Upon contact I run directly from the living room through the kitchen into the bathroom and lock the door. I cede everything else to it, shrinking myself to some fifteen square feet of space. The rest of the apartment I call my old apartment.
You can get used to anything. For example, having a pair of pants mediate between ass and toilet seat did not feel quite natural at first. But sooner than I expect I settle in. This is the silver lining of a job updating a spreadsheet at the literary non-profit that does not care if you live or die. To sleep I run from the bathroom to the bedroom as fast as I can, leaving all the lights on because I once heard mice were nocturnal.
I have never thought much of mice. Mice were a non-issue growing up in Los Angeles, I guess because of its relatively low population density. Or because of my own luck. It is only recently that I learned a mouse is not a young rat.
Living in New York, however, means living alongside rodents. Seeing the mutant subway rats at 2 AM deadlifting Coke cans remains a novel horror, one too outrageous to inspire true fear.
But the rodent in my apartment cannot be cute. No, this is my rodent. And this is my problem.
Of course, we humans have an instinctual fear of mice and rats as vectors of disease and filth. But my fear is somewhat different. It is the fact that I will never be fully alone again. That I will not have autonomy over my home. The mouse watches me like a ghost.
My apartment is the only thing I have left. I see no one and one sees me. Why should I? There is not much I need from the outside world. I live in my aunt’s apartment that she has not lived in since the 90s; not even the neighbors know it is inhabited. Photos of my aunt and her now-dead poodles occupy the walls. It is a basic apartment with just enough of the basics to live. Bed stove TV. All I have done for the place is buy a Roku plug-in for the old TV in the living room. Every night the walls are dyed a purple from the Roku City skyline. Every other morning I update the nonprofit’s spreadsheet like a guard on a distant watchtower. Life here is off-peak, easy, retrofitted by apps and delivery services to bypass all earthly contact, like I am swimming the right way down a river. In the afternoons I make coffee and pretend like I am standing around the office water cooler asking everyone what shows they’ve been watching. It’s not a bad life. I make myself laugh often.
I will devote all of my time to killing this mouse.
—
I google: HOW TO KILL A MOUSE.
The prevailing attitude online towards rodent death is squishing. That the expedient death is the courteous one.
“Grab the tail,” one Redditor says, “and just THWACK the mouse against the corner of a table. Aim for the joint between the spine and the head!”
“Or,” writes another, “You could freeze it. I hear that death by cold is just like falling asleep. Lovely!”
“Don’t use sticky traps. The mouse will die of dehydration or starvation or panic. It will scream. Horrible way to go!” I scroll, horrified by the fake outrage of these urban professionals. Their hang-up with mouse murder is not necessarily a moral quandary but an ethical one. Such that, peoples’ extermination methods are informed by the reactions they get to telling each other how they exterminated their mice. We are just looking for someone, anyone, to tell us: It’s fine. You are fine. Ethics are a manifestation of shame, of how scared we are of each other. We want answers to be therapeutic. These people think civility is a natural state of being. These are the worst types of people, who believe they are not animals.
—
The Whole Foods bag I use for garbage in the kitchen starts to shake. When I tiptoe up to it, the bag stops. I stand frozen in my kitchen (I am still in my kitchen writing this, shaking under the lightbulb that throws an orange-butter color against the walls). I am a predator. I hunt down a garbage bag from the cupboard and flip the contents of the Whole Foods bag inside out like how you’d scoop up dog poop. I grab the bag like it’s the head of an enemy and sprint downstairs to the trash room. I feel so clever. I feel like I just ate a big meal. I am alone again.
—
Nature heals. I have set up my burrow and I seem to have succeeded. Now I am back in the living room. It is August in New York and I stick to the vinyl of my aunt’s green loveseat. I laugh to myself that my feet are lifted off the ground like a child checking for monsters.
—
Good morning, I say to my co-workers. And how was your weekend? I open up the spreadsheet where I track book bans for the literary non-profit. My manager cares about this work deeply. He tells me he is scared about the future of the children. And yet what would he do if all the books got un-banned? Both sides shriek with moral outrage. The kids are brainwashed by the gay penguins book; the kids are inspired by the gay penguins book. Do they really think their books have power at all?
Sometimes I think about the mouse in the garbage bag. I wonder if it chewed its way to freedom. Or if it suffocated in the bag. How long would it take a mouse to suffocate? Did it experience pain? Can mice experience pain?
No one cares about a mouse’s death, that is for sure. Not even PETA would waste a good bucket of red paint. I do not care that mice are smart, that they can solve simple arithmetic formulas or do dances or recognize faces. And anyways I can do this too. Mice are pests. I learn that pests are a legitimate scientific category, it’s not just a derogatory term, that scientists even have a name for them: synanthropes, animals that exist within the urban landscape but have not been domesticated by humans. Though they’re hidden, they rely on human scraps for survival. At least the mouse and I shared this in common: we are out for ourselves. Neither of us will offer the other an ethical ending.
—
The date from Hinge just left, Gabriel, an unemployed woodworker, attractive but not sexy. Conceptual woodworker, he clarifies. I don’t bring up the rodent. He came over last night and it never really came up whether we would go beyond my apartment or not. I perform first date very well and he does too. He tells me about college, his sisters. We talk about the Big Gay Movie that has recently come out and he has problems with the Big Gay Movie but not the right problems. He says the depiction of queer community-building is important. He says it with conviction. It’s sad that he needs to be depicted on screen to feel real and then I say something to that effect because I have the urge to win this conversation, like the urge I have to squish a pimple. I notice his lip tense when confronted. He pushes back: can’t he just like it? Can’t he just be a fan sometimes and not know why? I push him back against the coat rack and grab at his skinny jeans.
—
New mouse just dropped. This one is thinner and faster and more determined to eat the salty tofu I left in the sink last night. It tightrope-walks across the cable of the Nespresso machine in the kitchen, hits the floor then runs into the bathroom. My mind stalls. Before I know it I am back in the bathroom. I have it all lined up. This one is so tiny. I spot no death instruments so I grab the expensive sunscreen my aunt left in the vanity and hurl it in the mouse’s direction but it lands a foot above my target and hits the wall with such force that the plastic bottle vomits up sunscreen onto the mouse. It saunters away under the door’s gap. Worse still, my enemy won’t wrinkle.
My life returns to the bathroom. I have to open the window, slick with fly guts, to remember a world outside of this domestic drama. If I really crane my neck I can see the German tourists in front of Carrie Bradshaw’s haus and the glistening Hudson River and the men on their phone screaming about their deals.
—
The gay guy podcasters review the Big Gay Movie and they think it’s great! They call it camp. Everyone online thinks this too. Don’t they realize how embarrassing an opinion this is? To be so genuinely moved by a piece of media that has moved everyone in the exact same way. How easily they can locate contentment. Why can’t I be moved? At least I am not them, I think, and shake my legs awake from a workday spent on top of a toilet seat.
—
I step on one of those glue traps I am not allowed to buy. My foot burns and then goes numb.
—
Gabriel ends it with me, lol. He gets mad that I don’t start text conversations with him, that I don’t take our relationship seriously. Does he take it seriously? Does he see me as someone whom he could love and who could love him back? It scares me to be so off-base with what another person is thinking. I usually know what they are thinking. No worries! Kinda feeling the same, just need to be alone right now, I text him.
I spot mouse #2 out of the corner of my eye and jump. I look again to see that it is just my hand. Not a shadow of my hand, my hand. I am so scared, I laugh to myself.
—
I google what the Rabbis say about mice killing. Jews are particular over the question of killing an animal. For us, kosher slaughtering is done not necessarily for the benefit of the animal, but for the health of the community. If the slaughterer causes excessive pain to the animal — if it takes more than a single cut from the blade, or if the blade has a nick — his impurities have become non-kosher, not the meat itself. This is how the ethical becomes a moral issue; causing harm to an animal’s body causes harm to yourself. It’s like smashing a glass at the end of a Jewish wedding to remind us to treat our relationship with special care. Smashing a mouse, I think, will be ceremonious, like a wedding. A commitment to myself.
—
I get laid off this morning. No worries. Manager begins our bi-monthly meeting by telling me he doesn’t have the money to keep me anymore, he’s really sorry. I see in his eyes that he thinks I should be sad. He thanks me for my hard work. I read that the organization just sold off an un-burnable copy of The Handmaid’s Tale at an auction for $130,000. No worries. It was a pleasure serving the organization.
—
Mouse #2 spotted in the kitchen. It does not notice me at first and runs into the sink. Then it changes course to the other side of the countertop where pots and pans are kept. I lay siege with a barrier of seasoning containers. This is my opponent’s first and fatal mistake. It drops on its side and plays dead. A smart move if I was an owl. It is only then that I am able to comprehend the creature. Its tail wilts off the countertop. Its black eyes are open. It’s like I’m performing an autopsy. I place a cutting board over its body. I am crying. I press down like I’m opening a garlic clove. The mouse pops open. L’chaim.
Then the sound of the old refrigerator’s hum.
—
I read that Eric Adams is hiring a “rat czar.” The salary is between $120,000 to $170,000. There are so many mice in this city that I don’t know about. This city is scary. Mice going this way, that way, little mice with briefcases going to the ad agency. It overwhelms.
—
Mouse #3 spotted. Primal scream. I watch mouse-killing videos until I have seen them all. I think I am bored. Men from Staten Island stare into their phones. They speak like they have seen awful things. “If you have one rat, you’ve got more.”
I run out and buy spring traps, which means I will have to stomp on the mouse to kill it. I put on a jacket because it is getting colder and the sun is setting earlier. My apartment becomes a minefield of fancy seedy bread.
I notice a dog bowl in the kitchen. This kitchen is small, why have I never seen it? It must have been for one of my aunt’s poodles. I stick a trap under it in case the mouse finds it too.
—
I check the bread in the traps and it is hard and thin. I’m on top of my toilet when I see a pair of eyes peek out under the stove, retreat, appear again. I don’t scream this time. We are playing a game, making up its rules. Instead I approach it with curiosity. What does it see when it looks at me: A killer? Its owner? A loser? I like the fact that I can’t penetrate its psyche; that I will never fully understand this mouse; that this mouse is, for all intents and purposes, a photograph of a mouse.
—
Gabriel and I match on Tinder. Of course we do. It’s all predetermined, this situation we pretend is spontaneous and exciting. He says he even misses when I talk in my sleep. Yes, I missed you too, I tell him. He says he’ll come over right away. After we have sex he tells me he wants to go to the gay bar around the corner, he wants to watch Drag Race with mozzarella sticks. He nuzzles me. I think he wants to be in a place where people can see us together. I think about it for a second then decide that it’s all so … Kate Hudson. What is so wrong with this apartment, I want to ask. I have an early morning tomorrow, I say. Can I call you a car home? My treat. He asks to stay, really pleads with me, like a child wanting five more minutes with the iPad, saying it’s midnight. His lip tenses. I pick him up and carry his naked body out of bed. He clings to me like he still wants to make this work, to break me open. He doesn’t believe that I could just send him away. His body is still in my hands and I don’t know what to do with it. I feel guilty of something. I want to apologize to him, to tell him what’s wrong with our relationship, what’s wrong with me, why I’m so scared. But then I’ll get pied in the face. I move towards the door and tell him I’ll see him soon. He opens a cabinet and fills up a water glass. He says he’s around this week. He drinks the water carefully. He is trying to see if I’ll say something stupid. This moment feels pregnant, like standing in the middle of before and after. I want him to tell me that it’s okay to be scared, that lacking knowledge isn’t a reason to trap yourself inside what’s known.
Instead I watch him walk down the stairs. I wave at him and he waves back. This is the last time I see him, and the first time I see him outside of the apartment’s walls.
—
The bread is missing from the traps but the springs remain alert. I learn several things about my mouse. That it understands the consequence of a trap, perhaps, even, understands the consequences of death; that it has figured out how to avoid detection; and that it has good enough short-term memory to repeat this action. I feel pride that my apartment has turned into a classroom.
I don’t realize it at first but then I am not in the bathroom anymore. I eat popcorn at night in the living room and feel satisfied when there are no kernels left in the morning. I like being of consequence. I hear scurrying in my pipes and I get the same pangs I did when I got tucked into bed after dinner while my mom cleaned up.
I read online that for every person in America there is the equivalent of one mouse. It is just a statistic but I think it is romantic. I have found my mouse. I want to tell the mouse that it’s okay, weapons down, it can come out now. We can get to know each other.
—
It sounds like something has fallen off a shelf. Then the sound doesn’t stop. The sound is like screaming. That’s when I locate it in the living room: its left leg and stomach smushed to a spring trap. It seems it just had a misstep running across the wall. It wiggles on the floor trying to free itself. It is screaming one of those primal screams. The Redditors warned me of this.
All I have to do is squish it and it will thank me. Squish it and it’s over. That is the ethical thing to do. I leave my apartment.
I walk to the drug store around the corner to buy an ice cream bar and sit on a bench in the park off Bleecker and Bank where they do the farmers markets in the summer. It is dusk and people are coming home from work. I watch tourists take pictures of their banana puddings from the shop made famous on Sex And The City. I watch mothers pick up their children from the playground. I watch Amazon drivers on their delivery breaks.
The mouse is still throbbing when I return. Slowly now, arrhythmically. I was hoping this scene would just resolve itself. I can only think to sit and watch. The mouse contorts itself in an attempt to relieve itself of pain, or to hold onto this last bit of life. The mouse will not die from smashing. At this rate it will give itself a heart attack from panic, or starve. Which could take days. All I have to do is kill it and it will thank me. The purple lights of Roku City illuminate us. Kill it and it will thank me. I am a coward. I am sorry. I am sorrysorrysorry. I pinch the trap and wrap the mouse in three garbage bags and still feel its heart vibrating.
I walk downstairs and Google which bin I am supposed to throw it in.
