A middle-aged man with a receding hairline opens the door and looks Tommy up and down.
“I take it you’re the exterminator,” he asserts in a thick accent.
“That’s me.” Tommy smiles and holds out his hand, “Thomas H. Hart: I kill for money.” The landlord doesn’t laugh, nor does he shake Tommy’s hand.
“Like I told you on the phone, we need a bedbug spray-down in C3 on the third floor.”
“Well, luckily, all I have to do is kill one bug and the rest will leave the bed to go to his funeral.” Tommy bends over laughing, almost losing hold of his supplies.
“Look, I have a shitload to do before I rent these things,” the landlord says coolly, adjusting his faded blue tie. “Just get the damn bugs out. If you need me, I’ll be in my office.”
Tommy stands still, his lips pressed tightly together. In silence, he pushes the door open and trudges up the musty staircase holding his heavy metal pesticide sprayer in his right hand. Once on the third floor, he starts posting warning signs all over the doors of the seemingly vacant building, still in an angry silence.
“Sorry about that,” Tommy finally says. “Sometimes I just feel so goddamn angry at people.” He forcefully takes off his sailor’s hat and tucks it into his bag. He breathes in deeply and, after a pause, relaxes into a smile. “Whatever. I don’t want to talk about it. No one will want to read about all my stupid emotional stuff. No one cares.”
Out of a large black duffel bag, Tommy pulls a pair of thick gloves and a roll of duct tape. After taping the sleeves of his shirt and the legs of his pants closed, he slips on his gloves and wriggles his head inside a World War I–era gas mask. All suited up, Tommy is somewhere between frightening and comical. “Bloodsucking bedbugs,” he muses, his voice sounding weirdly mechanical and muted through the mask’s air filter. “Sounds like something out of a scary horror movie.” He pauses and gestures to his eccentric appearance. “But then again, look at me. I suppose I’d fit right in.” He half smiles.
“On to My Lai!” Tommy suddenly declares. “The enemy lies ahead!” He brings his left hand up to salute and marches into the dusty, vacated apartment. A single window provides the light for the room, and with its low ceiling, dank smell, and sheet-covered furniture, the atmosphere is reminiscent of an old attic. Alone in the left corner of the room, a queen-size mattress lies like a victim, exposed and bare except for a few mysterious stains. Tommy places the heavy B&G chemical sprayer down on the old wood floor, laughing that he has no idea what the two initials stand for. The machine resembles an oddly sized scuba tank: a one-and-a-half-foot metal cylinder with three red nozzles protruding from its top surface. In the middle of these three sprayers is a gold pump used both to increase pressure of the spray and to reload new poisons. Moving closer to the bed, Tommy loads the enzyme pesticide into the tank and pumps the machine’s gold lever down about ten times before grabbing one of the red tubes and bringing it over to the bare mattress. “I can’t believe I’m still doing this at sixty-three.” Tommy laughs. “Did I tell you I’m sixty-three? I don’t think I did. I don’t look sixty-three, I don’t feel sixty-three, I don’t act sixty-three, and I don’t care.”
Tommy’s daughter, Anna, who now lives in Arizona, explains, “I usually call home about once a week, and Dad will sometimes tell me the same story twice in one phone call.” She pauses. “I mean, he’s always been like that with jokes, but now it’s other stuff too.” She stops again, then laughs slightly. “I don’t really understand why he’s still working. Forty years . . . Forty years killing bugs and rats. Well, it sure beats me.”
Growing up with an exterminator as a father was always slightly embarrassing for Anna and her brother, Kevin. “I remember,” Tommy begins, “one year when Anna was about eight, and it was ‘bring your daughter to work day.’ That was a big thing back in the eighties,” he chuckles. “Well, I remember Anna came down to breakfast that morning and told me she didn’t want to come.” Tommy half smiles, but shakes his head slightly and closes his eyes for a second. “ ‘Dad-dyyy, bugs are nasty. Why can’t you be a pilot or a doctor or something cool like that?’ I didn’t even argue with her, I just let her go to school.” Tommy sighs, “I told her I was sorry I didn’t have a cooler job.”
Moving with deliberation, Tommy slowly disinfects the bed by spraying the clear and odorless poison over the frame, edges, and then center. Peering close enough to the mattress, he can see the tiny black bedbugs writhing and shaking in agony for a few seconds before they fall still. “When I see bugs outside I never kill them. There’s no real satisfaction in killing them.” Tommy pauses as he watches a particularly twitchy one. Walking back and forth along the side of the bed, he switches between the three red tubes, each spraying in a different shape: fanlike, mist, and jet. “All insects and rodents and stuff play a part in Mother Nature’s scheme of things. It’s a balancing act. I mean, I could technically get arrested for this because it’s breaking the law, but when I catch squirrels in people’s houses, I usually sneak them into my truck and let them free in the woods somewhere. The law says you’re supposed to drown them, but I just can’t do it.” Tommy sighs and shuts off the machine, a new silence hovering in the room. “That should do,” he proclaims, standing back to observe his work, then walking over toward the wall next to the bed. Through his fogged-up gas mask, Tommy’s blue eyes gaze out the frosted window at the street below. Moving closer, he presses his hands up against the cold glass, cooling them off from the heat of the machine. “I don’t know,” Tommy sighs. “I just don’t know.”
Tommy suddenly picks up his stuff and starts walking down the stairs. “I’m honest, I’m never late, I respect people, I try my hardest, I’m friendly, I love my wife, I love my children,” he rants as he makes his way out of the building and toward his truck. “It’s just like, no one wants bugs around, so no one wants me around.” Tommy shakes his head and shoves his supplies into the truck. “I mean, why do you think it’s unlabeled?” He waves an arm outward toward his truck. “Because people would be embarrassed to have it in their parking lots, that’s why.” He shakes his head, suddenly stops talking, and sighs. “Ehh, stupid landlord. He’s just an asshole anyway. What do I care?” Tommy smiles and his body becomes less tense. “Hey, here’s one I’ve never told you, my dear. What do you get when you cross a centipede and a parrot? . . . A walkie-talkie!” He gags, and bends over laughing. Tommy slides into the driver’s seat of his truck and shuts the door, sealing the plain white shell around him.