Larry always knew leftovers would be gone the next day if he didn’t lock them up in his fridge. One morning, he found three rats had infiltrated his fridge. It took a whole day to find the opening and close it up. “I hate these fucking rats!” he exclaimed.
It was a shared opinion. No one had been impervious to their raids, food pantries being emptied of their contents overnight. One popular rumor was that the severe flu of last year (claiming four lives) had been spread by the rats. The Office of Antarsia Welfare sent out eighty-two volunteers to drop off rat poison and paraphernalia regarding ‘humane ways to end the suffering of rodentia.’ Tammy Kim, a retiree in her 70s, was struggling with dwindling Medicare and throbbing joint pain when she went to see Larry.
Larry thanked her for the cereal pellets and liquid poison.
“Will you be attending the conference tonight?” she asked.
“I’m filming it for the city,” Larry replied.
From the lens, Larry could see a mountain of dead rats and a blazing fire. Crowds were swarming the totem pole of corpses and there was a frenetic quality about their chanting. Their fists waved fanatically; they marched in synchronicity. Ernest Lai, who hadn’t been able to find work in two years, soundly denounced the hordes of rats. Yoona Chen, who’d failed miserably in her attempt to become a famous singer, mutilated rats and chopped wood tirelessly for the fire. Tim Yan, whose dream of starting a business died the day he found out his girlfriend was pregnant, demanded a new life for future generations.
In the wee hours of the night, Larry spliced together a first cut. He’d muted the sound when he heard a knock. Kathy was standing there, reeking of alcohol. “My toilet’s broken,” she said. Part of her cheek was swollen red.
“You all right?” Larry asked.
She ignored his question and looked at his projector. “You watching a war flick?”
“Footage from today’s rat burning,” Larry replied.
She said, “Play it.”
Larry did.
“It’s kind of scary,” she said.
“I’ll go see what’s wrong with your toilet.” He went to her unit, saw the toilet was filled with vomit and blood. He unclogged it and went back home. Kathy had passed out on his sofa. He turned off the projector and went to sleep on his bed.
He dreamed of rats. One named Zhucheng lost her tail — a pink, gnarled tube with a texture like a gizzard. She was crying a shrill homily and there were flags with emblems of rat ears. He realized all rats were psychics with more understanding of humans than humans themselves — a homeopathic conglomeration of half-defunct diseases. Telepathy is my disease, Zhucheng screamed. I know you’re planning our mass extermination!
I’m not! Larry Chao tried to protest. But he was swimming naked in rat fur. Some got up his ass, which made it itch, and he fell off his bed, startling awake. He went to the living room. Kathy was watching the movie with the sappy trumpet music blasting.
“You should make propaganda films,” she said. “It’s inspiring.”
He turned to her. “You serious?”
“This movie has me excited to kill rats.”
Larry shut off the projector. “The toilet’s fixed. You should get going.”
She nodded. “Thanks for letting me crash.”
IV.
Mayor Doug Kwan spent his evenings perusing a thesaurus and reading Shel Silverstein to his plants. His condo, by no means luxurious, was spacious with a view of downtown Antarsia. He was restless, tossing in his bed. The usual solution, porn, didn’t alleviate his tension, and his new girlfriend refused contact on case nights. He invited Kathy over. They fucked aggressively three times.
“You’re sprightly tonight,” Kathy muttered. “What’d you have for dinner?”
“Politics, babe.”
“Is that some French dish?”
He smirked. “An appetizer.”
He always got talkative after making love. And he could barely contain himself, listing about fifty media sources that wanted to interview him. “Online polls have my rating at an all-time high. CNN just posted an interview, and old Craven called me for lunch next week.”
She untangled her twirled hair. “Does this mean you can forget about your daddy now?”
Doug bristled. “Fifteen years honey, all I heard were backhand jokes. How’s your daddy? Falling in love with some more 12-year-old girls?”
“You should have told them to fuck off.”
“Being a good politician means you don’t need to say a single fucking word and they shut up.”
“You’re a public servant, not a mobster,” Kathy pointed out.
“Only difference is the mobsters don’t have the mob behind them anymore,” Doug said.
He did five different stretches for his lower back, waving his legs around like a contortionist. “You want me to stay the night?” Kathy asked.
“Will you ever let a man make an honest woman out of you?”
“It’s a contradiction putting man and honest in the same sentence,” she replied.
“You’ll let the first honest man kiss you then?”
“I don’t ever kiss anyone, honest or not.”
He pressed his hip up against his abdomen. “Do you ever stretch?”
“I’m naturally limber.”
“Like a cat?”
She shook her head. “I hate cats. They’re too moody.”
“I’m inducting a hundred cats into our campaign.”
“Why?”
“They’ll help people catch rats.”
“Where do you think this is going to take you?”
“Congress,” he stated.
As she was leaving, he handed her an extra thousand dollars. “I’m starting to go steady with a good girl, don’t wanna ruin things… Thanks for the good times babe.” She realized it was her severance pay.
V.
The next week was unusual for Kathy. No clients called. She lingered around home, caught up on some DVDs, and was surprised to hear Larry in a screaming match with an old Asian woman.
“—is part of a city-wide initiative. You can’t just refuse.”
“I know,” Larry shrugged. “But this is my house.”
“It’s against the law to keep rats alive!”
“Sue me.”
Kathy went back to her room, turned on the news. Mayor Doug Kwan was being interviewed about his campaign. “We have 98 % compliance and almost 87 % decrease in the rat populati—” Flipped the channel, got tired of soaps. Saw Larry sitting on his porch with his HD camera, sipping a beer. “Want one?” he asked.
They shared a few.
“You ever gonna start that film you’re always talking about?” she asked.
He shrugged. “I’ve been talking about that movie for five years now.”
“What’s stopping you?”
“My last movie, 58 Random Deaths and Unrequited Love, cost me fifty grand, my marriage, and my life savings. It didn’t get accepted by a single film festival and no one saw it except for the crew,” he said with a mirthless smile.
“Sorry, didn’t mean to probe.”
He waved it off. “You didn’t always want to do what you do.”
“I wanted to be a race car driver. Then an actress. The kind of acting I got to do wasn’t the kind I started out wanting to do. I have a lot of parts of my past most people would consider shady.”