A Fruit Fly Invades

Working through the night, windows open:

A fruit fly circles my head. I don't know where it came from, or how it got in, but it's here, and I hate it. I bat uselessly at it with a rolled-up envelope. Stella, who is marauding greasily around my desk, leaps for it and misses as well. Imagine such a fat, clumsy animal catching a fruit fly! She could sooner rise on her hind legs and tango with it. The fly, beleaguered, pisses off.

Noises float in from the street. Even nineteen floors up, I can hear them clearly. Someone kicks a can--bonk kraka-kraka-kraka, bonk kraka-kraka-kraka. Cars hiss and rumble. Electric buses rattle by on their wires. Seagulls--man, do those bastards never sleep?--seagulls screech. They're far away, probably fishing in the harbour. Night fishing must be good for them, all those dozy fish loafing just beneath the surface.

I used to go fishing at night, too. I used a fishing pole, of course, not my beak. I still dream of the lake--Snow Lake, Indiana--although I couldn't have been there more than five or six times, all told. It was very quiet at night, not like here. You could hear all the little noises, the nature noises, for miles around. Insects scraped and chirped in the bushes, and varmits rustled in their burrows. I'm not quite sure what a varmit is, but I always imagined it to be some sort of feisty weasel. "Don't go barefoot in the woods," my aunt would say. "Some varmit'll bite you." I rather wished one would, just so I could see what it looked like, and always went barefoot in the woods to that end. Never happened, though.

Anyhow, insects chirred and varmits wriggled, and every once in a while, a firefly clattered by. Noisy wee gits, those. If there was a breeze, the tire swing creaked monotonously on its rope. The moon tugged at the lake, sending ripples splashing up the sand. Subdued night birds whistled, and every once in a while, a fish flumped into the lake: sploosh.

I sat on the end of the jetty with my fishing pole, not catching much of anything. Every once in a while, I'd shine a flashlight at the water to make sure no leeches had attached themselves to my feet, which were dangling in the lake. Startled fish scattered. Sometimes, box turtles scattered, too. There were a lot of things in that lake: a thousand kinds of algae and waterweed, a hundred kinds of fish, turtles, dead folks (well, according to the local kids, anyway), and a thriving leech population. There was one of my shoes, as well, which came off while I was wading, and was sucked immediately into the silt at the bottom. I dove down and dug for it, but it was lost forever. It's probably still there, rotted down to just the rubber sole.

I'm startled from my reverie by the sound of screeching brakes and car horns going berserk. I wait for the crunch of metal, but it doesn't come. (Was I hoping it would, or simply expecting it? Jesus H, I hope I was just expecting it!)

I rub an ice cube over my eyes, which are irritated from staring at the monitor so long. One of them is more irritated than the other: a spatter of boiling oil flew into it earlier, while I was frying bread for Stella. I made matters worse by rubbing at it with my dirty hand--my dirty rat hand, which had recently stroked Stella.

Ha, ha--rat hand. What would my hand be now? How many things have I touched since last I washed it? Let me think. I washed my hands before I had breakfast, about six hours ago. After breakfast, I got to work, but not before I puffed up the pillows on the couch, threw away some junk that had accumulated on the kitchen counter, fed Stella, picked up Stella, and cleaned my spectacles. That would make it a food-couch-junk-ratfood-rat-spectacles hand. Yeuch. Remind me not to put that in my eye.

Last time I was out at Snow Lake, Uncle Bob (well, I called him that, but I don't think he was really my uncle)--anyway, Uncle Bob told me about some kid who'd got a fishhook in his eye. When they took the hook out, his eye deflated like a water balloon. I thought it was the stupidest story I'd heard in my life. Who ever heard of a deflating eye? Later that day, I got a fishhook in my finger three times in a row trying to stick a worm on. I didn't tell Uncle Bob about it, in case he made up some dumbarsed story about that, too.

A low, whirring screech comes in the window. It's a mechanical sound, but I can't figure out what it is. It sounds like a car driving by with a giant spinning hairbrush attached to the undercarriage: "Aaaaoooowwwwhhhsssh!" What the hell is that? I hear it all the time. It must be something very ordinary.

The fruit fly is back. It circles my head, and I immediately feel greasy, as though its loathsome presence has contaminated my skin. My face itches. Stella touches my feet--now, I'm positively corrupted. The pads of my spectacles feel like pouches of oil pressed against my nose. I pick Stella up and put her back in her cage. Brilliant. Now, my hands are polluted as well. I need a shower. No, I need to work. No rest for the wicked, nor yet for the greasy.

There's an empty bottle on my desk, which once contained orange juice. I move it to the kitchen, and the fruit fly follows it. I am fly-free once more.

I take off my glasses, wincing as they unpinch from behind my ears, and close my eyes for a minute. I imagine myself at Snow Lake, standing on the end of the jetty. My toes are curled round the soggy planks. The sun is bothering my shoulders, trying to scorch off my skin. I feel dry and parched, so I dive into the water. It's warm on the surface, and a little chilly underneath. I float. I touch fish, and they touch me. I like their sliminess against my feet. It feels disgusting and tickly at the same time. Above, the sun is so bright the whole sky shines. The whole world shines. The lake shines. Light pokes through my eyelashes, and I see the world as a white blur filtering through heavy curtains. Everything is deliciously ungreasy. A dragonfly lands on my nose--no, that's the

fucking

fruit

fly, ruining my dream. Faugh. Nasty. Disgruntled, I get back to work.