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If the books in Maggie's bedroom could speak of their greatest fears, they'd scream of being thrown violently at the floor, walls and ceiling at strange hours of the night. Maggie is about five feet and four inches tall, and she doesn't own a fly swatter. So to kill the endless squadrons of mosquitoes that infiltrate her ground-floor apartment in Brooklyn, she hurls the heavier books like bombs. Many of the books once were mine, but that was a few years and two apartments ago, before a string of book-nappings perpetrated by Maggie. And despite being weaponized, the books would probably say they are happier with her than they ever were with me.
"This is all your fault," Maggie says, turning on the light at 4:13 in the morning. "I heard one of those little fuckers buzz past my ear."
"Maggie, are you sure?"
"What? You think this is in my head?" She motions to a small bloodstain on the wall near her desk. The stain is in the shape of the palm of my hand. I killed a mosquito there a few nights ago.
"Okay, okay." I get out of bed and pull on my boxer shorts. Maggie herself becomes an American-Apparel-boy-short-clad, but otherwise naked, commando. She extends the fingers on both of her hands all the way out, but with no spaces between them. She then rotates her hands around each other, like she is getting ready to karate-chop something. She frightens me; she's a crazed ninja out to reclaim her own blood. I can't remember if she was always this way. I can't remember if I always was up for domestic bug-killing duties in what is otherwise a non-traditional, very un-domestic relationship.
"I'm so sick of this. I can't believe this always happens," she says.
"I don't understand why you think this is my fault. This really doesn't happen when you're alone?"
"No, Ryan!" Maggie says, with her short blonde curls bouncing off her cheeks like her hair is mad at me too. If Maggie's theory is to be believed, these buzzing bastards are the only flying cockblockers in the world. "The mosquitoes only attack me after we have sex," she continues. "It's the pheromones and sweat and come and everything! It's like honey to them or something, and I'm the honey pot! The honey pot of blood!"
So in her mind, the mosquitoes are like the psychopathic killers in bad horror movies. The unsuspecting couple starts making out in the cab of a pick-up truck, and once things get hot and heavy, the axe murderer, chainsaw guy, or whoever comes out from the bushes and offs them both. In our case, the killer would apparently come dressed as a giant mosquito.
"But what about in the morning?" I say. "We have sex in the morning, and the mosquitoes don't get you then."
"That's because in the morning I take a shower and go to work. They don't have time to get me. But I bet if I laid around in bed all day, like you, they would start biting me."
The strange thing is the mosquitoes don't seem to like me at all. They really do only bite her, lending credence to her theory. And as much as I fear this is some excuse she's concocted to stop sleeping with me, the bloody carnage on the walls and red welts on her naked body prove otherwise.
Maggie and I have been sleeping together on and off for about two years. Whether we dated briefly when we first met depends on whom you ask. But one thing is certain: If we find ourselves in the same bed together, we end up having sex. I like this arrangement because there's not much not to like about Maggie. She knows me really well, we like the same kinds of books and she's Goldilocks with regard to my penis.
I pretty much wish she were my girlfriend, but I've given up asking. To the men in her life, Maggie is one giant mammal, with all of us suitors sucking up what little of her blood we can. The last who bit Maggie was some guy living in Germany. She shooed him away after about eight months. I prefer not to think about him.
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Whether we dated briefly when we first met depends on whom you ask.
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Maggie sits down on her bed, temporarily defeated, and reaches for answers from her milk-crate bookshelf. Some people seek oracles, some people pray. Maggie asks questions of the books in her room, turning to a random page, placing her finger on a line, reading it and then interpreting it as an answer to her question. She doesn't make all of her decisions in this manner, but with matters of the heart, or libido, it's her version of a Magic 8-Ball. She grabs a copy of Kurt Vonnegut's Slapstick, her favorite. "Is Ryan the Pied Piper of mosquitoes?" she asks as she flips it open. She then reads the line beneath her finger: "Perhaps some people are born unhappy. I surely hope not."
Maggie pauses for a moment and considers this. Despite evading a legitimate relationship with me, she sometimes softens when viewing our situation through certain lenses. She either stole this copy of Slapstick from me or stole it back. Our books were shuffled around at one time, like children from a divorced family being ferried between Mom's house and Dad's house. "I guess maybe this isn't your fault, and maybe I'm just looking for a reason to stop fucking around."
I like her, so I endorse this insanity a bit by giving her another way to back out. "Well, if you want to stop having sex and go back to being friends… just tell me."
"Maybe," she says, "But not right now." We climb back into bed, leaving the light on. I pull off her shorts and throw her on top of me. We rarely do it this way. Usually it's just missionary, like we're getting down to business. We know that way works. But having her on top right now is nice. Maybe if we switch it up the mosquitoes will leave her alone.
And then — SMACK. Maggie's hand is extended on the wall behind her bed, and not to support herself. She just killed another one, and killed the mood in the process. "Let's try to go to sleep now," she says.
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