Shelly pinched a nit between her index finger and thumb and then carefully slid it down her long strands of hair until it released at the end. She held it in a firm pinch-grip and transferred it to the stark white void of the bedsheet. It was like a little operating theater. She wished for a magnifying glass. She was interested in the science of head lice (pediculus humanus capitis). She studied the nit. It was translucent, which meant it was just the empty husk of a hatched louse and not an actual living parasite. Unhatched eggs tended to be brown, which indicated a larva inside. Brown nits matched her hair color but she was thinking of dyeing it red.
Shelly had head lice. Her noggin had been itching like crazy for two days. Scouring her scalp with her usual Prell proved ineffectual. She couldn’t figure out where she’d picked them up. She’d visited the zoo last weekend and perhaps she caught them there. Lots of grubby little children with hair at the zoo. Kids were notoriously infested with vermin.
She swept the dead shell off the sheet and imagined the impact as big as a meteor. There were microscopic dinosaurs that would consume it. Fearsome predators that survived on grains of exuviated skin and tiny insects that died like wooly mammoths on the rolling tundra of her beige polypropylene carpet. Beasts with carrion appetites. She felt a sense of calm reassurance when she considered the invisible ecosystems around her. The monsters in her eyelashes. The tingling horde in her hair.
She remembered watching the chimpanzees at the zoo and the way they groomed each other, picking the detritus from their fur and eating it. Shelly needed someone to do that for her! Of course, chimps also groomed in the interest of social bonding and brute simian politics.
She remembered the last time she was in rehab and some of the other women were brushing and braiding each other’s hair and the nursing staff had to break it up because it was against hospital rules. Patients weren’t allowed to touch each other.
Shelly thought the policy was a bit too strict. It’s not like they were eating each other out.
She heard boots stamping up the wooden steps outside her door. She knew those boots. Sure enough, Clement’s three-bang knock sent her jumping off the bed and sprinting into the kitchen. Clement had a habit of banging with his heavy rings and the sudden shotgun sound made her want to give him a spontaneous splenectomy.
She opened the door and there was Clement grinning at her. He was holding a bottle of Malbec, a cold cigarette between his lips.
She scowled. “I told you how much I hate it when you knock like that. I almost jumped out of my skin again.”
“Sorry babe. I forgot.” He lifted the bottle of wine. “Brought this.…”
She sighed and swept her hair out of her eyes. “I don’t think you want to come in right now.”
“Why not?”
“I have lice.”
He stepped back and went, “Whoa!” with his hand up, as if that would halt contagion.
She said, “Yeah, you don’t wanna get too close. You’d be a playground for the little critters.” Clement was the shaggiest guy she knew, having unruly shoulder-length hair and a proud black beard. He looked as if he’d escaped from a 1969 album cover. He could have joined the Manson Family without an admittance fee.
“So what are you doing about it?” he asked, still easing away.
She shrugged. “Guess I’ll head down to the drugstore. Pick up some pesticide shampoo or whatever. And one of those little fine-tooth combs.”
“Yeah. Well, good luck with that. Guess I’ll be shoving off….”
She gave him a lopsided smile. “Run, you coward! The cooties are coming!”
He turned from her and as he walked away said, “Don’t forget to fumigate your bedding.” And then he was clumping back down the stairs.
Shelly stepped back into the kitchen, shutting the door, disgusted by Clement’s lack of chivalry. He could have offered to pick up the drugstore supplies for her. He could have at least left her the wine. What kind of friend was he? And after all those casual, humanitarian blowjobs.
She returned to the bedroom and slid back into bed, pulling the blanket around her like a shroud. She didn’t feel like going out for the chemical weapons needed to murder her lice. But she also didn’t want the little buggers to mate and breed and overpopulate the place. Her hairstyle was a biohazard. They would infest her pillows and sheets. Colonize the ticking and support layers of the mattress. They would stampede across the carpet like wildebeests. She needed to nip the outbreak in the bud, thus negating the need to pay for costly pest-control fumigation.
She rolled over and looked at the clock. The morning had crashed into the afternoon. She’d let the day escape. Potential squandered. Her silly life was draining away one empty moment at a time.
She suddenly wished she had a cat. For company. To cuddle. To share her lice with.
When she was seven her beloved orange tabby, Marshall, had died on the busy highway that ran past their old red house in Casper, Wyoming. She was devastated by the sudden loss. Marshall wasn’t an outdoor cat but her father and uncle Joey had been moving a couch into the house with the back door propped open and Marshall seized the opportunity and made a speedy escape.
After they got the couch safely inside they searched for the cat. Uncle Joey discovered Marshall’s body on the soft shoulder, tangled and bloody. They buried him in the back yard and Shelly cried for the rest of the day.
And a few days later, she made Marshall a god.
It began little by little, thinking about her precious cat, feeling the love she still held for him and wondering where he was, soul-wise. People existed. People had souls. People were animals. Therefore animals had souls. It made perfect sense and this realization spawned a burgeoning belief system and personal deity.
She started talking to Marshall, sure he was hovering above. And the talks became prayers.
She prayed to Marshall before a crucial math test, and received a surprisingly good grade of 85%.
When Sheila Boisvert started to victimize her at recess she beseeched Marshall for the strength to retaliate and head-butted Sheila in the nose, busting the nasal bones and releasing a gush of blood down the front of her pink Hello Kitty sweatshirt. It was like a hellish, crimson spigot had opened and Shelly was escorted to the principal’s office straight away (while Sheila was rushed to the school nurse). She was suspended for three days and grounded at home. Her parents forced her to apologize to Sheila Boisvert whose face looked war-torn. Her nose was swollen, splinted and swaddled in gauze and she had two nasty black shiners. She never bothered Shelly again, praise Marshall.
Eventually, it began to dawn on her that a dead cat was probably not a god and her prayers to Marshall dried up. She never got another cat.
Shelly rolled over and punched a more comfortable indentation into her goose-down pillow. What a dumb little kid she’d been. She was glad she’d never told anybody about Marshall’s feline divinity. The revelation would have made her an even more vulnerable target for bullies. Elementary school was full of bullies. Socialization was persecution.
She raked her nails across her scalp with brisk vigor. The head lice situation was losing its novelty. She checked the clock and realized the day was slipping toward dusk. Damn. She had to get a move on. The longer she lived (she was 35) the faster time accelerated. Months used to move like mud. Now they rushed forward at breakneck speed, falling like dominoes in a trajectory toward death. She’d heard from the grapevine that time was relative and illusory. Everybody worked through their paltry lifespans at varied rates, depending on their frames of reference.
If she could build a reliable time machine, she’d go back and unscramble her life. Get it right this time. A do-over was definitely indicated.
She sat up and swiveled her legs off the bed. The floor felt like ice. She picked up her jeans and climbed into them, noting with weary resignation how tight they were getting around the waist.
When she grabbed her keys she said, “My dead pet is my strength and my shield. Amen.”
Then she walked out the door to buy hair-care products with toxic properties.
Crumbling Asphalt 