Say Goodbye

TWENTY-ONE

HENRIETTA WASN’T DOING WELL. LAST NIGHT, HE had squashed a cricket between his finger and thumb, exposing its internal organs, then placed it in the dark shelter of the ICU next to Henrietta’s fangs. He had checked first thing this morning. The mashed insect remained in plain sight. Henrietta herself had retreated an inch, laborious progress given her mangled legs.

He reminded himself that older tarantulas often went weeks without eating after molting. Once, he’d heard a story of a tarantula that had gone an entire year without food and still recovered.

Starvation was not the danger. Dehydration was.

He would help her. They had come this far together. He would see her to the bitter end.

He didn’t turn on the light. Instead, he moved around the darkened master bath with the practice of a man used to adjusting his eyesight to the gloom. He’d already brought up a saucer from the kitchen, sterilized in boiling water. Now he filled it with a few drops of water, then propped up an edge on two cotton balls, tilting the saucer enough to pool the water at one end while forming a slight incline. Perfect.

Now the tricky part. Contrary to what people thought, spiders were notoriously fragile. Even the most impressive-looking tarantula was really a relatively small, poor-sighted creature of limited speed. They were easily crushed if improperly handled. Let alone the dangers inherent in molting, pesticides, parasites, and spider-eating wasps. No wonder tarantulas preferred to live in small, dark places all alone.

But Henrietta couldn’t hide anymore. She needed water.

Reaching into the container, he cupped his hand over her body as if she were an egg, careful not to squeeze too hard in order to protect his skin from the discomfort of the urticating bristles. His fingers enclosed the legs on one side of her body, while his thumb covered the legs on the other side and his index finger came down and over the top of the chelicerae. In one smooth motion, he turned his hand palm up, with Henrietta nestled lightly inside.

He swung her over to the prepared water dish, where he positioned her with her chelicerae and fangs immersed in the water and the rest of her body uphill. He let go, studying her closely to ensure she didn’t slide down into the shallow pool and drown.

After a few minutes, when she remained firmly in place, he rocked back on his heels with a satisfied nod and glanced at his watch. Forty-five minutes ought to do it. Then he’d move her back to the ICU with a freshly disemboweled cricket. Hopefully, that would do the trick.

Now he had other pets to tend.

The master bedroom was large. Two sides of huge bay windows, a charmingly vaulted ceiling. Once upon a time, this would have been the sunny crown jewel of the expansive summer home. Covered farmer’s porch that wrapped around two sides. A front parlor with stained glass. Three chimneys, six bedrooms, a sunroom.

Time had faded the heavily flowered wallpaper just as years of neglect had led to peeling paint, broken boards, sagging foundation. In the downstairs, certain windows wouldn’t close. Other doors wouldn’t open. The entire house tilted to the right, giving the place a drunken feel.

And yet, it was perfect. Filled with nooks and crannies, twisting staircases, old cupboards, exposed rafters. When the man had first seen the abandoned property, the ceiling of the entire master bedroom had been a tangle of cobwebs. In the course of his walk-through, not one but two spiders had dropped from the rafters onto the shoulder of the startled real estate agent. She had screamed both times. And he had known instantly he would take it.

He had divided his collection among the rooms upstairs. Tarantulas in the master bedroom, recluses in the adjoining nursery, combfooted spiders down the hall. They lived in terrariums or cobweb frames, cleaned once a month and refilled with adequate water. Room-darkening shades kept the sun at bay. Humidifiers kept the spaces at proper levels of moisture. In some of the rooms, he had brought in soil to cover the floors. Good old-fashioned dirt, filled with leaves and detritus and night crawlers. The earthen layer helped insulate the drafty floors and provide a whiff of death and decay. Ambience for arachnids.

The man himself hated dirt. The smell of it. The feel of it sliding between his fingers, sifting between his toes. He might say he was afraid of it, except he did not allow himself to feel fear. Instead, he surrounded himself with the very substance whose smell sometimes roiled his stomach and sent him to the bad place in his mind.

He respected these spiders. He studied them, nurtured them, used them to find the spider in himself.

In return, his collection provided him with sanctuary. A place where he came to brood when the bad spells hit and everyone knew better than to make eye contact. He would lie on the dirt-covered floor, remembering all the things he wanted to forget until his rage bubbled to the surface. Then he would strip off his clothes and open the tops of the fish-tank terrariums, watching colonies of brown recluses pour out. He would dare them to do their worst. He would beg them to do their worst.

But spiders remained shy creatures at heart. The brown recluses might walk across his feet, climb up his hairy legs, explore the veins on his arm. But mostly, they disappeared into the cracks and crevices of the old house, until he was forced to put out glue sheets to capture them.

The glue sheets killed them, of course. Because that’s what he did best-destroy, even the things he loved.

He started with the tarantulas now, moving methodically from rectangular glass enclosure to rectangular glass enclosure, lined up neatly on the metal shelves along the walls. Each terrarium was labeled with the species of spider and an index card where he recorded the day’s feeding. A new captive might eat a dozen crickets a week, while the average was six to eight crickets a month. Before and after molting, some tarantulas wouldn’t eat anything at all.

There was also the matter of variety. Some tarantulas ate only crickets and mealworms. The larger species, however, preferred baby mice and rats, dead but at room temperature (he bought them frozen and ran them under warm tap water; he had learned the hard way never to nuke a dead mouse; it had taken him forever to get the smell out of the kitchen). When he had first started out, he had caught insects in the garden-grasshoppers, cicadas, cockroaches, moths, caterpillars, earthworms. Wild insects, however, were an unsafe food choice-they could be contaminated with pesticides, inadvertently poisoning his pets. Now he bought most of his food from online pet stores, dividing his purchases among several different establishments so as not to call attention to himself.

His collection contained over one hundred and twenty specimens now, not counting the brown recluses whose delicate brown bodies probably numbered close to a thousand. He had spiders he’d caught in the garden, spiders he’d purchased abroad, spiders he’d bred himself, and, of course, a nursery filled with young spiderlings.

And like any proper enthusiast, he was still adding to the collection.

He was at the last terrarium. Even in the half-dark, he could feel the eyes watching him, feral, calculating, predatory.

It made him smile.

Theraphosa blondi. The world’s largest spider, with a leg span in excess of ten inches. He had imported this male just last week from South America. The tarantula had arrived, rearing back on its hind legs and hissing loud enough to be heard across the room. With extremely large fangs and a body covered in irritating bristles, it was a lean, mean fighting machine, known to take on anything from rodents to small birds.

The majority of tarantulas were gentle giants. The T. blondi, on the other hand, was famous for its bad attitude, with a bite capable of costing the unwary collector a finger, or even a hand.

He could feel the spider watching him late at night. Had watched it in turn as it roamed its new home, delicately tapping on the glass as if testing for possible weaknesses. He had the impression of a wild, churning intelligence. The spider was studying, waiting, plotting.

If the man presented the opportunity, the tarantula would strike.

The man bent over now, studying the dark mottled spider, crouched in the far corner of its cage.

“Hey,” the man said. “Want a mouse?”

He dangled the dead white mouse, waited to see what the spider would do. A few legs arched out, tested the air.

“Here’s the deal,” the man said. “Behave, get breakfast. Attack, and starve. Got it?”

He waited a heartbeat more. When the tarantula did not rush the glass, or rear up in a hostile display, the man straightened, put his hand on the top of the weighted mesh-screen lid and readied himself.

One, two, three. He popped up the corner, dropped the mouse, and watched as ten inches of tarantula sprang from the corner and caught the corpse midair. Both dead mouse and spider landed with a thud, the mottled dark body already wrapped fiercely around its new treasure. Then the tarantula’s head came up, fangs exposed…

The man dropped the top more hastily than he intended, falling back.

He caught himself at the last minute, steadying his pulse, eyeing the T. blondi with fresh respect.

He rapped a knuckle against the glass.

“Welcome to the collection,” he said, then, feeling that he’d had the last word on the subject, sauntered downstairs.

Boy was in the living room, playing video games. Boy was always holding a remote, eyes glazed over, sullen look on his face. Teenagers.

The man watched him from the doorway, contemplating.

Time was winding down now. A week, maybe more. It surprised him to feel a rush of nostalgia, a teacher for a student, a father for a son.

He walked in the room, shut off the TV. Boy opened his mouth to protest, then thought better of it. The boy hunkered down, waiting.

“Can’t you say good morning?” the man demanded, standing next to the sofa.

“Good morning.”

“Hell, think a few manners wouldn’t hurt. Haven’t I taught you anything?”

Boy looked up now, eyes hot, sulky. “I said good morning!”

“Yeah, but we both know you didn’t mean it.” The man backed off, making some calculations of his own. “You heard from her?” he asked abruptly.

Boy looked away. “Not yet.”

“Think she’ll do it?”

Boy shrugged.

“That’s about right,” the man agreed. “Nothin’ good ever came from trusting a woman. So, you gettin’ excited, boy? Come on, we’re talking graduation! That doesn’t happen every day.”

Boy shrugged again. The man wasn’t fooled.

He grinned, but it wasn’t a pleasant look on his face. “Tell me the truth, son. You think she loves you, don’t you? You and Ginny, sitting in a tree, k-i-s-s-i-n-g. Gonna get married? Raise the baby? Live in a house with a white picket fence?” Man waved his hand. “Pretend none of this ever happened?”

Boy said nothing.

“I’ll tell you, son, I’ll tell you exactly what’s gonna happen. You’re gonna graduate, I’m gonna offer you a big hunk-o-cash, and you’re gonna want to throw it in my face. But you’ll swallow your pride. You’ll take my money. You’ll tell yourself you’re gonna pay it back later. When you’re what? Gainfully employed as a male hooker, a pimp, a drug runner? ’Cause, you know, elementary-school dropouts don’t exactly go to college, or qualify as electricians, or auto mechanics.

“But you haven’t figured that out yet. You think freedom is only days away and anything’s gotta be better than this.

“Yeah, I give you two months, tops. Then you’ll be living on the street, giving blow jobs for five dollars a pop to dirty old men, or shooting anything you can find into your veins. And you’ll start to wonder. Was it really so bad here? Big ol’ house. Free food. Video games. Cable TV.

“I treated you right, boy. You’ll find out soon enough. I treated you good.”

The man headed toward the kitchen. Time for breakfast, then he needed to sit his sorry ass down in front of the computer. Cash reserves were getting low. Had to do some work.

At the last moment, however, the boy spoke up.

“How much?” the boy asked from the sofa, clearing his throat. “How much cash?”

“Why? Why do you care? You gotta graduate first.”

“I want to know,” the boy said. He had that look about him again, eyes flat, watchful. Like the T. blondi upstairs. The boy was growing up. He was also now one inch taller than the man and they both knew it. “I want to know,” the boy said, “exactly how much my life is worth.”

The man considered the matter. He turned on his heel, returning to the sofa, and was rewarded by watching the boy brace himself, as if preparing for a blow. But the man didn’t strike out. Instead, he leaned down. He said the words almost tenderly, whispering them next to the boy’s ear. “Dipshit, you ain’t worth the broken condom your parents used the night you were conceived. But I’ll take pity on you. I’ll give you a hundred bucks. Ten dollars for each year of service. Be grateful.”

Boy looked at him. “I want ten thousand.”

“Honey, you weren’t that good a fuck.”

“I want ten thousand,” the boy insisted again, and the very emptiness of his eyes spooked the man a little, tingled the fine hairs on the back of his neck, though he was careful not to show it.

He regarded the boy thoughtfully. “Ten grand? You’re serious?”

“I deserve it.”

The man laughed abruptly, ruffling the boy’s hair. “You want some extra money, son? Then you’d better earn it. Let me tell you about this new spider I got upstairs…”