Terry Bisson
THE COCKROACH HAT
A LITERARY LOVE STORY
Sam Gregory woke up one morning and found, to his dismay, that he had turned into a big cockroach. “Oh, no,” he thought. He had some idea of what was happening because of the Kafka story. He hadn’t exactly read it, but he had heard all about it back when he was in college. Sam’s roommate, Cliffe with an E, had taken a course called Shape Shifters in Modern Lit, thinking it would be an easy A, like the video games he played in the Student Union, taking on all comers, or Eco-Alternatives. Instead, it required a paper, and Cliffe felt betrayed. Sam said I told you so (the wrong thing to say) and Cliffe suggested he shut the fuck up. That only made things worse and soon they weren’t speaking at all. Several times, they almost came to blows.
Instead, they became the best of friends.
Here’s how that happened: Cliffe’s girlfriend was a Conflict Resolution major, and she suggested they go bowling blindfolded (neither of them bowled) in an effort to change the subject through creative misdirection while she monitored the experiment for credit. They even rented the shoes. It might have worked, too, but she didn’t know how to keep score, plus they had forgotten the blindfolds, so they played the pinball machine instead; there was just one, between the Men’s and the Ladies’, a leftover from some previous universe of bells and flippers.
“What I don’t like about it,” said Cliffe, “is that is it’s just a metaphor instead of something real.”
“What if it was real?” I (Sam) asked. “What if it was me and I actually turned into a cockroach someday?”
“Then I would do everything I could to help you out,” said Cliffe.
I was to remember that promise later when I actually turned into a cockroach.
Meanwhile Cliffe’s girlfriend, who I will call Anna, tagging along to monitor the experiment, was pleased with the results so far. She was cute, not as cute as some but cuter than others, and I immediately fell in love with her. It made me angry how Cliffe always criticized her for everything and I told her so.
We were sort of a threesome.
She was dying of a disease and told me so. Cliff already knew. She only had a year to live. We both felt sorry for her, me sorrier, but it was Cliff who died. This happened unexpectedly one afternoon.
It was time to make a new start so Anna and I moved to Park Slope, in Brooklyn. We pretended we were married and even got a baby carriage. We rolled up a towel in a blanket and pretended it was a baby and rolled it around the streets and sidewalks.
Then we discovered it really was a baby. I say “we” but Anna had known it all along. It was crying like crazy. Luckily by then we had a house. Now this had to happen!
Here I was, a big cockroach!
I tried to think of what to do. The bedroom door was shut but I knew that sooner or later Anna would come in and see me, flat on my back with six legs in the air. I had to figure out a way to communicate with her and let her know what was what, before she freaked out.
I was still figuring when the door opened and she came in and immediately started screaming. I could see she wasn’t going to be much help, so I scurried under the bed as fast as lightning, cockroach style. Meanwhile she ran out of the room to get a broom, I figured, or something to kill me with.
I was on my own. That was when I remembered Cliffe’s promise and wished he was still alive. But if wishes were pennies we’d all be rich. I scurried down through the walls and out of the house, making quick work of the front steps.
Here on the streets of Brooklyn I was less noticeable. Fast-moving, too. It was raining, and after lots of adventures which involved things like making a boat out of a leaf and riding on a roller skate like it was a bus, I made my way to the Gowanus Canal. I had a plan. I knew that with all the renovations in Brooklyn all the writers had ended up in one building, an old warehouse that wasn’t hard to find. There were their names on the mailbox: Auster, Lethem, Whitehead, etc., and a bunch of unknowns.
“This is not how you spell metaphor,” they said, when I explained what had happened by walking through ink on scrap paper. I had spelled it with an F. I met with them all separately and together as well, but they were no help. Plus, the canal smelled good and I was beginning to face facts: the cockroach thing was for real.
I ate some paper. It was almost noon. I had to figure out a way to call in sick, at least. Then I might at least still have my job when things got straightened out.
I walked in a circle, thinking.
Then I met this old Jew. It was in the park. He almost stepped on me, then he picked me up and put me on the cuff of his shirt and started talking to me. It was in Hebrew but that was the least of my problems. His children had all died of this and that and he was fond of me. It turned out he was even older than he looked and knew lots of secrets, many of them Kabbalistic. He took out his pencil and outlined a Quest that would return me to normal.
I was off!
It took all day and involved more things like leaf boats and jumping onto the back of a pigeon and riding it like a dragon. I got to know the sewers too. I wished I had six little shoes.
But never mind, it worked, and by midafternoon I was normal, that is human, and full-sized. I was in the Bronx, but I made it home and knocked on the door at precisely five p.m.
To my surprise it was unlocked and swung open on its own. There was Anna with another lover, both of them nude.
“I thought you had turned into a cockroach,” she said.
“It must have been your imagination,” I said. I didn’t want to get into it. Especially in front of this other dude who was pulling on his pants.
If you are thinking I was devastated, you’re right. But at least I was no longer a cockroach. I looked in the mirror to make sure.
I’d had nothing to eat all day but paper, so I fixed a bowl of Cheerios while Anna got rid of her lover, who it turned out she hardly knew.
“Maybe we can make a new start,” said Anna, pulling on her panties and replacing the barrettes in her hair. That was okay by me, I told her, and we were just about to watch TV when we heard the baby crying like crazy. We had forgotten all about it!
Well, it had turned into a cockroach too. There it was with six tiny legs, waving about, and I could see why Anna had screamed so on seeing me.
I looked at her. She looked at me. I knew what she was thinking. We had neither of us wanted this baby and now it was a cockroach.
She was just about to step on it when the phone rang. It was her father, the doctor.
“Your year is up,” he said.
Was our happiness about to come to an end? She had agreed as part of a medical experiment to come into his office after a year and be killed. It wasn’t a disease at all.
“My father pressured me into it,” she told me.
“I’ll go with you,” I said. I felt sorry for her. Plus I had a plan. I got a gun out of the box of them I had won in the lottery and stuck it into my belt. My plan was to kill him before he killed her.
“What’s with the gun?” she asked and I told her.
“You’ll need an alibi,” she said, mysteriously. Her father’s office was also near the Gowanus Canal, so I found myself retracing my steps, following her. It didn’t smell so sweet this time. It turned out Anna had a plan as well. On the way, she showed me the items in her purse: a huge pair of scissors and a weird thing.
“What’s this thing?” I asked.
“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!