At first, Barb thought she had bed bugs. That’s what Laura told her. Barb winced as the girl edged up her leggings and revealed a crown of red welts above the small pair of bird wings tattooed on her ankle.

“I can’t live here anymore!” Laura tossed her head back with an authority she shouldn’t have acquired by twenty-something and told Barb she wouldn’t pay next month’s rent. Barb began to tear a paper on the table into smaller and smaller pieces. She practiced meditation daily with military attention, but her hands still betrayed an inclination toward hyperactivity. It was a worrisome tic, especially when she was driving and her hands kept going for the dental floss, or the comb, or the hand lotion. And now her hands were betraying her again, raining the shreds on the kitchen counter.

“You don’t have to move out. I’ll call an exterminator,” Barb said flatly because she didn't want to sound as if she were begging. And then, more generously, she added, “You can sleep in my bed until we get rid of them. I’ll sleep downstairs.”

Barb hadn’t been sleeping well anyway, not since she’d hit early menopause last year. To be honest, she hadn’t gotten a good night’s sleep since her marriage began to fail three years ago, even though she and Richard were friends again. She could meet him for coffee without spending the rest of the day mulling over the “what-ifs,” but she drew the line at meeting Jennifer despite her many sleepless nights obsessing over the unknown appearance of the woman who had lured her husband away.

Laura tossed her long blue-black hair, which had a forelock in the front that made her look like a defiant stallion. “I’ll stay with my boyfriend until the bugs are gone.”

But you don’t really like him, Barb wanted to respond. He’s not good for you. She had enough pseudo daughters from her job at the homeless shelter to recognize the irresistible urge to protect a younger person with whatever wisdom and experience she could legitimately offer. Just last night Laura had come home in tears. “He’s a creep!” she cried out to Barb, who’d given up on sleeping and was in the kitchen drinking tea. “I mean, he’s not a creep. He’s cute, and he tries to be nice, but he never listens. Whenever I’m trying to tell him something important—like help me decide whether I should try to find my real mom, he leans in and grabs me, as if we’re in a cheesy movie.” Laura touched the corner of her face. “When I call him on it, he says he can’t help himself because I’m so irresistible, but that’s garbage.”

Barb had wanted to reach out and hug the girl, but she was only the landlady.

“You deserve better,” she said, a pat line she often used with the residents at the homeless shelter, along with telling them they were strong and resilient. She began to pull apart the teabag.

“I didn’t know you wanted to find your birth-mom. Are the records sealed in China? Would you have to go there?” She’d only learned Laura was adopted when she saw the picture in Laura’s bedroom—white people with their Chinese child standing in front of a plastic swing-set.

“Oh, it’s just an idea. I haven’t figured out what I’d need to do.”

“I could help you.”

“Thanks. I don’t know if I’ll really do it.” Laura took a handful of the chocolate chips Barb left on the communal shelf and disappeared upstairs.

—

On Monday morning, Barb called in sick to the homeless shelter. She spent three hours on the phone getting information from exterminators. The prices were outrageous. Maybe she could get rid of the bugs by herself. She searched YouTube and watched a fat man with a beard long enough for birds to nest in pour a bucket of bugs into his bed to prove the effectiveness of his treatment, which involved steam, chemicals, and a hot dryer. Then she tried her best to follow the video’s instructions: she stripped Laura’s bedding, including the well-loved panda that sat on her pillow, and sealed everything in a bag to take to the laundromat later. She drove to town to buy the chemical sprays and a steamer, a catch in her throat when she saw the skulls and crossbones on the canisters. But what could she do? Like it or not, she had suddenly entered the business of killing.

It took her two more sick days to strip, seal, clean, vacuum, and spray every available surface in Laura’s room—and the rest of the house, just in case. When she finally finished on Wednesday night, she set her alarm for work, pulled back her new, clean sheets, and immediately noticed a little brown intruder crawling right at the line of her pillow.

“Damn!” Barb turned off the alarm and went to sleep on the couch. On Thursday, she called in sick for the fourth time, steamed everything again, and re-sprayed the chemicals. Then she took the sealed bags of bedding along with every other sheet in the house to the laundromat and ran them through the hot dryer while reading glossy magazines, wondering, as she looked at the models, which face looked most like Jennifer’s.

She’d thought she and Richard had a solid marriage—comfortable, if not passionate. They fit well in the house, an older colonial off a dirt road that she’d fallen in love with at first sight, though they hadn’t intended to live so far out of town when they’d first moved to Massachusetts from Brooklyn. Ultimately, this was why all the boarders she’d rented to since Richard moved out had left. Most were graduate students at the state university, wooed at first by the quiet beauty of the woods, then worn down by the 45-minute commute. Their life cycle in the house wasn’t much longer than a mosquito’s. Bed bugs or not, Laura would have been gone soon. They always found a way to break their leases, and Barb was too kind-hearted to make them keep paying.

The house had been a fixer-upper, all she and Richard could afford, and in their first year, they’d strengthened their bond by painting, wallpapering, and re-grouting tile. Barb loved solving problems with tangibles, a balance to her job at the shelter, where it seemed no matter what resources she found for people, they always came back. They’d had extermination issues back then, too. A cadre of bats had nested in the attic, and Barb had woken one night to find a bat swooping around their bedroom. She’d screamed, surprised at how terrified she’d felt every time the shadow flitted at her from out of nowhere. Richard held her close until her breathing normalized enough to make an escape into the bat-free living room, where eventually they fell asleep on the sofa, tangled in each other’s arms.

Getting rid of the bats had been a nearly impossible job of finding and sealing every dime-sized hole in the roof and planting one-way exits with no return, then a long period of checks and re-checks as they waited for the bats to leave. Barb and Richard had intended to re-sand the wooden floors in the living room, get new cabinets for the kitchen, and eventually convert the spare bedroom, where Laura slept now, into a baby room, but after the bat crisis, they found their wallets and energy depleted. Richard had been ambivalent about children, anyway, and Barb hadn’t wanted to press the issue, so the years went on. Then Richard met Jennifer.

When he told Barb he was leaving, she flung herself at him and tried to stop his words with kisses, but his body tightened, and she looked up to find fear in his dark eyes, his craggy face suddenly older and more tired. He reached over and unclasped her hands from the back of his neck.

“No,” he said as if he were admonishing a small child. “We need to make a clean break.” Suitcase already packed, he stood up and walked out, carefully closing the door behind him.

The laundromat was nearly empty, the only other person an older, round-bellied guy in khakis and a red beard who looked a lot like the guy in the bed bug video. Barb ran the dryer on high for two complete cycles, then stuffed everything into the pillowcases, too exhausted to fold, and drove home. The darkness in November was unnerving, as always. It wasn’t just the early sunsets, that got to her; it was the way the sky seemed to suck up all the residual light. Heading through the mountain pass and down the hill, she kept fighting the urge to let her wayward hands leave the wheel. It was one thing to floss while driving in the bright sunlight where the parameters of what lay before you could be controlled by keeping the steering wheel between your knees for a few seconds. It was another to let your hands wander in the dark, especially when the deer and possums could stroll nonchalantly into the headlights. Wind seeped through the vents. Barb turned on the heater and yawned. She was so tired…

She hadn’t noticed herself drifting until she heard the honks. Bolting awake, she swerved away from the piercing lights and slammed the brakes. The oncoming car, a pickup truck, pulled up beside her, still blaring the horn. The driver rolled down the window. In the murky light she saw a biker type—thirtyish with a ponytail and Sox cap. When Barb rolled down her window, hoping to ward off a rampage of curses with a quick apology, the man’s mouth softened, his anger dissolving into a look of perplexity.

“I expected a drunk kid, not an old lady.” He had the familiar local New England accent with drawn-out vowels. “Are you okay?”

Barb bristled at ‘old lady.’ She wasn’t even fifty.

“I must have fallen asleep. I’m sorry. I’ve been having a lot of insomnia.”

“My mother gets that. Do you want me to drive you home?”

“No, I’m okay now.”

“Coffee?” He reached for a thermos, poured, and handed her a Styrofoam cup through the window. Barb could tell from the smell that the coffee would taste like dirty ashtrays. If she drank it, she may as well give up on any hope for sleep tonight. But she couldn’t risk falling asleep at the wheel and having an accident. She thanked the man and took a sip to show her gratitude before driving off.

The house felt lonely without Laura. Not that they interacted much, but Barb enjoyed sensing another presence when she heard footsteps in Laura’s bedroom or wafts of music, even the awful electronic stuff Laura listened to late at night. She opened the sofa bed and took two newly cleaned sheets out of the laundry bag, scrutinizing the fall-out as she shook them. No bugs or bug remains. It would probably be fine to sleep in her own bed. After all, the man in the video claimed he’d gotten rid of his bugs in twenty-four hours. But just in case, she’d sleep downstairs for one more night. And amazingly, even after drinking the coffee, she slept.

On Friday before work, Barb re-checked all the mattresses for bed bugs, and when she discovered several hiding under Laura’s box springs, she gave up, called in sick for the final day that week, and phoned the exterminator.

“These aren’t bed bugs. They’re bat bugs.” The exterminator explained the subtle difference. Bat bugs fed mostly on bats, but occasionally “they like a little human blood for dessert.” The exterminator winked as if he were trying to pick her up at a bar, never mind that he was closer to Laura’s age than to hers. Wasn’t everyone, these days?

“We haven’t had bats in years.”

“Well, these are bat bugs and you need a bat man. I don’t do bats. Once you get rid of the bats, we can get the bugs. If we do anything now you’ll be wasting your money. The bats will keep bringing the bugs back in.”

Barb called Laura. “It’s bats.” Somehow, she hoped the new information would be comforting. “The bugs aren’t bed bugs. They’re from the bats. The bats must be back in the attic.”

“Eeww!” Laura squealed. “That’s disgusting!”

For a moment Barb was glad she’d never had a real daughter who might disappoint her. Laura was acting like a spoiled brat.

“Bats eat mosquitoes,” Barb said, as if she were a park ranger in defense of wildlife. “They…” She stopped because she didn’t know anything else about bats. Other than that they were blind.

“Well, I’m going to move out,” Laura’s voice crackled as the cell connection hiccupped. “Jared says I can live with him.”

So that was the boyfriend’s name. One of those pretentious new generation names Barb hated. She’d always vowed that if she’d had a child, she’d give it a timeless, normal name like Michael or Emily.

“But you said he doesn’t listen to you.”

“I’d rather live with Jared than with bedbugs—or bat bugs, whatever they are. I’ll come and get my things in a few days. After I figure out how to decontaminate them.”

Barb told Laura she’d already dealt with her bedding and that based on her research, the rest of her stuff should be fine, though she knew Laura wouldn’t believe her. The girl was one of those germaphobes who ate on paper plates because Barb’s dishes weren’t clean enough for her. Well, let Laura do her own research. The sooner Laura moved out, the sooner Barb could advertise for another renter—once the bats were gone.

On Friday night, Barb didn’t sleep at all. She read the newspaper and the pile of junk mail on the counter, crumbling the urgent appeals for money into little bits before she threw the mess into the kindling bin next to the woodstove. Then, disregarding the sleep-expert warnings never to do screen time at night, she turned on the computer and watched bat videos on YouTube. Swarms of the ugly creatures soared through the sky and devoured their prey, a gruesome and macabre sight close-up. Barb learned that many bat species were on the verge of extinction because they only had one child at a time, though they had a unique ability to find their child anywhere, even in a crowded cave of thousands.

Saturday Barb dozed on the couch. Just like a bat, she thought, sleeping all day and up all night. She didn’t wake up until the bat man (thank goodness he’d agreed to come on the weekend) rang her doorbell at around 3 pm. He spent several hours crawling through the house, sealing up spaces that must have opened since the last bat infestation and planting the one-way exits—places where they could fly out, but not return.

“We can’t exterminate them; bats are a protected species. They should leave, eventually. We’ll check in a couple of weeks to make sure they’re gone and clean up the feces.” The bat man scribbled some notes on a carbon sales pad and handed her a bill for $800. Barb had to fight the urge to crumble the paper into smithereens.

She didn't sleep on Saturday night, probably because she’d slept so much during the day. But then, she didn’t sleep on Sunday night, or on Monday night either, despite a hard day at the shelter, where Melanie, one of the few girls she’d bet on to beat the system and hadn’t seen in two years, showed up. Melanie told her she’d met such a sweet guy, she moved in with him and gave up the subsidized apartment she’d waited so long to get. When he lost his job, she quit school and expanded to full-time at Dunkin Donuts, but they couldn’t make enough money and he lost his apartment, and they both ended up in a tent by the river. And yesterday he’d told her he was leaving to go back to his wife, after claiming to be already divorced and telling Melanie he wanted to marry her.

“You’re strong and resilient,” Barb said, though she felt sick. Likely, Melanie had omitted some of the story, but no point in judging. Shit happened.

After several hours of sleeplessness, Barb got up and made herself a cup of melatonin-infused tea. Then she went back to bed, and after another anxiety-ridden hour, she decided on “the nuclear option,” the one remaining pill left from her last insomnia flare-up. But the pill merely exacerbated her tossing and turning, so she got up again, and rummaged through the medicine cabinet until she found another pill buried in a nearly empty jar in the back of the top shelf. The date on the prescription was long expired, but maybe the pill would work anyway. She swallowed the capsule and went back to bed. She must have fallen into a restless and fuzzy semi-stupor because she felt as if her head was wedged in a ball of cotton when the alarm rang, a disorientation that continued as she got up and bumbled around the kitchen. As she waited for the coffee to perk, she realized she was falling asleep between spoonfuls of cereal. Maybe she could rest for a minute with her head on the table. She leaned over, only vaguely aware of the cold wood, a mushy flake pressed against her cheek before everything went soothingly black…

Someone was shaking her shoulders. “Barb! Are you okay? You were sleeping with your head in the cereal bowl!”

With her face so close, Laura’s make-up looked uneven, one cheek brighter than the other, a smudge of mascara escaping the lashes.

“What time is it? I have to go to work.”

“Around ten.”

“Oh no!”

“You could call in sick.”

“I called in sick all last week. Because of the bats.”

“You look awful. You should go to the doctor.” There was a sparkling stud in Laura’s nose, which was wrinkled in an expression Barb couldn’t quite decipher, though her voice reflected an unusual degree of care.

Barb hated anything medical, but Dr. Grayson had prescribed pills the last time her insomnia had gotten out of hand. Maybe she should ask him for more meds.

“When I came in and saw you asleep in your cereal, I worried you had a stroke—or a heart attack.” Barb saw Laura’s eyes sweep over the messy table, where the $800 exterminator bill lay on a pile of magazines.

“It’s just insomnia. But if it’s okay, I’ll ride into town with you and try to get better meds. I’m too tired to risk driving by myself.”

“I have to go to work at 3. So, I might not be able to bring you back.”

“That’s okay. I can take a taxi. Or call Richard.”

Laura took less than an hour to pack up her room, a measure that confirmed the insignificance and fleetingness of her tenant’s life in the house. The other young people she had rented to were no different—floating from one random living space to another with only enough possessions to pack in a car: a suitcase, a box or two of assorted nothings, a phone, a laptop. All their music was digitized, not like the crates of albums she and Richard had carted from place to place. Her renters would abandon their furniture at the edge of the road for another rootless soul to pick up or ask Barb if she wanted to keep their stuff for the next renter, figuring they could get whatever they needed in their new home from the street or a buy-nothing site.

“So, what did they do to the bats?” Laura asked, as Barb helped Laura carry her boxes to the car, an old Honda Accord with peeling seats. “I hope you didn’t kill them.”

Even in her fuzzy state, Barb noted the change in pronoun from “they” to “you,” as if any positive correction would be attributed to someone else but she’d have responsibility for bat blood.

“They” (she emphasized the word) “don’t kill the bats. They just seal off all the holes so the bats can’t get back into the house.”

“But what about the bugs? Bugs can get in anywhere.”

“The bat people said there won’t be any bugs once the bats leave.”

“Oh, so they’re not gone, yet? What if the bats don’t leave?”

Barb hadn’t considered that possibility. What if the bats didn’t care about having an escape route?

“They left last time,” she reassured herself—and Laura. “We had bats when we first moved in.”

They got in the car and Laura turned on the radio. Barb leaned back and tried to doze between the clashing chords.

The P.A., a young blonde hunk, weighed Barb, took her blood pressure, and asked what the problem was.

“I need meds. I can’t sleep.” Her voice, slow and dreamlike, sounded as if it were coming from somewhere else. She felt her head lolling...

“Not sleeping?” the PA repeated the words, and in her semi-somnambulant state, Barb tried to register the expression crossing the man’s cherubic face. He didn’t look sympathetic, just inquisitive.

“It’s the bats,” Barb tried to explain. “Dr. Grayson knows about my sleep problems. He’s prescribed for me before.”

“Dr. Grayson isn’t here today.” The P.A. had a soft Southern accent and his name was Taylor. Or was it Tyler? Another pretentious Millennial name.

“What bats?” he asked.

“They’re in my attic and they’ve got bugs. Like bed bugs, but they live on the bats.” Barb made herself open her eyes. The PA tapped on his tablet, a concerned look on his handsome face that made her realize her incoherence. “I just need to sleep,” she tried to explain again. “I need meds so I can sleep.”

“Did you take any meds? What did you take?”

Barb tried to remember the names of the pills. “I know I shouldn’t have taken them both,” she admitted. “But when the first one didn’t work, I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t sleep, I hadn’t slept in days, and I was so tired—all that work getting rid of the bat bugs…and the bats… it was so expensive, and my tenant just moved out and I don’t know how I’m going to pay for an exterminator…” She didn’t want to cry, and she felt embarrassed as the P.A. wordlessly handed her a tissue.

“Did you drive here by yourself?” he asked.

“My tenant brought me. My ex-tenant. I was too tired and scared I might drive off the road because I fell asleep at the wheel a couple of days ago because I couldn’t sleep. I haven’t slept for days. I just need to sleep.”

“You drove off the road?” The PA leaned close to Barb. She knew he was trying to be comforting, but she felt his invasion into her space. “I think you need to go to the ER. Tell your tenant to bring you.”

“I don’t need to go to the ER. I just need the right sleep meds. Dr. Grayson …”

“Dr. Grayson isn’t here and we can’t give you meds until you’re evaluated,” the PA said evenly. “They can only do that at the ER.”

“Evaluated? For what?”

The PA took her hand. “Ma’am, you seem to be exhibiting symptoms of a psychiatric breakdown.”

Ma’am! Barb couldn’t help it. She laughed, though she knew this would make her seem even crazier in the PA’s eyes. It was her marriage, her house that was broken—not her mind. All she needed was some sleep, and to get rid of the bats and the bat bugs.

The PA led Barb back to the waiting room. “I’ll call the ER and let them know you’re coming.”

“I don’t need to go to the ER. I just need sleep meds. I know I sound crazy, but it’s because of the bats, and because I haven’t slept.”

“They can give you sleep meds after you go to the ER. Don’t worry, everything will be fine.” The PA sounded way too cheerful, as if waiting for zillions of hours in the ER was no big deal. And what if they didn’t give her the sleep meds? What if they locked her up? The bats would leave, she realized then. Because it’s in our collective animalistic nature to avoid places without a sufficient means of escape.

“I’m not going to the ER,” Barb said when they got into Laura’s car. “You don’t think I’m having a breakdown, do you? I just need some sleep—some meds to help me sleep.”

“I’ve got weed,” Laura offered. “You think that’ll help?”

Barb laughed. “I haven’t had weed since college.”

“Let’s go back home,” Laura said, and Barb felt warm inside to hear Laura refer to the place as home. “We’ll roll a joint and I’ll tuck you in.”

Laura rolled expertly, better than Barb had ever done, which made Barb wonder how much of a pothead Laura was. They’d agreed on no smoking or drugs in the house when Laura moved in, but this was an important exception. They passed back and forth for a while, not speaking, the thick, sweet smoke warming Barb’s lungs, her body softening into relaxation.

“Do you think I’m having a breakdown?” Barb asked again.

“I don’t know.”

“Maybe I’m just a batty old lady!” And they both burst into such a cascade of laughter, Barb had to hold her knees. She rocked back and forth, watching the last remains of the joint burn in the holder, both too overcome by laughter to take a final hit.

“Lie down,” Laura gulped to catch her breath. “I’ll get you my panda bear.”

The stuffed animal hadn’t done too badly in the dryer. The bare patches, none worse the wear, showed how loved that panda had been.

“I treated him for you. I’m glad he survived the hot dryer.”

“She,” Laura corrected. “But thanks.”

“Does she have a name?”

“Emily.” Laura covered Barb with the blanket and put the panda in her arms.

Emily smelled like Laura, spicy with a hint of rose.

“Shall I sing to you? I’m warning you, though. I can’t sing.” Laura burst into another fit of uncontrollable stoned laughter.

“Yes!”

“Lullaby… and good night… In the sky stars are bright … round your head… flowers gay….”

“Those aren’t the words.”

“It’s the version from the Celine Dion album. My mother’s favorite. She sang that song every night to my little brother.”

“I didn’t know you had a brother.”

“Yeah, they finally had their own baby after they gave up and adopted me. But it’s okay. He’s chill.” Laura bit her bottom of her lip as she tucked the edges of the blanket around Barb’s toes. “Maybe I’ll go to China next summer and try to find my Mom. I’ve got to go to work, now. Text me when you wake up so I know you’re okay.”

In the small clear space remaining under the fuzz of her mind, Barb wanted to reach out and hug the girl, but Laura was already flitting toward the door as Barb sank into a dream where she was lying at the bottom of a cave with bats flying around the high outer rim, shadows against the brilliant sun. She tried to open her eyes and erase the image, but she had already sunk too deep. All she could do was hope this wasn’t a one-way exit.