Big Swiss(35)

Yes



Give it to me immediately



I’m not at home



I’ll wait



Go to sleep, Greta



Yeah, okay. She closed her eyes, but her lids didn’t feel quite heavy enough. In fact, she felt distinctly that she was being watched. Although there were no windows in the antechamber, quarter-size spiders were embedded in every nook like hidden cameras. One or two looked large enough to jiggle a doorknob. These were called black lace weavers.

“But—have I gone over the stink bug situation?” Sabine had asked weeks ago.

“No,” Greta had said.

Sabine removed her glasses. “The stink bugs are out in the field right now, eating all the apple trees, but when the temperature drops, they come inside.”

“Where?”

“You’ll see,” she said. Their favorite place was the Vermeer Room, as Sabine called the antechamber. “I mean, not all of them will be in there. But… many.”

“Like how many?” Greta asked.

“I mean, not a million, but maybe five hundred thousand? Something like that.”

“Half a million bugs are coming into the house?” Greta said. “This house?”

“Just to hibernate,” Sabine said. “They hide in the closets, mostly, but occasionally you’ll find one on your toothbrush or whatever, and you just shake it off, no big deal. Oh, and make sure you shake out your shoes before you put them on, and your coat and so on. They like to hide in sleeves.”

But Greta didn’t feel watched by stink bugs. They were flying thumbtacks, basically, and she wasn’t crazy. More likely it was just the gap under the door, which was too short for its frame. There was a three-inch clearance between the bottom of the door and the floor, a gap that made her feel exposed, though she loved the door itself—primitive, board and batten, painted pale pink.

Moving forward, it might be necessary to cover the gap with a towel. Or a heavy blanket, like old times. Her childhood bedroom had been its own antechamber, but she’d been hiding from a different kind of weather: her mother’s gloom, so clingy, oppressive, and noxious it could seep into the tiniest crack. Greta had layered the walls with tapestries, the windows with velvet curtains. The gap under the door she’d covered with a heavy blanket. Only then could she relax and be herself. When forced to emerge from her room, she sometimes covered her mouth when her mother spoke to her, or pinched her nostrils. She didn’t like having her skin exposed, or the top of her head, or even her eyeballs, and so she’d worn a hat or hood indoors, even though they lived in Los Angeles. Sunglasses, too, but only at the breakfast table, never at dinner, lest she be accused of drug abuse or insolence. When she was twelve, she asked for a mini-fridge for Christmas. (She didn’t get one.) She asked for a microwave, too. (No dice.) What she wanted, basically, was a studio apartment. By then she was pissing in empty orange juice cartons to avoid running into her mother in the hallway, cartons she hid in her closet and carefully dumped out the window at night.





6


Greta listened to the new session without transcribing it, as if it were a podcast or radio interview. Big Swiss’s voice tumbled out of the speakers and steadied Greta’s nerves as she repaired the windows with Gorilla Tape. The day was warm and bright. Greta felt optimistic for no reason. Perhaps the winter would be mild. Perhaps the windows, which were original to the house, i.e., over two hundred and eighty years old, would keep the weather out. It was a miracle they still opened and closed. The actual panes, made of pioneer glass as potent as Big Swiss’s personality, had not shattered or even cracked when they’d fallen, but the timber that held the panes was rotting. Tape, tape, and more tape, that’s all. Greta used an entire roll. Since the tape was silver, the windows looked boss in the way that orthodontic braces could sometimes look boss on the right person— Greta smelled smoke and looked over her shoulder. There stood Sabine, wearing a Victorian nightgown with coffee stains on the chest. Her hair, usually in a loose bun, was tangled around her shoulders.

“Do people say ‘boss’ anymore?” Greta asked. “You know, as a synonym for ‘cool.’?”

“Is this NPR?” Sabine asked.

“No,” Greta said.

“Whose voice is this?”

“Uh,” Greta said. “I don’t think you know her.”

“Is she serious?”

“As a heart attack,” Greta said.

Sabine blew smoke toward the ceiling. Greta was ready to drop everything and unplug the speakers. Luckily, the session abruptly ended.

“Actually, her voice reminds me of… metal,” Sabine said. “Liquid metal.”

“She’s Swiss,” Greta explained. “Listen, I slept in the antechamber last night, and I may just sleep in there every night, but do you have a chamber pot of some sort?”

“Of course,” Sabine said breezily, as if Greta had asked for an extra blanket. “In fact, there’s one right there.” She pointed at the bookless bookcase, which for some reason always made Greta think of the Headless Horseman. On one shelf sat a broken antique scale. On another, a giant ceramic teacup.

“I can pee in that cup?” Greta asked. “It looks expensive.”

“It might be,” Sabine said. “It’s a legit chamber pot from the nineteenth century.”