carefully, holding the wheels so they wouldn't fall out again, and put the box spring and mattress back on, trying to restore the bedskirt to its original position, whatever it was. Then I made the bed and wondered where the hell the cockroach was. Should I go down to Duane Reed and buy some insect spray, knowing that I'd have to breate the poison along with the insect? It was still me against this insect mano-a-vermino. Maybe I'd take the broom and just sweep out everything from under the low furniture along the wall. When I reached for the broom, I saw a movement. The cockroach was crawling up the handle, right to the top. I grabbed it and stuck the handle out the window, hoping to shake the thing into the black night outside. But it fell off right before I got it through past the sill. But it was still in sight. It crawled over to the air conditioning unit, heading for the grate on top. Before it could get through I whacked it with the broad end of the broom. WHACK! WHACK! This time it was dead on its back, laying on the ventilation slats. I swept it into a dustpan and dropped it into the trash. Then I noticed the window. There were two more cockroaches there. One was on the sill and the other on the window. They were coming in from outside! This time I didn't miss with the broom, and reduced both of them to brown sillkill. After inspecting the rest of the room, I sat down here in a stinky sweat to write this before midnight, West Coast time. The alarm is set for 5am. That's a little more than two hours from now. I doubt I can sleep. So I'll get back to work. But at least I 'm pretty sure I don't have any more of these around. I hope.
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