SUMMER, 2002

1.

During that month they lived without power, the cockroaches grew incredibly bold. Cockroaches are not scared really of people; in the darkness they will crawl right across you, but it is the light that to them signals danger, since if they don’t scatter when the light flashes on they are bound to be stomped and crushed under a shoe. It is the light that tells them of the danger--human presence doesn’t faze them. And so all night, while Marty and Alex would hit off bongs with their two feeble flashlights, the cockroaches would creep around the circumference of the small circular beams like wild animals coming right up to the boundary range of a campfire. Alex began to have fun with them by casting his light across the carpet of their living room at night and watching the large brown bugs constantly scamper out of view, moving out of the beam’s range with more panicked motions the quicker he cast the light across. He would sit there and shine the light around and laugh, and his laughter seemed disconnected and private.

It was absolutely terrifying to Marty that in the dark black apartment those bugs were everywhere creeping around, terrifying not because of the ones he could see--it was the ones he didn’t see that scared him. His imagination inflated their numbers far beyond what was physically possible, so that he felt any moment they would pile onto him from the walls and carpet and ceiling and suffocate him in their mass. The pot made this paranoia worse so he quit smoking it after dark and tried his best to sleep all the night, which wasn’t all that hard since it was summer and the nights were short.

The one good thing about the cockroaches, though, was that they kept the piglet (whom they’d named Arthur) well fed and contented. They gave the pig bacon grease and eggshells and table scraps; and of course he loved eating the cockroaches which came in endless supply. Alex had even been right about Arthur eating candy bar wrappers, plastic bacon packages too; anything that had been smeared with any organic substance Arthur would gobble right up, whether it involved cannibalism or not. Of course they both knew Arthur would never be slaughtered now, and neither of them ever spoke of eating him again.

The hooker had left a week after she’d arrived, and Marty nailed a heavy wooden board over the square area of broken window so that she couldn’t return if she ever got it in her head to do so. Of course she’d probably just knock this time and Alex would invite her right in; but he hoped she’d gone on to fucking with other people, and would not bother them again. Marty never learned what her name was, nor was he exactly sure if Alex did. But after a month he grew more confident that she wouldn’t return, and began to relax a little about the issue.

He knew the only thing that would bring the electricity back was a job, and so he went on an application blitz and finally found one, stocking shelves at a drugstore that paid well and allowed for amazing opportunity for theft. He knew that if he were caught he’d just be fired, and wouldn’t go to jail, which was the best thing about it, aside from it being so easy. He was left alone in the stockroom to pocket any candy bar, lighter, aspirin--whatever he could fit into his jacket pockets without them bulging. He did so often and while he knew he’d eventually get caught, he also knew that every job was always a temporary prospect anyway.

So after his first payday they got the lights back on, Alex’s unemployment check had a few months left, and they lived a life of plenty: not only pot but beer, not only food but meat.

One day as Marty was shaving in the morning, Alex came and opened the bathroom door, a disconsolate look in his eyes.

“Marty,” he said.

“I’ve got to get ready for work. Is it about Arthur?”

“I think he needs to be walked, but--”

“Well walk him.”

“It’s not that,” said Alex. “And even when Arthur shits in here, he eats it right up in five minutes anyway.”

It was true. The pig’s excretions were probably his main staple.

Marty set his razor down.

“What is it Alex?”

“Remember what I showed you--right after that hooker stayed here the first night, the night we tripped?”

Marty sighed. “I told you to go to a doctor,” he said. “Let me see it.”

Alex undid his belt and opened his crotch as he spoke. “I tried to put some wart shit on it that I bought at the drugstore, but it didn’t do shit. The stuff keeps growing and--”

“Jesus!” Marty couldn’t believe what he was looking at. Bubbly white cauliflower was blossoming all over Alex’s scrotum, swallowing the soft flesh right up.

“You got to see a doctor.”

Alex started to tear. “I tried slicing the shit off with a razor and it keeps just growing and growing--what am I just supposed to look up ‘doctors’ in the Yellow Pages or what?”

“You get a referral.”

“A referral from who?”

“From . . . fuck.”

Marty pushed him finally to show up at the emergency room. He went to the Denver County Hospital, as he’d heard they don’t hassle you for payment if you don’t have a lot of means. But they only referred him to a private practice doctor, who ended up zapping the shit with a laser, at the cost of a $1,200 neither of them had. The laser didn’t cure it but knocked enough life out of it to make it manageable with a cream. When the bill collectors grew more insistent they made a deal to pay it off at fifty dollars a month, which the bill collector wouldn’t have taken except for the fact that he’d seen Alex’s poor credit report. But even that was getting hard to pay; and Marty’s reprimands at work were growing more frequent, so he could see the handwriting on the wall where that was concerned. At least if he got fired he’d qualify for a few months of unemployment again.