The Stranger                    Joachim Frank

(first appeared in Ghoti Magazine, now defunct)

 

Alex awoke with a start, to see the room filled with bright light. Through the open window came the reverberations of a sound that had shattered his dream. Garbage night, he thought with a sigh. His wife was fast asleep, a grin frozen on her face, her mouth slightly open. He got up from the bed in slow motion, put on his Bermuda shorts, and tip-toed out of the bedroom. He opened the back door and went outside. The cold dew that covered the grass and the clover bathed his feet. Another brilliant day was in the making: flowers in all colors beckoned in their inexplicable silence. There was growth, there was the bursting of life he had fostered, there was will to become.

Alex took a few steps toward the deck, to inspect the progress of his Chinese Wisteria plant on its way up. Each shoot started as a bulbous furry thing in the pit of a leaf stem; it seemed to stall for a day, uncertain and loosing determination, but inside that green fur the plant was making a microscopic copy of itself, with each feathery leaf pre-formed but tiny as the antennas of a beetle. After this long period of planning, the shoot would suddenly start to telescope itself into the air above, in an empty blind punch to seek support. As it expanded and spiraled upwards around the wooden post, the leaves unfolded like little accordions.

This morning the uppermost shoot had completed its third turn and was halfway up on its way to the roof of the deck. Alex felt a rush of satisfaction, as if he himself had completed a difficult chore, like a mountain climb, and was now taking a rest to overlook the valley beneath. “Nice work,” he said, smiling at his plant.

His eye fell on a brown spot close to the stem — could it be that the first flower buds were on their way? But then the brown spot started moving, and, as it moved into the sun, iridescent colors appeared. Close to the spot the leaves were ragged; small semi-circular pieces were missing as though bitten off by so many elves.

“A bug!” he cried out. “I’ll be damned, a bug. A filthy Japanese bug on my Chinese Wisteria. Figures.”

He grabbed the bug, which at once began struggling between his thumb and finger, so much that it tickled, flung it onto the planks of the deck and stomped on it with the heel of his bare foot. The wooden boards amplified the sound of crunching. Disgusted, he jumped into the wet grass. Holding his killer leg stiff, he walked around in a circle to brush off the brittle remnants.

“What are you doing out there?” From the house came the sleepy voice of his wife. Jennifer stood behind the screen like a shadow.

“Beetles. Japanese beetles.”

“You must be kidding. This is halfway around the globe.”

“Believe me. I’ve seen them in our Garden Guide.”

She came out in her blue morning coat and matching slippers. Her black, curly hair was wild, unkempt. Bending over him and touching him lightly with her bed-warmth, she said,

“Where are they?”

“Actually one. I found one. I finished it.”

She kept staring at the bush, then cried out,

“Jesus. Look at this. I see two. They are actually . . . they are fucking.”

“Oh, my God,” he said as he recognized two beetles astride, partly hidden in the green.

Apparently, the one at the bottom was not ashamed of eating during the act. Alex, suddenly becoming aware of the pressure of Jennifer’s breasts on his back, felt a spell of dizziness.

“When you pluck them off, keep them together,” she said into his ear.

“You know what they are doing, Jennifer? They’re making more beetles,” he said. “They’re making more fucking beetles in my backyard.”

“Keep them together, will you?” she said. “Just these two. It might bring us luck. Please?”

He plucked the two bodies off the leaf and dropped them into the ashtray on the table. The two bugs separated upon impact, then started climbing up the rim. Every time one of them was halfway up, it slid down with a tiny tingling sound.

Alex and Jennifer sat down on either side of the table and watched the performance. Jennifer leaned on the wooden top, her elbows angled out. The sun had risen sharply, flooding the deck with bright light that was about to turn uncomfortably warm. The morning’s first mosquito appeared and caused Jennifer to wave her left hand.

“You know,” Jennifer said. “There’s something I need to tell you.”

Alex lifted his head and looked into her eyes.

“Yes?” he said. The last time she had told him something she said she needed to tell him was when she had bought an expensive dress on impulse. The time before that, when her period had been late. With a pang of his heart he realized how much time had gone by since the miscarriage and the months of monosyllabic life they had been living after that.

“I don’t know how to put it,” she said. She was looking at her fingernails. “The thing is, I saw you stomping outside in your flowery shorts, and for a second I thought to myself, ‘how odd! Who is this man?’ I thought, ‘what if he was a total stranger? What if I called the police to have this man removed?’ Isn’t that strange? But then — get this! — I saw his chin for a second, and I said to myself, ‘this is the chin of a man I might want to be with.’ And it was you all along!”

“That is strange,” Alex said. “You never told me about my chin. What is it about my chin?”

“I don’t know. It’s just . . . curved like this.” She made a circular movement with her outstretched hand. “Resolute but sensual. I don’t know how to put it.”

“Also, you’d say individual,” he said.

“I would say what?”

“Have this in-di-vi-du-al removed. That’s how you talk to the police.”

“Well, obviously, I didn’t have it down to the details,” Jennifer snorted back.

The bugs, after many attempts to climb the edge of the ashtray, had landed on top of each other, apparently quite by accident. They touched each other’s little antennae furiously.

“Here we go,” she said.

“Nice work,” he said, “go for it!”