Big Swiss(75)

They smoked a cigarette and discussed options. Five minutes later, they carefully lifted the dishpan out of the sink and carried it out of the house together. The plan was to simply dump it in the woods, but they never made it that far, because Greta dropped her end of the dishpan after a dozen spiderlings ran straight up her arm. She frantically brushed them off while making a Pi?on-like noise in the back of her throat.

“Oh god, they’re everywhere,” Sabine said, looking at the ground.

Greta began jogging toward the house.

“Wait!” Sabine screamed. “Take off your clothes!”

They both removed their coveralls, left them in a pile on the ground, and walked into the house in their underwear. Greta decided to cancel her confession.



* * *



IN THE MORNING, she rehearsed again: “Listen, I became infatuated with one of Om’s clients, a married woman in her twenties, and I recognized her voice at the dog park, and now we’re having an affair, but she doesn’t know who I am or what my real name is, and she’s being stalked by a psychopath who just got out of prison, and I had dinner at her house with her husband last night, but I think we might be in love? So yeah, I guess I’m fully gay.”

It needed work, obviously, but she needed coffee first. She descended the stairs to the kitchen. Sabine was already awake and on her third or fourth cigarette, wearing a baby-doll nightgown with hospital pants, sitting in the Louis XIV chair with the ripped seat.

“I have something to confess,” Greta blurted.

“Hold on,” Sabine said. “I keep hearing—shit, you hear that?”

It sounded like rain pelting a tarp. Greta went to the window and looked out at the yard. No rain or wind, only flowering weeds. The noise was coming from inside the house, but it sounded different near the window. It had an oozing, vaguely sensual quality. Greta looked at the ceiling.

“Something’s in the hive,” Greta said.

Sabine slapped her leg. “Thank god. I knew they’d come back. I had a very intense dream about it the other night.”

They stood underneath the hatch, squinting up at the hive, but the bees were difficult to see because the Plexiglas was coated with bee debris from the previous generation. Greta idly wondered if bees pooped.

“I don’t want to disturb them, but I’m dying to see how many there are, aren’t you?” Sabine said. “Fetch me the flashlight.”

Sabine swept the light over the length of the hive, all seven feet of it.

“Son of a bitch,” Sabine said.

The hive was indeed teeming, but not with bees. Greta groaned and turned away, shielding her eyes like a child. Of course, she thought. Of course it had to be maggots. What else?

“Why are they so enormous?” Sabine said. “Look at them! There must be hundreds!”

Greta couldn’t look. Or listen. She tried to think of something that repulsed her more than maggots. The answer was nothing. Nothing!

“This is a pretty serious infestation,” Sabine said. “And they’re very large. It’s going to be hard to kill these fuckers.”

“Kill how?” Greta said.

“Well,” Sabine said slowly. “We’re going to have to open the hatch.”

“Honestly? I’d rather eat shit.”

“I mean, we’ll have to open it just enough to fit a can of Raid in there. One of us will hold the hatch open while the other sprays. I’m guessing we’ll have to empty two full cans. Or maybe we can do some kind of bomb thing.”

“In other words, it’s going to be raining maggots,” Greta said. “In the kitchen. Where we eat.”

Sabine shrugged. “What else can we do? We have to kill them before they… transform.”

Greta felt an overwhelming need for sleep and began climbing the stairs.

“What were you going to tell me?” Sabine said casually. “You said you needed to confess.”

“Never mind,” Greta said.





14


Now that Sabine was back in the house for good, roaming around like a ghost at all hours, Big Swiss no longer felt comfortable having sex in Greta’s room, not even in the antechamber, and neither did Greta, who didn’t mention the maggots. Airbnb was too much trouble, not to mention traceable, and so they were forced to meet in bars.

Greta liked to think of herself as having experienced everything except childbirth, enlightenment, prison, one or two other things, but going to bars with Big Swiss was entirely new. It was like having drinks with a Richard Serra sculpture. Big Swiss was commanding enough to alter the space in any room, which in turn affected how people behaved around her. Most became clumsy or visibly self-conscious. One needed to view her from different vantage points to fully understand her—or, as Greta liked to think, to recognize that she wasn’t as complex as she seemed—and so even if the bar was mostly empty, Big Swiss was often surrounded by a small cluster of people pretending not to stare at her, or pretending to be annoyed that she was in their way, while others, mainly male tourists of a certain type, approached her brazenly, demanding to know where she was from, what she was made of, their thoughts written plainly on their faces: Is this slab of steel for real? Look at that, she bends. I’m going to fuck this piece as soon as I figure out how to transport it back to my Airbnb. God, this bitch is heavy.