Read Online Bedbugs by Ben H. Winters - Free Book Online

the living room, muttering to himself and tapping away.
    *
    Louis arrived to clean the smell from the bonus room at precisely 7:30 the next morning.
    “Will wonders never cease,” Susan murmured at the sound of his knock at the door before calling out “just a sec,” pulling her robe close to her chest, and opening the door. Alex had left fifteen minutes earlier, grimly clutching his travel coffee mug, game face on for a trying day. After offering Louis coffee or tea, which he cheerfully declined, Susan got Emma going on breakfast and then stood awkwardly in her bathrobe in the doorway of the bonus room, unable to decide if it made her more uncomfortable to perch there—watching an elderly man on hands and knees, in his jeans and an undershirt, cleaning her floor—or to return to the kitchen and leave him alone in this isolated corner of her home.
    “Have you been working for Andrea a long time?” she asked.
    “Well, how’s forty years?” Louis looked over his shoulder with a broad, playful grin. “Would you call that a long time?”
    “Forty years?”
    “I kid you not. Well, now, I guess I’ve only been
working
for her, officially, since Howard passed away. Helping out with the odd jobs and what-have-you. Do everything I can for her, you know?”
    Susan nodded as Louis settled back on his haunches, spongedripping idly onto the hardwood. The guy was a talker, that was clear.
    “I’ve been retired some years now, so I’ve got my days free. Thirty-seven years as the assistant principal at Philippa Schuyler, up on Greene Avenue. And I tell you, after all those years keeping tabs on a couple hundred young people, scrubbing the occasional floor, well, I call that a vacation.” Louis’s laugh was low, gentle, and melodious, a slow-played tympani drum roll:
huh-huhm, huh-huhm, huh-huhm
. “No, but I loved it, I did. Loved those kids.”
    Susan thought with fondness of the assistant principal at her own middle school back in New Jersey. Mr. Crimson. Clemson? Something like that.
    “You want to know the truth, I’ve known Howard and Andrea since 1970, if you can believe that. Autumn of 1970. We met right here in Brooklyn, protesting over Kent State, waving our signs in Cadman Plaza. One day I’ll bring up some pictures. As Andrea might say, you will
plotz.
”
    He gave the Yiddish word a thick, comical Andrea-style growl, and Susan smiled. “And when did Howard pass away?”
    The pleasant grin slipped from Louis’s face, and he looked down at the floor. “Four years ago. And may God rest his poor unfortunate soul.”
    A deep silence welled up, and Louis turned back to scouring the floor. As Susan watched him, she felt a twinge of remorse for the way she had sized him up yesterday: though he was clearly no kind of professional handyman, he was forceful and competent as he went about his business in the small room. He focused his efforts on no specific spot, just blasted away at the whole floor with bleach and Pine-Sol, inch by inch, the shock-and-awe cleaning method.
    After a few moments, Emma called out from the kitchen.“Mama?” she said. “All done.”
    “OK, baby.” From the kitchen came the scrape of a chair leg and a gentle thud as Emma lowered herself to the floor. Susan smiled:
she’s growing up so fast
. Louis’s memories, his nostalgic attitude, had put her in a sentimental frame of mind.
My little girl
.
    “Hey. Uh, Susan?” She turned and saw that Louis had shifted up onto his knees and was now hauling himself laboriously to his feet. He crossed his arms over his sizable stomach and stood with evident nervousness, not meeting her eye. “Something I need to say to you.”
    “All right.”
    “I wasn’t looking in your little girl’s room. That night. I need you to know that.”
    “Yes,” she replied, taken aback. “You said.”
    There was an adamance in this declaration, a pleading quality, as if Louis was sickened by the idea of anyone thinking even for a moment that he was the kind