Greg: Not a People Person
L.P. Ring
There are over 4,000 species of cockroach. Only about thirty species ever share our space.
It skitters from beneath my laundry basket, but doesn’t attempt flight until I trap it beneath my Great British Beer Festival polycarbonate pint glass. I balance a paperback on the receptacle’s base, sit cross-legged, and watch its impotent flutters. I can’t tell yet if it eventually tires or comes to some wearied acceptance of its new circumstances, returning my stare from its temporary home, wondering whether this is a stalemate or the prelude to something far more fatal.
Cockroaches live in almost any environment, even somewhere as cold as the Arctic Circle.
I’m edgy already from their arguing next door: his voice lower, snarky-toned; hers higher-pitched and pleading. He isn’t doing enough around the house. But he also works damn hard putting food in the cupboard and the refrigerator so that she can make FUCKING SLOP every time she turns on the stove. Something ceramic smashes on the floor. It’s his fist which slams into the wall.
I pierce air holes in a Tupperware lid. He calls her a bad word, the bad word, and tells her he hates her. He’s moving out as soon as he can. She lets out loud, fitful sobs, while I edge the lid underneath the beer glass and move my new roommate to the kitchen table. It aims a few angry thumps at the plastic. I turn it right side up on the table, securely add tape around the sides.
“If you learn to trust me,” I promise, “I’ll move you to more spacious surroundings.”
I take deep breaths, wondering at how women like her end up with knuckle-dragging apes like him. Do they actively seek out abusers? Are they naturally drawn to trash?
A plate smashes against the wall.
The Russians once sent cockroaches into space. Where they mated and bred.
A front door slamming wakes me. He’s already striding towards the station, air pods shoved into his ears. She cried half the night, occasionally calling his name, begging him to come to bed. My house guest is still on the kitchen table.
The milk smells iffy but I use it anyway. I spoon up the cereal while Michael sits there, his feelers occasionally twitching. Is he hungry? I haven’t decided to give him official licence to the refrigerator and cupboards just yet. I get ready beneath the eye of the clock; faking a cold would allow me to wear a mask and avoid shaving. I’m running two minutes early when she knocks.
Cockroaches are quite social creatures. But ones bred in isolation and introduced to a quorum will often not recognise social cues.
“Please, I just need a cup of sugar,” she all but whispers when I crack the door against the chain.
I think of the unopened half kilo stashed in the cupboard above the sink. “Just a minute.” I grab the bag, wary of the paper tearing and drowning me in sugar. I glance Michael’s way. “You’d love some of this, wouldn’t you?” I ask on my way back.
I unhook the chain and open the door just enough. “Here.”
She lets out a nervous titter: “Not that much.”
“I don’t even use the stuff,” I mutter.
She’s tied her hair back. No make-up, her face still blotched from crying. She’s wearing those blue stretch pants with the t-shirt that shows off her midriff as she runs. She takes the packet and a nail grazes my hand – our first physical contact. “Did I hear you talking to someone?”
Stab of panic. “My boss phoned. He wants me in fifteen minutes early. So…”
“I’m sorry.” She steps back, a half-invitation to walk past.
I have my keys. I have my wallet. I have my phone. I inch out the gap and shut the door behind me. I’ll spend the rest of the day worried I’ve left on the gas.
“I hope we didn’t worry you last night. Darrell and I had such a terrible fight.”
I shake my head and circle around her. “I’m a heavy sleeper, Juhn-nuhn-funf—” I try for her name but my voice plops out a half-strangled blob of consonants and vowels.
She calls out a goodbye as I flee.
Does this mean I’ll have to pretend I work fifteen minutes earlier for the next week?
Cockroaches might be able to survive a nuclear war. But I can’t be sure they would survive radiating in my awkward shame.
She’s been baking. I steal into my apartment before she can force me to take some. Darrell arrives home soon after, and for a while all I hear is murmuring. I eat a bowl of cereal while I contemplate which of the battalion of stir-in sauces best suits brown pasta.
Michael occasionally flicks a well-observed, disdainful antenna my way. “Keep up that attitude,” I warn, wagging a spoon, “and you’ll miss out on this evening’s culinary extravaganza.”
Some cockroach species are raised as pets. But Michael is not a Madagascar Hissing Cockroach.
Voices rise again around 8.30. I fork two pasta spirals to mop up some leftover sauce. This time it’s about money and that bloke at the gym. He calls her the bad word, a LYING CHEATING BAD WORD. A better neighbour would call the police. Michael would be a better neighbour if he could.
I take the tomato-smeared plate and fork to the sink and wash up noisily. Water blasts off the metal base of the sink, off the plate and drowns my left shirt sleeve and crotch. “Fuck!” I holler, hoping they don’t think that’s directed at them. I leave the plate in the sink. Maybe it’ll attract more friends for Michael.
A loud thump next door is followed by a sustained period of silence. I put an ear to the wall. Michael lets out a little flutter, his wings tapping against the plastic – perhaps he disapproves of nosiness. I make a shushing gesture.
“Greg, can you hear me?” I leap back two feet, my back jamming into the desk, causing Michael’s tub to rattle back and forth. “Greg, are you there?”
I silently curse building management for making us put names on our downstairs letter boxes. No, it doesn’t encourage sociability, or a greater sense of community spirit – we’re British. Michael flits against the plastic again, earning a wagging finger and a hissed rebuke.
I hear footsteps heading to her door and the whine of the hinges. I snap off the light, cower in the darkness, barely letting out a breath. A gentle rapping against my door is followed by low and urgent whispers of my name. It takes ten minutes before she gives up.
I feel my way to the kitchen, pat around under the sink until I find the flashlight.
An Ancient Greek poet coined a name for cockroaches (Lucifuga) based on their preferences for the dark. I don’t know if that’s pronounced with a hard or a soft ‘C’.
I awake with a start, fumble for my phone; it is barely past two.
In my dream, Jennifer kept knocking at the door, begging me to open it. The handle kept slipping from my hand. The flapping of wings behind me and overhead almost drowned out her cries. But I could hear Darrell’s voice bellowing above it all, calling her more disgusting names, threatening her.
Most cockroaches are nocturnal.
I pop a beer tab and sip it at the dinner table, thinking of my exhaustion and considering whether tomorrow might be a good time for a sick day. I’ve made my decision by the time I finish the beer.
I knock lightly, a sliver of me hoping that she won’t hear, or will but won’t answer. If I can discern it as the latter, I can pare away some of the guilt. When I hear her footsteps, I don’t scuttle back indoors.
“I’m here to help,” I half-stutter. Her face is in shadow, the ceiling light like a halo overhead. She steps aside and lets me pass. Her hands and arms are smeared in blood, one eye puffy from a blow. I only notice the meat cleaver after she’s shut us in.
A decapitated cockroach can live for up to a week. A disarticulated one can regrow its limbs through different stages of moulting. It can even regrow its feelers too, though I understand that’s a longer process.
Darrell met his end via a kitchen knife lodged into his sternum. She’s laid her deceased beau out on the plastic shower curtain on the bathroom floor. “It’s easiest to separate bone at the joints, so I’ve focused on the knees and elbows so far.”
Maybe Jennifer doesn’t need my help. She’s already managed to remove parts of three of the limbs. She nudges me with her elbow, a definite improvement on a stray nail. “How would you feel about handling the head? I can separate myself mentally pretty easily by not looking at his face, but… you know.”
Decapitation doesn’t take very long with a good meat cleaver, though what’s also true is that even six hours after death a body still bleeds a hell of a lot. Jennifer bites her lower lip as we watch it flow. “That’s bound to get walked onto the carpet.”
I glance towards our handiwork, now stacked in the tub. Thirteen recycle bags not counting the torso. I wonder if Michael misses me. I wonder if he’s jealous of my being here.
Cockroaches are omnivores. Which is a posh way of saying they’ll eat anything. But as far as we go as a food source, they’re most partial to the fingernails, eyelashes, and dead skin. They prefer us for what we throw away, what we waste.
“You don’t drive, do you?” My confirmation brings disappointment. “We’ll need to take different directions: bury some, drop some into the river attached to a weight, maybe even burn some. Shame it isn’t closer to Halloween.”
“I have a bicycle.”
“Hmm…” She blows a piece of errant fringe off her forehead, frowns when it drops back down. There are a few blood smears on her chin, one streaked down the right side of her nose. “We should wash up and change. Your bathroom okay?”
Cockroaches can go without breathing for about forty minutes. They can survive submerged in water, though not for very long.
I leave the door off the chain. I put Michael – despite his protestations – where she won’t see him. I’m not ready to drag my roommate into a murder just yet. She taps lightly before entering, bringing coconut shampoo, towels, and a change of clothes.
“Bathroom’s through there,” I point, still avoiding much eye contact. “Take whatever time you need. I’ll make coffee.”
“I like what you’ve done with the place. Very minimalistic.” Soon water’s gushing from the shower faucet. Dawn’s inching forwards, bringing a new day. This is the best I’ve felt about a new day in a long time.
Cockroaches definitely sleep and will often be found at rest in moist, dark areas.
She takes her coffee black, no sugar. I mumble about work, the weather, if the landlord’s increasing the rent again. She doesn’t answer – which is bad. She doesn’t sigh or yawn like Pippa from accounting though – which is good. At seven o’clock I make a quick, terse call to the boss to say my tonsillitis is playing up. We’ll need to discuss my performance once I return to work.
“Prick,” I mumble after hanging up.
“I’ll see you later then,” Jennifer says, finishing her coffee. “It’s best we take care of things after dark. And I can’t take two days off work in a row.”
Oh.
Cockroaches have excellent olfactory range, even able to identify different quorums by scent.
I spend the day fashioning a new home for Michael from a plastic container bought in Wilkos. He seems happier with this wider space, and after thoroughly exploring his new abode settles in to munch on some deli stuff I almost tossed. I hear Jennifer come home and wonder what she’ll be doing now that dickhead isn’t around to cook and bake for.
My summons comes via text. She’s changed back into the blood-stained gym clothes. “You’re not going to believe this,” she says, letting me in, “but I’ve had visitors. My stupid fault for turning the bathroom light off.” She gestures towards the tub.
I let out a low moan at the smathered innards. An antennae droops limply up and down from one, a stray leg budges slightly from another. I retch and find I have nothing tangible to bring up.
Entomologists believe cockroaches lack pain receptors. These charlatans also believe that cockroaches don’t suffer, as they lack emotions. The cockroaches lack emotions, I mean, not the dickhead entomologists.
“How do you suppose the fuckers got in?”
“Probably up the plughole.” I watch as Jennifer runs the shower faucet, sluicing them back to their community. It’s an act of fair warning, like a native tribe sending the brutalised corpses of Amazonian explorers back downriver. I won’t introduce Jennifer to Michael yet.
The recycle bags crinkle as Jennifer transfers a lower arm, an upper arm, a foot, and a leg to the first black bag. “I picked up a small shovel at the store as well. Cycle at least a few miles. And dig deep, or some wretched mutt gets something to munch on when let off the leash.”
Jennifer stays behind, finishing the draining of each bag. I make damn sure to have my lamp on as I ride, constantly imagining police cars waiting around every corner to give me a caution and ask what’s in that backpack mate. Three trips in and with only south to go, I’ve finally found a use for my iPhone’s compass. His head goes in the river with two of her aerobics dumbbells added as weights. That leaves only the torso; she’s thinking of renting a car for that trip.
I wonder at how I haven’t slept. About how good Jennifer looks, even in those bloody exercise clothes. At how stripping off her top shows how at ease she feels around me. I wonder if Michael’s missing me, and how exactly I’m going to handle introductions. Maybe a dinner for three, if I can be sure of Michael’s table manners. “Michael, meet Jennifer. Cockroach killer, meet cockroach.”
Jennifer’s dispensed with her sweatpants by the time I return from my final dump. The way her panty line shifts while she scrubs the bath shows she sunbathes naked. The torso’s well-wrapped: recycle bags, then black bagged, then duct taped. I can imagine years from now some construction worker immediately having a premonition that this should never be opened.
She stands up, and wipes sweat from her brow without bothering much to hide that she knows I’m admiring her. Her ex’s electric toothbrush is still buzzing in her hand.
“What do you want for all this, Greg?”
Cockroaches copulate facing away from each other.
I try the well-meaning neighbour route, talk about what I heard, and how what she did was self-defence. The toothbrush, off now, gets balanced alongside an empty bottle of bleach on the end of the admittedly quite clean bath. She leans on the doorjamb, biding her time until I stumble to an awkward silence.
“I’m not looking for a relationship, you understand. I’ve been hurt. I’ll need time.”
Here we go again. A woman telling me what she wants before I’ve gotten a word out.
“If you wanna fuck, we can fuck.” She starts unhitching her bra. I stare at my shoes, mumbling that I don’t want it to be like that.
“Then you’re willing to wait. Until I’m ready.”
I hope she doesn’t take my vehement nods as a sign of surrender.
“Thank you, Greg.”
I call in sick the next few days, tolerating my boss’ complaints while assuring him I’ll have a doctor’s note when I return “tomorrow”. He doesn’t use the term “idiot” when finally informing me that tomorrow’s a Saturday, but I get the drift from his tone.
Jennifer rents a car with a sizable boot. I hear her staggering down the stairs in the small hours and driving away, no knock for help this time. I hear her go to work and come home.
I hear music coming from her apartment.
I wait. She’s gone through something traumatic. She’ll need time before being able to love again. But I can’t help feeling bitter at the exclusion. Michael wanders around his new home. He doesn’t even care he’s stepping in his own leavings.
Cockroach faeces tend to measure about one inch. They usually defecate near their homes.
The moving truck is a shock. Jennifer’s voice echoes up the staircase, directing where to go and what to be careful with. I peer out through the gap in the door, catch her eye once before shutting it quickly. She looks flushed, worried. I guess the apartment just has too many unhappy memories. The men – big blokes who wouldn’t think twice about squashing me to help a lady in distress – yell directions and barter off-colour humour.
Boxes appear in the driveway. There’s the dining table she would have sat at with him. There are the slats from the IKEA bed on which they fucked.
I phone the landlord to check he knows the tenants next door are moving out – a Machiavellian act that earns Michael’s congratulations. His arrival provokes yelling on the stairs and insistences that they aren’t getting a penny of their deposit back. Jennifer tells him to shove the deposit up his arse. “I’m leaving and there isn’t a damn thing you can do!”
The remainder of the conversation, conducted in lower tones, can best be described as strained. The same goes for my hearing as I manage to catch that she’ll return the keys to the real estate agency by five.
My iPhone signals I have less than two hours to get her alone. To beg her to stay.
Cockroaches tend to be at their most active about four hours after dark. Tread carefully when taking a night-time piss or getting a glass of water.
At 4.30, the wheels of Jennifer’s suitcase trundle down the stairs as she drags it after her. Michael wishes me a bonne chance as I unlock the door and chase after her. I feel like one of those guys running through an airport, trying to reach the departure gate before final boarding closed.
“Don’t leave!” That I’m brandishing my key instead of a bunch of flowers isn’t the only problem. The expressions that greet my appearance in the driveway suggest that I’ve failed with any positive, romantic impression. Her grimace shows just how much she wants to be gone.
The burliest of the movers steps towards me, t-shirt sleeves riding up to show his West Ham tattoos. “Steady on now, mate. You’re not going to cause this nice lady any trouble.” I’m not even sure how conscious he is of his right fist clenching and unclenching. The two others exchange grins. Their working day’s going to end with a floor show.
“Jennifer, don’t make me tell!” She sticks the suitcase in the boot and slams it. She stalks up to me and shoves a finger in my chest; the nail will surely have left a mark.
“What do you want to tell people, Greg? That you’re a sad little prick who creeps on other men’s girlfriends?” Someone from the cheap seats lets out a chortle. “What else is there to tell?”
“Where’s your boyfriend, Jennifer?” I lean forward. She rears back, nose wrinkling, sneering her distaste. That hurts. “I bet you didn’t check the drains, did you? There aren’t just cockroach remains down there.” Her eyes widen, that sneer disappearing as her jaw goes slack. “Come upstairs, Jennifer. You owe me that.”
I head back inside. Despite being relatively sure of myself, I’m still relieved to hear her follow, and to hear her tell the Hammers fans she’s fine, just fine, and to wait there. Upstairs, I push my door open and motion her ahead, savouring the smell of coconut as she passes.
“You’ve got two minutes. Keep the damn door open and your hands visible.”
“I’m not the one who killed her boyfriend, Jennifer.”
“But you are the creepy little incel trying to blackmail his neighbour into bed. Two minutes.”
I can feel my heart thumping, shame’s heat rising to my face. If only we could begin again, introductions for the first time, as if none of this bad feeling had ever come about. The least I can try is to do the introductions on someone else’s behalf.
“What the hell is that?” she says as I hold the tupperware out to her.
I try not to let the incredulity bother me. “Jennifer, meet Michael. Michael, Jennifer.” He offers a quick flutter from his box.
Those same rotten entomologists claim that cockroaches have little memory or ability to absorb information. They can suck my cock!
I reach out my free hand, hoping a physical connection might somehow bridge the gap between us. There’s that momentary brush of nail on skin again before she rakes those claws down the back of my hand full force, sending Michael’s home skating across the room and against the wall.
The lid pops off and, for the first time in what was for the rest of England almost a full working week, Michael is free.
“Michael!” I cry as he rises into the air. Then Jennifer places her hands on my shoulders, turning me and pulling me towards her, and I don’t even see the knee aimed towards my crotch.
As I vomit on all fours, a loud cry is followed by the sound of a slap, by the sound of wings fluttering against the floor, by a stamp. I twist round, my attention swaying between the look of revulsion on her face and my little world of nauseated pain.
I curl up and wait for things to end; her hot breath brushes against my ear. “Greg, never forget you’re at least an accessory. After what’s happened today, don’t for a second think I can’t tell a story that’ll convince people you’re the one the cops should be cuffing.”
Her footsteps stomp on the stairs, then there’s the slamming of the front door. Through the gap in the bathroom window, before the engines started, I’m sure I hear shared laughter.
There’s no sound from next door. The noises from the street disturb me. I think of going outside, railing against each blundering fool on the staircase and the pavement who won’t allow me a moment’s peace. My apartment is dark except for one desk lamp’s bulb. Michael lies in state, laid out in the Tupperware box he loved.
Except of course that he wasn’t a Michael at all. Rather, she was a Michelle. I should have known from the wing size and the fuller body.
There’s scampering along the skirting boards. My fellow mourners are skittish in their approach. I mean them no harm. This is a time for grief, for remembering what we have lost. My Michelle, gregarious, flirty, and thoughtful, was from a community far greater than the fractured mess of egos and lies of this cruel human world.
I finish another can, and wonder if the off-licence is still open. I ignore that hammering at the door.
I wonder if I can fashion something as a black armband. And if, after a time, Michelle’s kin will accept me.
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