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Show THE EXTERMINATOR-69 THE EXTERMINATOR The box elder bugs were everywhere, hundreds of them around the windows, coming inside, falling from the ceilings, crawling sluggishly or spurting into sudden flight, the cheerless fire under their wings flashing briefly, unbeautifully. It was November and still the bugs swarmed, died. And swarmed again. She was tired of flicking them off her clothing, of having to look into a coffee cup before drinking from i t , of shaking them out of her shoes. She wondered if she shouldn't call in an exterminator. She had never called an exterminator before. She'd been alone for a month now. Yet a person could only stand so much. And she was trapped here, inside this maddening squarish house. With Marta gone, there was no one to take her out or to bring things to her. The crackers had been gone since yesterday, and she was nearly out of coffee. She drank out of the cup slowly, savoring the bitterness. After the last swallow she felt something in her mouth, flicked it out with her tongue onto the tip of her index finger. It was a piece of wing, black, edged with red. She rinsed out her mouth for a long time. Then she looked up Exterminators in the Yellow Pages, choose the only one that looked like a man, not a company, someone local and small, someone who might need her: Bertram McClintock, "the Oldest Name in B-Free Bug Control." He came to the door the next morning, a small gray-haired man wearing a shabby black uniform with "B-Free" crudely embroidered on the pocket over his |