Кейт Эллиот - The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2021

Efficiently, I work through all of the Hefty bags and throw away everything except a handful of items, and these I put away among my things, cleaning and humming as I go. I also throw away all of the empty lipstick tubes. As I scrub the remnants of red lipstick from the bathroom sink, I catch my reflection in the mirror and realize that I have not stopped smiling since leaving Consuelo’s house.

Out in the kitchen, I open a window and let in the summer night air while I wash the dishes in the sink. The sounds of the city bubble in from the street: car horns, a distant radio, sirens, shouts of kids playing. Tomorrow, I think, and for the first time in a long time, the word expands before me like unmarred snow.

When the apartment is clean, I change into pajamas. On my back, I spread my arms and drift, weightless and cradled, on the sea of my bed. I sleep like a baby, my mind blank, pristine.

I wake up with the sun and float around my apartment, getting dressed. I go to two appointments downtown and sell two sets of knives. At the second appointment, the woman says, smiling, “You seem so happy. You must really like your job.” On the train home, people smile at me, and it’s as if I’m emanating something beautiful and pure, something people want more of.

A memory surfaces, unbidden, of the day after my mother died. How I had gone to the funeral home to choose her casket, and then cried on the subway, my head in my hands, a Hefty bag of her belongings stuffed between my knees. How people had looked in the other direction, and sidled silently away, as if sadness were an airborne disease you could catch.

I let the memory go and focus instead on a cute guy sitting across from me. I catch his eye and smile. He flushes and smiles back. My stop is next and I walk home, awake to the electricity of the city. I turn onto my street and see a rat standing in the middle of the sidewalk, waiting. I give it a wide berth, shivering with disgust as I enter my building, where I spend the evening lounging on the couch, imagining new jobs, boyfriends, and tropical vacations.

The next morning, I raise the blinds of my bedroom window and a rat is perched outside on the air conditioner, watching me. I scream even though the rat can’t touch me, even though we are separated by a thick pane of glass. The rat doesn’t move. How did it get there?

The rat watches me as I cower behind the bedroom door and peer out at it. After a few tense minutes, I finally do what I do best: I scurry across the room, yank the blinds down, and hope the problem goes away. I spend the morning army-crawling around my bedroom like an idiot, trying to get dressed without—​what? Alarming the rat?

I briefly consider dislodging the air conditioning unit and pushing the entire thing out the window, letting it drop three floors into the airshaft below, but then I imagine the rat running up the slope of the air conditioner and onto my arms as I push. I’ve seen YouTube videos of New York City rats scaling the facades of apartment buildings.

Its stolid, determined rat silhouette is still visible through the blinds when I leave for my first house call. I comfort myself by deciding that I will call an exterminator if the rat is still there when I get home. I put my headphones on and walk toward the subway. It’s eight in the morning and the city’s already in full swing. I let my attention rove over the street vendors and the schoolteacher walking a caterpillar of toddlers on a giant leash.

I stop to wait for a light and there it is, next to me. A woman standing nearby screams and a man shouts “Rat!” and stomps to scare it away. The rat doesn’t run, and the man pulls a leg back and kicks it as hard as he can with a heavy construction boot.

I wince at the thud the boot makes against the rat’s body, and then sigh in relief when the rat flies through the air and disappears behind a pile of trash bags waiting for pickup. I run down the steps, onto the subway platform, and jump onto the 1 train right before the doors close. The car is nearly empty. I put my headphones on with shaky fingers as the train pulls out of the station.

A few stops later, a gaggle of teenage girls get on. By the time we start moving again, they’re applying lip gloss and tittering and TikTok-ing videos of themselves making faces and doing stupid dances.

My heart rate slows as I watch them and think of all the friends I let drift away. Who would want to hang out with someone who can barely keep it together for a dinner without crying, anyway? I’m ashamed at my old weakness.

For the first time in a long time, I am able to keep my thoughts away from my mother. I think of the friends I might call this weekend instead. I scroll through the contacts on my phone. I can do dinner now; I can feel it.

The girls have gone quiet and they’re looking in my direction. Oh, God. What is it? I look for stains on my hideous yellow suit, and the girls start screaming and leap up onto the orange and mustard-colored seats of the moving train. They’re clinging to the metal bars and pointing to my left. I follow their eyes and fingers. There, four seats down from me, its long tail hanging over the edge of the seat like a whip, sits the rat.

I scream, too, and sprint to the door on the other side of the car, where I cower near the girls until the train stops. When it does, I run out onto the platform and, heart pounding, take the stairs three at a time to get out to the street. I run through the first door I come to, a bank. Inside, it’s quiet. A line of customers waits for the teller.

“What can we do for you today?” a woman at the information desk asks.

The rat waits outside, watching me through the glass, seemingly indifferent to the throngs of people walking up and down Broadway.

“Um, I’m not sure yet,” I say, pulling out my phone. I google “animal control.” I google “rat disease.” I get a call from Kutco about the house call I am scheduled to make. The client is expecting me, the operator says, and wants to know if I’m running late. I say yes, I am, and apologize. I hang up and book an Uber.

The rat watches me scramble into the car, watches me slam the door hard behind me.

The house call is a bust and the woman seems incredulous that a company has employed someone as untethered as me to sell knives. I pack up my wares and nurse the cup of herbal tea she’s given me, just to put off leaving. I do leave, eventually, but I don’t see the rat again until I approach my apartment building after two more failed house calls. It’s waiting a few feet from the entrance, its fur glimmering in the streetlight.

When I open the door, it doesn’t try to dart into the building with me, and for that I mumble a grudging thank you as I pull the door shut with trembling hands.

The next morning, the rat is waiting outside my bedroom window again. I finally get up the courage to look at it straight on.

It’s ugly, even for a New York City rat: about the size of a squirrel, gray with bald spots and scars. One of its ears is missing. Its tail is as long as a ruler and its eyes are beads of gasoline.

I snap the blinds down again.

The next morning, I take the bandage off and throw it away. Then I scurry to the subway station and take the train back to Hamilton Heights. On the way, I look at the healed line on my wrist.

I march down the musty old hallway and rap-rap-rap on the door like I’m the police, like I’m owed a debt.

A woman I’ve never seen opens the door just wide enough to release a flood of soapy, Cloroxy air. She is wearing elbow-length dishwashing gloves and an exasperated look. She tells me she doesn’t know anything about the previous tenant, this slovenly Consuelo. The new tenant looks me up and down, clearly dismissing me as a grubby acquaintance of Consuelo’s.