Meet Me in the Moon Room by Ray Vukcevich Page A

you’ve got a going-nowhere-fast job, Jesus, some young punk called you Pop on the dock just the other day; a world where your wife is fooling around with someone, you don’t know who, but someone. That kind of world. Any more questions?
    “Are you going to let me in?” Carmela banged on the door again. She was quiet a moment, then she said, “I’m going to pee in your precious bowling bag if you don’t let me use the toilet, Perry.”
    He didn’t say anything, but he hated the thought of her squatting like a skinny white frog over his genuine leather bowling bag doing her business. The guys had given him that bag last year after he took City mostly all by himself.
    “I’m going now,” she said, and he could hear her moving away from the door. “Here I go walking toward the closet to get your bowling bag, Perry. Can you hear me walking to get your bowling bag? Stomp, stomp, stomp. I’m at the closet. I’m opening the door. I’m picking up your bowling bag. Last chance, Perry.”
    Another of life’s never-ending irritations, Perry thought. He could wash his ball, but he’d never get the smell out of his bag. He took his finger away from his right nostril and blood streamed into the sink. Suddenly angry at the entire universe, Perry snatched up the bug poison and gave his right nostril a good long spray. To hell with caution.
    “I’m peeing in your bowling bag, Perry!”
    Perry’s nose jumped around on his face like it wanted to get off. It felt like the residents in there had decided to get out of town but had forgotten the way and were just busting down the walls, cutting corners, going cross-country. He felt them tumbling down into the top of his throat, and he gagged and spit bugs into the sink. They landed, lively, and scrambled over the edge and dropped to the floor and dashed under the door.
    “Squirt, squirt. Pee, pee,” Carmela yelled. “Can you hear me peeing in your bowling bag, Perry?”
    The pain in Perry’s head was like being slapped hard on both ears at the same time by a big TV wrestler, and he slumped to the floor still holding onto the sink with one hand. He squeezed his eyes shut.
    Another head picture: Perry’s in bed on his back staring at a ceiling he can’t see because it’s absolutely dark in the bedroom; he can’t see his hand in front of his face; in fact, he moves his hand up in front of his face to check that; right, he can’t see it, but he can feel the roaches leaving his nose. He struggles not to scream and jump up clawing at his face. They come out at night, and the reason Carmela knows about them is that they don’t all come crawling back to his nose in the morning. Some of them stay out and breed and live in the kitchen cabinets and in her underwear drawers and behind the couch and in the bathtub and beneath the sink—everywhere. It’s not so astonishing, he thinks, that a kind of roach has developed that can live in his nose. After all, they live almost everywhere else. He read once about a roach that lives in TVs and never comes out until the TV dies. The bugs in TV-land listen to the programs and the commercials and eat the insulated guts of their machines. Snug. It’s not so surprising that a cousin would get around to Perry’s nose sooner or later.
    Perry opened his eyes. He snatched up the bug spray. If, when he sprayed his nose, they exited his mouth, it stood to reason that if he sprayed his mouth they’d exit his nose. So he opened wide and sprayed, realizing almost at once that his logic was flawed. His stomach twisted, and he had only time to throw open the lid of the toilet before throwing up in the bowl.
    “I hear what you’re doing.” Carmela was back at the door. “I might have known. You promised, Perry. Sneaking around like your old man. Did you hide the bottle in the toilet tank? That’s it, isn’t it, Perry? Come out of there!”
    Maybe some more ice-picking would help. He crawled around on the floor and felt behind the toilet until he