HAUNTINGS: Bugs

By Levis Keltner

I want to kiss Sara or be her or die.

“Stein without Hemingway is still Stein.” Sara from Bulk is proving I’m not smart, convincing herself the invitation to chill in her car over lunchbreak was a bad idea—maybe?

The air isn’t hot or cold, yet my armpits are leaky, fingertips numb from the walk-in freezer. Without her noticing, I can’t check if grime or bugs muck my nails.

“That’s why she wins,” she concludes.

My crush makes second-guessing a state of being. When I offer a swig of carrot juice, she shakes her head. Sara crushes me.

I point at the stereo and lie, “This is good.”

“He’s really vegan,” she says as if she can hear it in the whiny vocals. The undertone is clear: Unlike you. I’m vegan for the health aspect. She donates to PETA.

I creep in glimpses: cat-eyed, pouty lipped.

“Your legs are so smooth,” she says.

My work apron is twisted. Through a hole in my khakis, bare thigh gleams. I shave them. Since adolescence, hair has made my body feel not mine.

She pokes a finger into the hole. The violation is casual. I straighten my apron, forgive her everything.

“Low testosterone,” I say. It’s a joke because I bench 300 and have to avoid my beefy face in mirrors.

Sara smiles conspiratorially, as if the truth will be as funny.

#

“Limp,” Boss says.

She plucks a flaccid celery from the ice water tub and flops the pale veggie onto the prep table. A nun-ish lesbian with a tiny hook nose and sleepless eyes, Boss orders me with a glance to pick up the knife.

I angle the blade into the root. She nods to commence surgery.

We’re due for a GM walk and need to look good. Her breakthrough was reviving wilted greens with a root shave and ice water bath. The third boss I’ve had at World Foods in a year, Produce is unforgiving between time and bugs.

Once, I plunged my hands into a box of dinosaur kale and they returned bejeweled with ladybugs. Last week, a squad of tarantulas hopped from a banana crate across the tile until Sara popped them with the bulk broom. They’re good insects, muncher munchers, nothing like Dermatophagoides gravis, called gray bugs, or just bugs.

If eyeballing, you’d mistake bugs for dirt unless a fool has allowed infestation. They chew into the skin until crumpled, too gross for sale. With no known organic pesticide, I wash bunches of celery in the stainless-steel trough for a second chance, trashing the forgone.

“Fuckers won’t stay hard,” Boss says.

“Sometimes it’s them, not you,” I say.

She smirks. “Glad my best ass-sociate is on the job.”

“All over it,” I say.

Laughter confirms it’s friendship, so I get busy for us both.

#

Half the time, the Senator goes soft.

“My big boy,” he breathes on my body. We’re in the parking lot in his Escalade. The backseat’s leather squeaks under my knees.

“Too risky,” he says about his place. I ask again to hear our shame echo.

A Chinese herbalist cured his stage four cancer with daikon radish. In his new life, the Senator fucks muscly young men while his wife jet sets. He squeezes my pecs like ripe grapefruit. I close my eyes, and I’m her. The calm is the scary part.

“So strong,” he says.

The first time, I thanked him.

#

I escort out a shoplifter, and the cashiers applaud. My muscles justify themselves.

“Orange food is like, your thing?” Sara accepts the pocketed peach.

I eat a ghost pepper to hear her laugh but vomit on her patent Doc Martens. I can’t catch my breath. The GM walks the store Sunday, yet Boss orders me home. I listen.

Defeated and desperate to smoke and edge my brain into goo, I notice my unwashed hands on my laptop. Their wide, veiny backs itch, spotted gray with bugs.

I scrub to take them off until a knuckle bleeds.

Where do bugs go under the skin? I google. Finding Eggs, I hurl toward empty.

#

Boss doesn’t have time for “OCD Senior.”

“You have fresh?” the customer asks Saturdays, noon to one, so they’re my Freshie.

Fluffy haired, ambiguously gendered, Freshie buys from unopened boxes I wheel from the freezer. They double-bag their hands and pick with a disposable bag to bag each veggie. Snap peas gobble half the hour.

Stoic and masked, I’ve learned their moods by their eyes. Today they squint, irritable, scrutinizing each pod. The cucumber was left out overnight, and half the wet rack is crawling.

I wonder if Freshie chooses ideal veggies or the best of a bunch. I wonder what’s the worst that can happen. I wonder what it takes to live without bugs.

Before I find strength to ask, time’s up.

#

Sara pokes my leg. “Who do you think is cute?”

She doesn’t hear me linger. We’re in her car, again. Puking has made me a sympathetic character? All I want to say is, “You.”

She suggests Ed from Meat and Seafood. I can’t words. “Your boss is attractive,” she says.

“All yours,” I mumble.

Her gaze is hopeful. “She say anything about me?”

Our gayness circles. I try to slow my breathing. I’m missing her.

“You shouldn’t sleep with managers.” I’m loud, a bad friend.

“You think I’m a slut?” Her laughter glistens.

#

The Escalade is man musky. Rain drumrolls the roof. Through a fogged window, I see the World, neon and distant. In a minute, I’ll suffocate.

The Senator doesn’t ask about the gray spots burning on my arms. He apologizes for the stain, talks scheduling. “You cutting weight?”

Two missed calls from Boss. I’m 23 minutes late for the GM walk.

I slosh across the lot until Sara’s car passes. She’s seen me and the Senator. I wave. Her hands don’t leave the wheel.

I shout to please turn around, how we make sense, until I’m shivering, me and me in the rain.

—

Levis Keltner is chapbooks editor at Newfound and author of the novel “Goodnight.” Their creative nonfiction, fiction, and poetry has appeared in Hobart, Anomaly, Entropy Magazine, Be About It Zine, and elsewhere. They write role-playing mystery games at Feverdream Games. From Chicago, Levis lives in St. Louis and Instagram @leviskeltner.