Too Early

"Bugs!" She yells clear across the office, loud enough the walls shake. It's too early for this. It's too early for bugs, or rodents, or any damned thing. It's too early for this.

She comes over, shaking like she's on the losing end of a crack withdrawal, her eyes bleary from lack of sleep but jammed open wide with fear. "Bugs!" she yells again, this time her voice as shaky as she is. It's only 5:02. Too damned early.

Too damned hot too. The lady with the voice like cotton candy said it was already 92 degrees. At 5 in the damned morning. I think back to mornings in Santa Cruz, down at Natural Bridges, the cold of the sand as it rubbed between my toes. It was cool then. A damned sight cooler than 92 degrees at 5 in the AM.

Bugs. She's never even seen bugs. Not like I've seen them. Roaches as big as small birds. And flying too. The flap of their wings like the sound of a miniature radio helicopter, like the kind some poor guy pawns on some infomercial long after everyone's gone to sleep and way past the time that anyone actually cares. Now those were bugs. They were mean suckers too. Afraid of no man and just as soon bite you as look at you.

I remember New Year's Eve back at the house on the beach in the P.I. There's me and my cousins, standing in the dust, watching as M80's blow through a tin can. The air smells like smoke and sweat and the sulfur smell of firecrackers that tickles the nose and makes the hair on the back of your neck stand at attention. And above the cracks of fireworks, above the drunken laughter that would soon make way to tearful confessions as old friends reminisce of far younger days, you hear the steady hum of bugs. Like miniature helicopters.

I tell her to calm down as best I can, all nice-like. She ain't never seen bugs. No like I've sen them. I tell her to sit at another station and she hesitates. You can see the gears turning. She's not even awake enough to really think this through. She finally walks aways and I get a slice of quiet.

*RING* It's only 5 in the AM and already I've got to take this call. It's a live one. You can hear it in the rep's voice. Only 5 in the AM. It's too early for this.