Know Your Beholder: A Novel (24 page)

Afterward I surfed the Internet for pictures of bedbugs and compared them to the small critters I’d pulled off me.

The following morning I called Orkin.

That afternoon an official Orkin inspector arrived from Decatur. He drove a charcoal-gray Hyundai and wore a crisp company uniform featuring a white shirt with red epaulettes, a black tie, and pressed khakis. He was also sporting a hard hat, which somehow added a science-fiction element to the proceedings. His name was Glen and he was clean-shaven and when he spoke he hit all of his consonants and stood in a military fashion.

I showed him my bug bites along with a few of the bugs that I had killed and put in a jar. I was terrified that they were bedbugs and that I’d have to burn my furniture and throw out all my records and dry-clean my thermals.

“They’re not bedbugs,” Glen said, “they’re fleas. Do you have pets?”

I said that I didn’t.

He asked me if I worked with animals and again I said no.

Then he asked me point-blank if I had intimate relations with dogs. If I cuddled or slept with one.

“I don’t have intimate relations period,” I answered, trying to be witty. Which was probably too much information and fell flat with the humorless Glen. Then I told him about Glose staying with me, referring to him as “an old friend.” I said that he’d been sort of itinerant; that he’d been wandering around the country, down on his luck, not bathing, hitching rides, crashing on people’s sofas; that I had let him stay at my place for a few weeks.

I have no doubt that Orkin Glen imagined me having rough anal sex with a homeless person, and that he considered fleas to be the least of my worries. Despite what Orkin Glen might’ve thought, I thanked the God of Home Infestation that these pests weren’t bedbugs.

“The flea problem is serious,” Orkin Glen continued, matter-of-factly. “And they’re mature fleas.” Meaning they’d apparently been living and feeding off Glose for some time. And now they were living and feeding off me. “I’m going to need a few hours,” he said.

He went down to his car and returned with two large cylindrical containers of chemicals. He told me that after he was done fumigating I should be sure to wash any dishes that had been left in the open air and that it’d be wise to start using a new toothbrush.

While Glen did his thing I took my laptop down to the porch and read
Pitchfork
and felt jealous of the new crop of important emerging bands with cool names like the Department of Motor Vehicles and Excellent Day to Run Away. I did my reps of push-ups and sit-ups.

After that I sat really still, imagining Glose’s body teeming with fleas. I fantasized about them boring into his ears, nesting in the sores on his feet, mating in his nostrils, eating him alive.

Glen bombed the attic with a powerful insecticide that cost me $375. Now there is a faint chemical smell, like the smell of burnt napkin crossed with new-car smell. When I wake up I feel like there’s a coating on my teeth.

So where does this leave me? How am I feeling? I’ve gotten to the point where I want to make Glose disappear. And in a real way.

Haggis has an acquaintance whom he refers to as “the Concierge.” I have heard many anecdotes about the Concierge. For the right amount of money the Concierge can make pretty much anything happen for you. According to Haggis, for three hundred bucks he’d recently set someone’s car on fire so the person could collect the insurance. For seven hundred he drove a golf cart through a plate-glass window. The word on the small-town street is that in addition to these larger acts, if the price is right, he can also procure anything for you, from chemotherapy kits to certain kinds of high-end African snakes to untraceable fatal substances, meaning poison.

I called up Haggis. “What if I wanted him to kidnap someone,” I said, “drive them a thousand miles away, and just drop them off? How much would that cost?”

Haggis’s gut estimate was that the Concierge would do it for a grand, plus expenses. “But I couldn’t tell you for sure,” he added. “Want me to reach out to him?”

“Why not,” I said.

“Any major conditions?”

“I would just ask that the Concierge guarantee me that this person never returns to Pollard.”

“So you’re saying you’d want him dead?”

“No,” I said, “not dead, not that.”

“Blinded.”

“Not blinded.”

“Maimed.”

“Not harmed in any way. Just get him a thousand miles away and drop him off in like the middle of a field of red sorghum or something.”

Haggis called me back fifteen minutes later. “The Concierge can make it happen for two grand,” he said.

“Guaranteed?”

“Guaranteed. But he’s going to have to kidnap him, which will be somewhat hostile.”

I told Haggis that I didn’t want him harmed, just displaced.

Haggis replied that he didn’t think any excessive pain would be necessary. According to Haggis, the Concierge had also told him that he thought red sorghum grew only in Uruguay and to make that happen it would cost an additional grand.

I told him that sorghum was a chief part of the Illinois agricultural harvest. “It’s like the third most harvested crop,” I said.

Haggis simply stated that the Concierge had his own take on things.

“Never mind,” I said. “He’s taking this too literally. It doesn’t have to be a field of red sorghum. It can be any field. It can be a forest. Or a pasture. Or a glade, whatever an actual glade is.” I could hear Haggis writing all of this down. I asked him how the Concierge was planning to abduct the person. Haggis said that he didn’t have the slightest idea, that the Concierge was a person of many, many means.

“The Concierge is going to want to speak with you on the phone,” Haggis said. “He’s going to need to know the subject’s height, weight, exact address, the best time of day for the abduction to occur, and a list of any serious allergies or phobias. Can I give him your number?”

“That’s cool,” I said. “The cell.”

I was in deep.

I went down to the basement and knocked on Baylor Phebe’s door.

Glose answered. He was wearing new clothes: khakis and a plum-colored turtleneck sweater, along with my Doc Martens. He had tucked the turtleneck into the khakis and was also sporting a new leather belt. In these new clothes he had the air of someone who smokes a pipe and jots things down in a little leather-bound journal.

“You look like a homeroom teacher,” I said, then pointed to the turtleneck. “Is that cashmere?”

“You’re still mad at me,” Glose replied.

I couldn’t even fathom the depth of my anger. As much as I was attempting to stay even-keeled, my face was likely giving me away. For all I know my beard was glowing red.

“You have to let go of all this anger, Francis.”

I asked him if he was allergic to anything.

“Not that I know of,” he said. “Why?”

I told him that I was thinking about organizing a big meal for everybody in the house. “Like a post-winter feast,” I explained.

“Word,” Glose said. “Baylor’s got all this frozen venison,” he added. “I’m sure he’d love to contribute. We could make a stew.”

Yes,
we
, as if they were lifelong companions, a couple even. The absurdity was bewildering. I was starting to understand the concept of one’s blood boiling. I felt this most intensely in my mouth. I could have spit flames. “How are those shoes treating you?” I asked.

“They’re great,” he said, seemingly both sincere and appreciative.

At least acknowledge that you’re a conniving prick, I thought. At least have the decency to leaven your responses with a bit of irony.

The Wii ice-fishing game was on Baylor Phebe’s high-def flat-screen. Glose had paused it and the wheedling music played like a bunch of mad elves on helium.

“You still gonna buy me those drums?”

“Probably,” I said as I imagined him waking up in some random field of dirt a thousand miles away, utterly lost, confused, terrified, thawing into consciousness. The image thrilled me to no end.

That night the call came in.

The last thing I expected was for the Concierge to be a woman. Or a digitized woman’s voice, at least. The voice wasn’t dissimilar to the one featured on a dashboard GPS. It was a little eerie, a touch soothing. When the call finally came in, the word
BLOCKED
flashed on the window of my cell phone.

“This is the Concierge,” she said when I answered. The voice was too human to be a speech synthesizer, and yet too measured, too consistent in the music of its vowels, to be purely human. It was certainly anthropoid, but weirdly tweaked, and I was convinced the natural voice was being bused through some digital device.

“Oh,” I said. “Hi.”

“Mr. Haggis has informed me that you would like to partake of my services, Francis.” She asked me to tell her my needs.

I told her that I needed someone to be relocated.

“One thousand miles away,” she said.

“A thousand miles,” I confirmed. I reiterated to the Concierge what I had told Haggis: that I wanted “the subject” to be taken this distance from Pollard and left in a field of some sort, and that while I didn’t want the subject physically harmed, the subject should be left without either financial or communication resources, as far from civilization as possible. I said that I’d like the subject to be left with a few days’ supplies of food and water to get him through.

And then she listed a number of rural areas that are at or slightly beyond the thousand-mile radius perimeter with Pollard as the center point. They included Laredo, Texas; Artesia, New Mexico; Cortez, Colorado; Gannett Peak, Wyoming; Malta, Idaho; Indian Head, Saskatchewan, Canada; Pikangikum, Ontario, Canada; Chicoutimi, Quebec, Canada; Raymond, New Hampshire; Salem, Massachusetts; Kathleen, Florida; and a defunct offshore oil rig somewhere in the Gulf of Mexico.

“Do any of these places interest you?” she said.

I told her that they all did, except perhaps the oil rig, but that I would leave that up to her, that I preferred not to know.

She gave me a post office box address and instructed me to send a photo of “the subject,” as well as the details Haggis had already asked me to collect. After she received this she would send a letter confirming receipt, at which point I would be expected to send one thousand dollars cash—half the fee—to said post office box. Then she would text me with the date and time that the abduction would take place. Upon completion of the job, a series of photos would be mailed to me confirming the subject’s displacement, at which point I would have seventy-two hours from the date of the postmark to pay the balance of the fee and the Concierge’s expenses.

“No harm to the subject,” I repeated.

“Although a little force might be required to detain the subject,” she replied, “once in custody, no further harm will be necessary.”

The following day I returned to the basement and knocked on Baylor’s door once more. Again, Glose answered. He was wearing another new outfit: blue jeans and a baby-blue oxford, Top-Siders without socks. He was holding a large pizza box, open. It held three pieces of pepperoni pizza, one half-eaten. His mouth was impossibly full.

“Rrizza?” he said.

“Already ate,” I replied. “You look great.”

He thanked me as marinara slop pushed grotesquely through the tight hole of his mouth.

I told him that the homeowner’s insurance guy had called and I needed to photograph everyone’s apartment. “Just a rudimentary thing for their files,” I added. “Do you mind?”

“Not at all,” Glose said, stepping aside.

I stood in the center of the living room and used my cell phone to photograph each wall. I went into the bathroom, which was spectacularly clean. No signs of Glose Entropy. No awful smells. No sunken turds in the toilet. No drifts of simian hair under the sink or boogers on the medicine chest mirror. I photographed the shower and the sink. I came back out and photographed the kitchen.

And then I asked Glose if he wouldn’t mind standing under the cougar head. “I should give them a sense of scale,” I explained.

He stood under the cougar head, his arms spread in a kind of welcome-to-my-wonderful-life fashion, and waiting until he swallowed his pizza, I got three good shots of him.

On my way to the door I asked how Baylor was doing.

“He’s great,” Glose said. “Rehearsals couldn’t be going better. I’ve been helping him learn his lines.”

“Nice!” I said, perhaps a little cravenly.

“He has a day off on Monday. We might go ice fishing.”

“Cool!” I said. “From the virtual to the natural world!”

“He’s such a good dude,” Glose said.

When I got back to the attic I uploaded the photos to my computer, hooked up my old color-printer-slash-fax-machine, printed the best picture of Glose posing under the cougar head, as well as the following information sheet:

The time of day would coincide with Baylor’s rehearsal schedule, and thereby guarantee his absence. This seemed like a safe plan.

I continue to do my push-ups and sit-ups. I continue to take my penis-enlargement pills. Francis Carl Falbo is on a mission. To what end, exactly, I cannot say, but this newfound devotion feels good. I haven’t thought about Percocet or my desire to float away in a personalized canoe.

I am a man who does push-ups and sit-ups, and who takes penis-enlargement pills, this much I know for sure. I am this man.

Today Haggis stopped by to clean up the front steps and walkway. Though it hasn’t snowed in days, they still need to be swept because the two-month-old snow—that old, gray molecular survivor crust—still blows around.

When he came upstairs I handed him an envelope containing the photo of Glose and the required information. He said he would express mail it to the Concierge for me and handed me a DVD.

“This was in that DVD player you gave me,” he said. “I thought you might want it.”