The Bugman's Daughter
by C.S. Anderson

---Abigail had always been convinced that the biggest reason that her father had stuck working with the pest control company for so long was the simple yet profound pleasure that he had taken in writing ‘professional killer’ in the occupation blank on his yearly tax returns. The joke had never gotten old for him and in all the years that he had been doing it no one at the IRS had ever apparently found it odd enough to comment on. She was sure that it would have made her father’s day to have been called on it. ---Maybe the fact that they hadn’t bothered had been just one more small disappointment in his life. Maybe he hadn’t committed suicide over any one big dramatic issue, maybe the combined weight of countless small sorrows and disappointments had just gotten too heavy to carry anymore. ---Or maybe the constant exposure to the wide assortment of lethal chemicals he had used in his work had simply damaged his brain. ---In college she had once gotten into marijuana fueled discussion about why people killed themselves and a fat Goth girl with bad skin had told her that there was nothing remarkable about the fact that people committed suicide. What was remarkable was that most people chose to live. ---Her mother refused to ever talk about it, for years she had suffered the quiet embarrassment of being ‘the bugman’s wife’ and that had been bad enough. After her husband’s death she had become known as ‘the wife of that crazy bugman’ and that had been more or less intolerable for her. She had moved several towns away and had never returned. ---Abigail supposed that it would have at least been poetic justice of a sort if her father had killed himself by swallowing the spray that he had used to wipe out legions of pests but he opted instead for the standard male approach of splattering his brains all over the family rooms new wallpaper with a small pistol that no one had known he had owned. ---There had been no note. She had helped her mother go through his things afterward, and they had found nothing to suggest that he had been so depressed. No letters from secret gay lovers, no reports from doctors revealing terminal illnesses, no confessions of terrible crimes, and no indicators of guilt, shame or remorse so powerful that they would drive a man to take his own life. It was a mystery that she had never completely given up trying to solve, even now, a full twenty years after the fact. ---Today was her birthday, she turned forty today, which was supposed to be a big traumatic milestone of sorts. Her co-workers had given her the obligatory gag gifts and sarcastic cards and taken her out to lunch at an Indian restaurant. What bothered her more than turning forty was the fact that they these people who were supposedly her friends, some of which she had known for years, had no clue that she hated Indian food ---Of course, that was likely the least of what they did not know about her. ---If she had been a man she supposed that she would have to throw one of those tantrums known as a midlife crisis, she had always hated that term, it seemed like people used it as a blanket excuse for a lot of bad behavior. Buy a really expensive sports car and find a young blonde with a room temperature IQ and really large breasts to replace the wife. ---Her father had been forty-six when he had died so she didn’t think that his suicide had been fueled by anything as simple as not wanting to be forty. Maybe, things would work better for everyone if everyone knew just how long they were going to live so that they could arrange to have their midlife crisis at the appropriate time. ---For example, if you gazed into some crystal ball and it was revealed that you were going to die at the age of thirty-two then you went ahead and scheduled your midlife crisis for sixteen. ---She shook her head to clear it of such pointless ramblings and went back to what she had been doing, picking out a dress to wear tonight. ---Her best friend, Rachel, had insisted on taking her out for her birthday and she didn’t have the heart, or maybe the spine to turn her down. They had known each other since high school, back when kids had teased her unmercifully about being the bugman’s daughter. Rachel had been her friend in the days when football players had made huge pyramids of roach motels in front her locker and asked if she used Black Flag as perfume. ---As one of the very few black students in school Rachel had been a fellow outcast of sorts and they had formed a bond that still endured. A bond that had lasted through Rachel’s marriage and divorce and through her own long series of assorted failed relationships. ---The only thing that ever came between them was the question of religion, Rachel had been raised in a very devout church going Baptist family, and to this day her faith seemed all but unshakable. ---Abigail had long ago decided that she wanted nothing to do with religion, that she didn’t believe in much of anything. In her mind, all that organized religion did was give people yet another reason to hate and be cruel to each other. Each religion pronounced that it was the one true path to salvation and that everyone else was wrong and doomed to burn in hell. ---People denied their children needed medical attention in the name of god and then blamed their children for their lack of faith when they died, people strapped on bombs and blew up strangers buying fruit in markets in the name of god, and people flew crowded airplanes into office buildings in the name of god. ---She felt that if god existed then she wanted no part of the sick bastard. ---Not a philosophy that went over well with someone whose father had been a church deacon. Still, they managed to agree to disagree even though Abigail knew that deep down inside Rachel still held onto the hope that her best friend would someday see the light in a sudden blinding epiphany. ---So far her life had been more or less epiphany free. Everything that she knew she had figured out the hard way, usually the hardest way possible. But if it was a comfort to her friend to hang onto the hope that they would both end up in heaven together strumming harps and complimenting one another on the shininess of their halos, well so be it. ---She had talked to her mother on the phone today. Her mother called on all the major holidays and on her birthday. Never at any other time. Her mother had married another man a few years after her first husband’s death and moved down to Florida with him. Abigail had visited exactly once, her mother’s new husband had tried to get her drunk on bad wine and had put his meaty hand on her knee under the table in one of the tackiest diners that she had ever been in. Her mother had simpered and fawned over the man until Abigail had wanted to vomit on the table. ---So, now days their communication was limited to standard holiday and birthday phone calls and the forwarded inspirational emails her mother seemed to live to send her. Never a personal message with these, just things that caught her mother’s eye on the Internet. For years now Abigail had been deleting these messages unread. ---The man from two failed relationships ago had given her a computer, a sleek laptop with more functions than she was capable of comprehending. Rachel said that it paid to date computer nerds, even though they were usually complete failures as human beings they were grateful enough for sex that they often came across with good gifts. A lap dance could just mean a laptop. ---Odd outlook for a supposedly deeply religious woman but there you had it. ---If she was forced to imagine herself on the information highway Abigail tended to see herself as roadkill. She had never really learned much beyond the basics when it came to using the laptop. Which, she supposed, had a certain symmetry to it since the man who had given it to her had never learned anything beyond the basics about sex. ---So, what to wear? What outfit didn’t cry out ‘lonely forty year old looking for Mr. Right Now?’ What looked ‘post twenty something yet premenopausal?’ She sighed and put on a simple black dress to which she added a string of pearls given to her by the man from three failed relationships ago. She had long suspected that they were as fake as he had turned out to be but had never really cared enough to find out for sure. ---She swept her keys off of the kitchen counter and tossed them into her purse, the one that Rachel had given to her for her birthday last year. A few minutes earlier she had called for a cab to meet her in front of her building so it should be waiting for her out front. ---“Happy Birthday!” She told her reflection as she passed the large antique mirror in the hallway. The image in the mirror looked skeptical, like it doubted the sincerity of the well wisher. ---The place was called McMurphys and it was so damn Irish that it was getting on her nerves. Rachel had claimed that it was the new hot singles spot and the current place to see and be seen and all that crap so here they were. The bartender was cute but not as cute as he thought he was. They had had no idea of what they wanted to order when they had first sat down so they had told him to surprise them. So, every round that he sent then was something different. ---So far they had been sent a sex on the beach, a screaming orgasm, a hop, skip and go naked and a blowjob. The theme was not lost on them, the bartender had his eyes all over Rachel. ---“Once you go black, you never go back.” She had told him flirtatiously after the third round. ---Abigail looked at her friend and found that she couldn’t blame the bartender, Rachel was beautiful and looked at least ten years younger that she was. They had slept together a couple of times in college, hell everyone had been bisexual in college. Even uptight daughters of bible thumpers experimented. The memory of it suddenly filled her senses, the warm softness and the delicious heated friction that had built between them. ---As memories brought an ache to her heart and a flush to her face she wondered out of nowhere if Rachel would sleep with her tonight if she asked her to. ---“Hey sweetie, you all right? It’s not that hot in here and you are still way too young for hot flashes.” Her friend laughed as she signaled for another round. ---“Shut up and finish the blowjob.” She told her as she took a sip of her drink. ---“I think that I have heard that line before somewhere.” Rachel told her with a wicked grin. ---Everyone had experimented in college, everyone had been desperate to reinvent themselves. The most wonderful thing about college had been the simple fact that no one had given a good goddamn about what her father had done for a living. Everyone was free to be whoever they chose to pretend to be, she had tried on personas like some people tried on clothes. After years of being ‘the bugman’s daughter’ she had been free to be whoever she wanted to be. ---Still, when she looked in the mirror she could still sometimes see that same outcast freak that had defined her high school years. Maybe you really never got past who or what you were back then, maybe all of the changes were just so much window dressing. She was now a successful graphic artist for a major advertising firm but she was also the skinny little twerp that the other kids had thrown bugs at out on the playground. ---She had two awards for her work gathering dust on her mantelpiece but they didn’t change the fact that her father had blown his brains out her second year in college and they didn’t change the fact that she was lonely and slowly becoming bitter. ---Once during an argument, her mother had become furious with her for some affront or another and had hurled the worst insult that she had been capable of thinking of at her difficult daughter. ---“You are just like your father!” ---So, now here she was, on her fortieth birthday sitting in a bar that she didn’t want to be in, drinking a drink that tasted like cough syrup gone bad, entertaining lustful notions about her oldest friend and thinking that perhaps her mother had been right. ---Her father had once wanted to be an artist, like her he had sold out for a job that offered more money and security. The work that she did at the agency was a far cry from the kind of art that she had once dreamed of doing. Like her father she avoided major drama and collected instead an ever heavier load of small sorrows and disappointments and like her father she kept secrets from those supposedly the closest to her. ---She wondered if she was having an epiphany, but she supposed that epiphanies were much like orgasms. If you had to wonder you probably weren’t having one. ---“So, anyway, like I was saying, this latest idiot that I have been more or less dating told me that he couldn’t commit to a serious relationship because he had no idea who he really was. Well, hell, who does? Aren’t we all just sort of making it up as we go along?” Rachel said as she waved at the busy bartender again for another drink. ---“I know exactly who I am.” Abigail told her slowly, careful to keep her words from slurring as the drinks began to catch up with her. ---“And whom, girlfriend, might that be?” Rachel asked her teasingly in the same overly careful tone. ---“I am the bugman’s daughter.” ---The waitress brought them their drinks and they both looked down to see what the bartender had sent them this time. ---Kamikazes.

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