That night, I dreamed of carpenter ants, termites and other creatures poking their mandibles out of wet plaster—only it wasn’t wet plaster, it was my skin. I woke up shuddering just before dawn.
There was a tiny red indentation, slightly sore and shaped like a half moon, on the inside of my wrist, and four other half moons on the back. I found a tube of Neosporin May had bought for her chapped hands, and dabbed some on each sore.
I went for my morning walk.
The dusty woman who said her name was Vichnaya Pamyat was outside the house, dressed in the same filthy work clothes, poised with a weed eater but not actually mowing. The weed eater was plugged into a thick yellow extension cord running up the bannister to the tenant’s door, which was open a crack.
“Howdy,” said the woman. “It’s a little early to mow, I know, but there’s so little time.”
I wanted to ask her what the hurry was, but she’d already moved on.
“Not gonna be pretty, but I gotta get all the brush down to size. We can tear it and put down sod later, but there’s no time now.”
“Is your tenant helping you?”
“She’s not very helpful, you know,” said the woman. “I wish I could make things easier on her. Can you do me a favor as long as you’re in the yard?”
I was in the yard, somehow. I didn’t remember walking over the slick moss to get there, but there I was. “Sure.”
“Look up at the back window and tell me if the tenant’s light is on? If it’s not, I’ll have to go back in the basement and throw the breaker again before we can weed. But I know where to find the box this time.”
I walked around behind the building to look.
There was another dormer in the back of the roof, which certainly hadn’t been there two days ago. I couldn’t say if anything else about the outside of the house had changed, because this was the side that faced the ravine. I had never been to this side of the house at the end of Michaelmas Avenue before, even though I’d lived in this neighborhood for years.
The siding on this side of the house was green and white with lichen. An arm’s length beside me was the brushy edge of the ravine.
My feet had been silently going squish on the moss and mud; now they went clop on something solid. I looked down to see that I was standing on a discarded square of particle board, all riddled with holes as if it had been used as a peg board for hanging tools on once upon a time.
“I do not have tripopophobia,” I lied to myself as I looked away.
I could barely tell if the upstairs light was on or not, not in daylight and not with the thick green scum growing over the window. I was just about to say this when the door of the apartment slammed open. heavy, pounding footsteps thundered down the stairs.
I jumped at the sound of the door. I looked at my feet to avoid landing in the ravine. That was when I saw the wasps.
Gray and brown wasps, the same color as the old sheet of peg board, were boiling out of all the little holes in the wood. They were certainly wasps. I could see their segmented bodies and their wings, though the wings looked looked oddly dull and opaque in the shade of the backyard. I felt rather than heard the vibration of their wings, buzzing in my feet and in the bones of my skull. But the wasps did not fly. They flowed along the ground en masse like a living blanket.
They flowed toward me.
The five welts on my hand throbbed with something between an ache and an itch, as if they were responding to the buzzing of the flightless wasps.
I covered my face and lurched away in the direction of the side yard where that strange dust-covered woman was waiting to mow down the weeds.
Then the weed eater started with its own mechanical burr which drowned out the buzzing of the wasps. I uncovered my eyes in time to see the swarm take flight, all at once, a cloud that had been a blanket. They flew into the trees surrounding the ravine, and were gone.
When I rounded the corner, the door to the upstairs apartment was all but shut around the yellow extension cord. The dusty woman was by herself, mowing the weeds at the front of the house.
She stopped and smiled when she saw me leaving. “Going so soon?” she called.
There was something about that smile that irritated me. It was too innocent, too ignorant, too naïve by far. No grown-up person should ever smile that way at another. May gave me that same smile every time she played stupid—when she acted as though she had no idea why I was angry with her. She did it constantly, and was shocked every time I lost my temper. And then she would hold grudges. Every time I lost my temper, she kept score. She would never let me forget.
“There is a wasp’s nest out back!” I screamed. “It’s the biggest one I’ve ever seen!”
Now she looked concerned. “Didja get stung?”
“No, they didn’t.”
“You sure about that?”
I looked at my wrist.
The five crescent-shaped dents had turned into welts. They were larger, red, and hot to the touch.
“Those aren’t wasp bites.”
“Better put more of your wife’s cream on them,” said the woman, her voice all maternal concern. “They look sick. You might want to have ‘em looked at.”
“Mind your own business,” I began; then I remembered I wasn’t talking to May. “Sorry. Thanks, I will. Do you want me to call an exterminator for you, for those wasps?”
Now she looked sad. “I wish that would help.”
There didn’t seem to be any answer to this. I scratched the nagging itch on the inside of my wrist. “Well, goodbye then. What did you say your name was?”
“Vichnaya Pamyat. It means ‘eternal memory.’ Is there something you’re forgetting, Kade?”
I couldn’t think of anything—except that I didn’t remember telling her that I had a wife.
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