“What’s that you’ve got there?”
She snaps the box shut and spins around. The voice comes from the flowerbed – no, it’s a rock garden, with an ivy-covered alcove behind it on a small rise. Katya makes out a figure sitting in its shady depths. Drinking. He raises his glass in a cheery salute and beckons her closer.
“Just a sec,” she says to Toby. A paved path winds up to the grotto.
Closer, Katya sees he’s a large man, sitting on a throne-like wrought-iron bench with armrests in the shape of dragons’ heads. His legs are thrust out in front of him and a tendril of ivy tickles his brow. Shirt loose at the collar, a whisky tumbler askew in his fist.
She stands in front of him, waiting. This is another thing this uniform achieves. As it had eased her interaction with the gardener, so too it helps her do business with what is, clearly, a boss. Usually, standing in front of someone like this – evidently a rich man, powerful, older – Katya would feel awkward. She’d wonder how to stand, what to do with her hands, what to say. But here, now, her posture and her role are clear. He can talk to her if he wants. Or she can walk away. All part of the job.
It’s also his evident inebriation that puts her at her ease. He seems to be a benevolent drunk, squinting up at her from behind the ivy.
Katya doesn’t find drunken people difficult. Unless they are threatening or loud, they can be quite soothing company. She feels less observed around them; and there is something touching in the way they allow themselves to be seen, in this foolish, almost infantile state. And although they are in one sense blurred by the liquor, there is also a film peeled back, an occlusion lifted.
Right now, she feels free to pass her eyes over this man’s suit, his watch, his hair, his fittings and fixtures. He is solid, meaty. His mouth and nose are strong, large enough to balance the broad face, and finely cut. The face of a Roman emperor, past his prime and in his cups. When he smiles he shows one grayed-out canine, the same color as his hair. In his fifties, maybe.
“Let’s have a look at the merchandise,” he says.
Katya opens the lid of the box, tilting it to show him the brownish caterpillars.
Most people would recoil, exclaim at least. But in his face there is nothing: no revulsion, no interest either. He sips his drink, and then, with a casual flick of the wrist, dribbles a splash of the liquor into the box.
Katya snatches it away. “What’s that for?”
He shrugs. “They can’t feel much, surely? Stuff’s nutritious.”
She scowls and closes the lid carefully on the squirming creatures.
“So,” he says. “Caterpillar wrangling. Nice job for a girl. What else can you do?” He has a pleasant voice, smoother and more musical than his bulk would suggest.
“Caterpillars, snakes, frogs, slugs, cockroaches, baboons, rats, mice, snails, pigeons, ticks, geckos, flies, fleas.” Katya observes his face for reaction. Men are generally more squeamish about these things. “Bats. And spiders.”
He laughs – a laugh like the bark of a sizeable dog – and swirls his drink, as if her recitation has made him happy, has confirmed something for him. “I see. The whole gang. The unlovely. The unloved!”
He’s not as drunk as she’d thought. His layers are shifting: filming and folding. One has just pulled back to reveal something hard and clear. Whisky sloshing back in the glass to show the ice.
“Would you like a business card?” Katya asks.
He’s hugely amused by her, slapping a splayed thigh. “Sure, why not? Cards are good. A card would be fantastic.”
There’s a gold signet ring on his right hand. He looks at her with his eyes half closed in the late afternoon sun, wells of gray liquid glinting between the lids. Behind her, Katya senses Toby fidgeting with the car keys. The shadows are lengthening.
“In my top pocket,” Katya says, leaning forward to him. It’s a move that would show cleavage, normally, but as she is all buttoned up in froggy green, it’s more of an aggressive gesture. What it does is tip her breast pocket open, enough to show him a pack of business cards.
He does not hesitate. Smiling still in that slit-eyed way that reveals little, he reaches up and tweezes a single card from her pocket. His hands are thick, nails broad but manicured. He taps the card across the open mouth of his tumbler, examining it seriously.
She’s proud of the card: PPR: Painless Pest Relocations, it says. Plain font. Nothing cute, just the facts. Rat, pigeon, spider. Simple, accurate line drawings. It bothers her slightly that they are not to scale, but there is only so much you can achieve on a business card. Underneath it, her name: Katya Grubbs.
“Grubbs,” he says, and she waits for the laugh. Most people make a comment, something about the name fitting the work, etcetera. But he’s looking at it with a frown, holding it too long. “This is not you.”
“Yes it is.”
He looks up at her, sharp now. “I thought I told my wife not to hire you lot.”
“Sir?”
“Grubbs, I wouldn’t forget the name. Last year. Nineveh.”
Nineveh? Katya shakes her head, mystified.
“Grubbs, Grubbs ...” He clicks his fingers, “Len Grubbs.”
Katya’s back teeth click together. She was going to have to say it. “That would be my father.”
“Same crew, though?”
“No, I’m different – different company, different approach.”
“How?”
“I’m humane. Painless. Different.”
He taps his knuckle with the edge of the card. “Huh. Well, you better be. Because your father ripped me off quite spectacularly, you know that? Len Grubbs. Took my money, fucked around, fucked off. You can tell him I said so.”
Katya is standing oddly, stiff and tight. The magic of the uniform failing. She makes herself shrug, casual. “I have nothing to do with that. I haven’t seen him for years.”
He looks at her, nods and tucks her card into his top pocket. Crisp in the heat: fine cotton, no doubt. The man is sweating booze, but his clothes are holding up. And now here is the bluebell hostess at the corner of the house, gesticulating with her glass. Irritation registers in a momentary immobility of the man’s face but he gets to his feet, still smiling pleasantly. His movements are sharper and more energetic than a drunk man’s have any right to be. “Well, we’ll give you a try, I suppose. I might have some more work coming up.” Then he leans forward and slips his own card – appearing magically in his palm, a trick – into her pocket. Katya feels it through the material, sliding in. “I do think I prefer my caterpillar wranglers, ah ...” – and he looks her up and down, the ghost of a wink – “painless.”
As the PPR van labors up the steep driveway, Toby is uncharacteristically still. A capture box is on his lap, his long fingers resting lightly on its lid, and every now and then he drums on the wood with his index and middle fingers: a private, soothing rhythm. Poor little creatures, torn away: their pilgrimage denied.
“What was that all about?” asks Toby, rather sternly. “That dude.”
“Nothing. Just the boss.” And she changes to first so that the sound of the engine stops further conversation. But around the curve of the driveway, she pulls over and takes out the cigar box, slides it open.
“And now?”
She cranks down the van window and tosses the caterpillars into the shrubbery. “A bit of insurance. Gives us something to come