These Dreams of You

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Earlier in his life, Zan decided it’s the scandinavian in him that accounts for the pathological orderliness he since has surrendered. This realization preceded another that he lives with four agents of chaos, if you count the dog; but his attempted reconciliation with chaos notwithstanding, the violation of the house by rats represents something so primal he can’t abide it despite the house itself having become a locus of uncertainty. He dreams of rats the night that Viv tells him she’s counted four. He dreams of them coming out of the holes that his son has punched in the walls in small explosions of new adolescent violence; one night Viv wakes to something running down her arm. Zan will let a tsunami take the house before the bank does, but not the rats, not yet.

Some years ago Zan had the house sealed, so he isn’t sure where the breach has occurred. It’s possible, he believes, that the rats came right through the front door, which sometimes has stood open for hours when Chaos Agent Number Four, otherwise known to Zan as the Fucking Dog, pushes his way in. Whatever the explanation, now the vermin can be heard scampering across the kitchen floor at night and scurrying through vents. For $500 that they don’t have, Zan hires an exterminator, an aging latino giant named Jorge who lumbers through the house and crawls beneath it laying traps.