Терри Биссон: The Cockroach Hat: A Literary Love Story

“It’s a cockroach hat.” She showed me how it worked. When she put it on, she looked exactly like a cockroach, six legs and all. I tried it on myself. We were passing a health food store and I saw myself reflected in the plate glass window. It worked!

She had made it herself out of stuff around the house. “You gave me the idea,” she said. “I thought it might come in handy.”

Indeed it did. “Before you kill me,” she told her father, “I want you to try on this hat. I made it myself.”

Like a fool he did. I shot him and she cut him up with the scissors, careful to leave the hat on his “head.” When the police came they were puzzled but we had an alibi.

“He looked to us like a big cockroach,” said Anna.

“We believe you,” said the police.

“I love you,” she said (to me, Sam), but that came later.

First, they let us go and we walked home, hand in hand, along the canal part of the way, holding our noses comically. It was a beautiful spring night in Brooklyn and I had learned a thing or two about love. It was time to make a new start.

We quickened our steps. We had forgotten to step on the baby.

Wyrldmaker

(Timescape, 1981)

Talking Man

(Morrow, 1986)

Fire on the Mountain

(Morrow, 1988)

Voyage to the Red Planet

(Morrow, 1990)

Pirates of the Universe

(Tor, 1996)

The Pickup Artist

(Tor, 2001)

Be First in the Universe (with Stephanie Spinner)

(Delacorte, 2000)

Expiration Date: Never (with Stephanie Spinner)

(Delacorte, 2001)

Bears Discover Fire and Other Stories

(Tor, 1993)

In The Upper Room and Other Likely Stories

(Tor, 2000)

Greetings

(Tachyon, 2005)

Numbers Don’t Lie

(Tachyon, 2005)

Billy’s Book

(PS Publishing, 2009)

The Left Left Behind

(PM Press, 2009)

Nat Turner

(Chelsea House, 1988)

On a Move: The Story of Mumia Abu Jamal

(Plough, 2001)