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It all started with a cockroach.

Don’t get me wrong. I’d had bad days before in Minneapolis, but this one was the mutha of all bad days. I had moved to the Twin Cities straight from high school, on the run from Paynesville, the small Minnesota town where I’d first played hide—and—seek in a cornfield that stretched for miles, and where I later learned the guilty pleasure of drinking stolen sweet wine in an abandoned farmhouse and the delight of wearing Guess jeans with a rainbow shirt while I curled my bangs into the perfect tube.

Then I grew up but quick and headed east to Minneapolis the minute it was legal, high school diploma in hand. I was tired of the small—town gossip and people referring to me as “Manslaughter Mark’s daughter.”

In Minneapolis, I quickly learned two things: anonymity is lonely, and perfecting the curlicue on a Dairy Queen cone didn’t cut one many breaks in the big city. I was more than a little fish in a big pond—I was Bananarama in the land of Hüsker Dü. I grew out my perm and let my dark hair flow long and natural, I stopped wearing mascara and eye shadow to bring out my deep—set gray eyes, and I started smoking clove cigarettes before switching to the real ones.

I even relaxed enough to cease being a walking foot watcher when I realized nobody within a hundred miles had heard of my dad or cared that I had gone to the prom with Linda Dooley, the girl who always smelled like farm, because no guy would touch me with a ten—foot fishing pole. I earned my BA in English while learning to blend in the big city.

Somehow, though, I morphed into one of those slack—eyed West Bankers who waited tables during the day so they could afford to drink at the music clubs at night. I squeezed in a few graduate classes so there seemed to be a point to it all, but I started to feel like I was back in Paynesville, only with more places to drink. My dad had been a heavy boozer for as long as I could remember, and I knew I would have to make some changes soon, before my denial card expired.

Enter the cockroach, who set in motion a sequence of key events that slapped me on the rear and sent me to Battle Lake, Minnesota, the land of no return.

I had been discussing my day—to—day existence with Alison, my supervisor and friend at Perfume River, the Vietnamese restaurant where I’d waited tables for the past six years.

“It just seems like I’m not where I’m supposed to be, you know?” We were wrapping silverware in paper napkins for easy grabbing during the lunch rush. It was a sunny but freezing April day, and the fresh—mopped floor would soon turn a salty, slushy gray.

“What about Brad? I thought you two were doing great.”

“I don’t know,” I said. “He always seems distracted when he comes over, which now he only does after bar close.” Brad and I had been dating for five months. He was cute, in a blonde—Jim—Morrison sort of way, and he was in a band. That had been enough.

“Maybe you should get a tattoo.” Alison stacked the last silverware bundle on top of the pyramid as the first customers walked in. “I got ’em,” she said, heading toward the couple who’d just entered.

She seated them in my section. I grabbed two glasses of ice water and strolled out, putting my existential crisis on hold to do my job. Before I even reached the table, I could tell from the woman’s immaculate makeup and the man’s manicured fingernails that they weren’t the regular college crowd we drew.

“How are you two doing?” I asked as I placed their water glasses and silverware in front of them.

By way of an answer, he sneered at me. “What are your specials?”

“All our meals are $4.95 or less. We think everything is special.” I capped this off with my best perky smile.

The woman gave a slight eye roll and turned her menu’s page. “How many shrimp come with the shrimp and bamboo shoots?”

“Six.”

“Well, isn’t that special.” She flipped the page again. “I’ll take your vegetarian spring rolls, no carrots in them, around them, or in the area they are prepared in. Do you understand?”

I could feel the skin at the base of my neck crawl. “Sure.”

She pointed at my notepad. “Then why aren’t you writing it down?”

I scribbled “VN1,” the code for spring rolls, and made a mental note to rub a whole carrot up and down both rolls like it was their wedding night. “Got it.”

“Can I see it? What you wrote. I need to make sure you got it right.”

I glared over at Alison, who was wiping out ashtrays. She raised her eyebrows and gave me a better—you—than—me look.

“Sure.” I handed the woman my pad. As I did so, a black cockroach peeked at me from behind the Kikkoman soy sauce bottle. Its shivering antennae felt the air, possibly sensing the tension and wondering if it should come back at a better time. I’d spotted plenty of cockroaches at the dingy burger joint I’d worked at when I first moved to the Cities, but never at Perfume River. Ba, the owner, was meticulous about order and sanitation in his kitchen. I shook my head at the little guy. Not now.

The woman grabbed the pen out of my hand, scribbled “no carrots” next to the “VN1,” underlined the words three times, and handed the pad back to me, a smug look on her face. “You must not work for tips.”

I think I may actually have been leaning forward to spit in her hair when the cockroach darted to the middle of the table and stood stock—still, basking in its public premiere. The no—carrots woman screamed and jumped to her feet, knocking over the table. The soy sauce crashed to the ground just as a table of ten walked in.

“You horrible, dirty people! Dirty people! I’ll call the health department. I’ll have you shut down!” The woman’s shrieking reached a glass—shattering pitch.

The man with her handed me a card out of his wallet and said, “Expect to hear from me,” and like that, they whisked themselves out the door.

I glanced at the card.

David Jones, Jones and Jones Law Offices.

Somebody’s Gonna Pay.

It was at that point that Ba rushed out of the kitchen to see what all the fuss was about. When I explained what had happened, he was so upset that he made me go home. Forever. It didn’t do any good to tell him that it wasn’t my fault. I was now and everlastingly associated with cockroaches in his mind. I walked home with my hands thrust in my pockets, my face down against the biting wind. I was so intent on not thinking that I almost ran down a man in a street—length sheepskin coat.

“Sorry. I didn’t see you.”

His close—set eyes lit up when I addressed him. “Wanna buy a guitar pedal? I have reverb. Fifty bucks.”

“What?”

He opened his coat and showed me a bag of colorful electric guitar pedals. His breath smelled medicinal up close.

“I don’t play guitar.”

“Maybe you could learn,” he said. “Or what about your boyfriend? You gotta have a boyfriend.”

“No thanks.”

I tried to walk around him, but he planted himself back in front of me and dropped his pants, quick like a wink. “In that case, how about some of this?”

His cold weenie stared sadly at the ground, looking for all the world like an overcooked green bean on a big, white plate. Before I could think of a suitable response, someone brushed past the Bean Flasher. He packed up his treats, tossed me the peace sign, and ran off in the other direction.

“Thanks for making a crappy day a little bit crappier!” I yelled at his back.

I stomped the two blocks back to my Seven Corners apartment, where I had lived since moving out of the dorms. A gray cloud with a black lining lumbered over my head until I spotted Brad’s bicycle parked by the back door. My doubts about dating a man who biked in the winter gave way to relief that there was someone at home for me.

Brad didn’t have a key and he wasn’t waiting out front, so I figured he must have dashed to the store across the street. I entertained thoughts of him right now buying flowers to surprise me with or fixings to make dinner for us both. He wasn’t normally the romantic type, but after my day so far, I deserved to dream.

I let myself into the building to wait for him, passing the two other apartments on the second floor on the way. My three neighbors and I all lived above an art supplies store, and our apartments were refurbished offices. They had fifteen—foot ceilings, hardwood floors, and cheap rent. One neighbor was a law student, and the other was a professional saxophone player in his sixties. His name was Ted, and we had had many great hall conversations in passing. His niece had been watching his apartment for the last month while Ted was on tour, and I was surprised to hear from the music wafting from 1B that she was home in the middle of a weekday.

As I turned the key in my door, I realized it wasn’t just any music I heard coming from Ted’s apartment. It was the very hard—to—find music of Portuguese flute players that I had special—ordered for Brad’s birthday last month.

“Oh no you dih—unt,” I whispered to myself as I tiptoed over to the door kitty—corner from mine and slapped my ear to it. I couldn’t hear anything inside except the music and some rustling. I kneeled to peek through the old—fashioned keyhole on the leftover office door that served as Ted’s front entrance but could only see prisms of light glinting through the houseplants.

The quiet part of my brain that some people might call my common sense told me that Ted’s niece could also like Portuguese flutists and that I should just step into my apartment and wait for Brad to show up.

I rarely listened to that part of my brain.

Instead, I snuck back down the hall and tried the door handle to Ted’s outdoor garden space. His patio door was locked. I considered breaking it down, or just knocking on Ted’s front door, but both ideas lacked the stealth I was after.

I was feeling crazy, but not crazy enough to imagine that what I was doing was sane, if that counts for anything.

I thumbed through my keys and found the tiny one that unlocked my patio door. I hadn’t been out there since I’d cleaned my herb and tomato pots in October. The area was small, maybe ten feet by five, and it was covered with brittle April snow accented by a chute of gutter ice. There was also a rusty ladder leading to the roof. Before the sensible part of my brain could organize its arguments, I climbed up the ladder, hauled myself onto the roof, and crawled over to Ted’s side of the building, heading for his skylights.

The icy April wind hit me like needles up this high, but the rush I always got from acting instead of waiting kept me moving forward. When I neared Ted’s skylights, I army—crawled over and peered down.

Staring back at me was my second peter of the day, and here it wasn’t even noon.

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