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Wasp

Kristi DeMeester

Last night I was letting the dogs inside—too hot out to be healthy—when a wasp flew in. I screamed, of course, because you were gone, on the road again to some new city to shake hands with another fat, sweaty man in a navy suit, and you weren’t there to kill it. This week’s issue of People was on the counter, and even though I hate Jennifer Aniston, I couldn’t bring myself to roll it up and go after that stupid fucking wasp.

Instead I went running down the long hallway to our bathroom. You’d spilled your Gold Bond powder that morning, just a sprinkling across the sink, but you’d shouted, “Motherfucker!” and I pretended to be asleep even though I wanted to giggle.

My hairspray is expensive, but you sneak and use it any way. I pout, but really I like the way it makes your hair look.

The hairspray is flexible hold, so it didn’t work on the wasp immediately. Not the way that the Rave Level Four Ultra Hold that my mother used worked. One small trigger squeeze with that stuff and anything that flies or squirms dropped dead in two seconds.

I chased the wasp around the kitchen with the can, doused him whenever he landed. Our hardwood floors grew sticky while I waited for the wasp to die. If you were home, you would have been irritated by the hairspray spots all through the house, but I planned to clean them before you got back, and you would never know.

The wasp finally died, and I flexed my toes inside the hairspray pooling at my feet. My skin stretched, snapped towards me when the hairspray finally let me go.

For a moment, I considered coating the entire house in hairspray before you came back. Stickifying every surface like a spider’s web, and you would come in, set your bag down, and never be able to pick it back up again.