In which our hero is visited by an exterminator.

Welcome to my blog. Previous readers have expressed confusion as to whether the narrator of this blog – or what Henry James refers to as the center of consciousness – really is Jack Nicholson. All I can tell you is that I, the writer of the blog, am indeed Jack Nicholson. However, I should mention that the characters in this rather disjointed chronicle are NOT intended to represent any real people, living or dead. And so, I felt this preface necessary.

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Caption for photograph of dog driving automobile: What is the correlation between conscious thought and muscular action?


Letters:
I would like to formally apologize to my oldest and dearest friend, Danny DeVito. It is indeed likely that, as his legal advisors have suggested, I took some “liberties with the truth” […] “in the interest of fantastical erotica or transgressive literature”. I wish to once again remind my readers that the characters appearing in this blog are very much works of fiction.




“Though in many of its aspects this visible world seems formed in love, the invisible spheres were formed in fright.” The exterminator was a Danny DeVito look-a-like and a nose-picker. “Herman Melville from his novel Moby-Dick.” He lifted his eyes to a crumb beside my mouth and had no qualms about picking his nose while I rambled on about the infestation. He pulled out strands of snot to better smell personal relics; but he was careful to appear tactful in the disposal of the findings. Resisting his temptation to eat a sharp lozenge of booger, he examined an anthology of Holocaust poetry for markings of Cragganmore’s teeth and placed the prize within its pages. He tapped the binding against his lip and sniffed in the aroma of antiquated glue tinctured with silverfish droppings.

“I’m a big fan of anything Holocaust,” remarked the exterminator.

“Oh. Are you Jewish?”

“I’m all religion and no religion, everyman yet no man at all. You see, all religions speak to and of me, but none grant me tranquil. I, my boy, am an extrémité incessante!”

“Is that also from Moby-Dick?”

      

He withdrew various poisons from a clunky leather medical bag and noted Cragganmore’s name on a long muster roll within a thick encyclopedic-like book before returning his finger to his nostril. Rather than draw attention with a forceful flick, the exterminator wiped the remains of partly dried mucus from his stubby fingertip onto the unseen back of the refrigerator – his other fingers making like he was occupied with important tasks by flipping through the pages of the immense leather bound book or adjusting the pince-nez on his nose. He opened the refrigerator door to taste every cheese, salami, pickle, both smooth and crunchy peanut butters, whatever he could find to determine what would best lure the rodent to its death. He did all this with the same fever a pregnant woman devours to bring life to her unborn. And when he finished, he inquired about lunch.
“There is no mayonnaise in your refrigerator,” he reported while fixing himself a postprandial sandwich. “Only mustard and horseradish.”

“I’m watching my cholesterol.”

“Sans doubt. But what fowl, I dare ask, can you put on a sandwich without mayonnaise? Ne pas manger ce pain-là. Dare you not profess the condiment rather de rigueur to prevent dryness?” 

The pleasure of eating the sandwich he had prepared was soon abandoned however, as the hypnotic saccade of his eyes suggested a pretzel found in the corner of the room might jump up and scurry off at any moment. With a swiftness that indicated he had been trained for such an occasion, the exterminator dropped on all fours and sneaked the pretzel into his mouth. Like a dog, this somehow made him more human.

Sensing scrutiny in my gaze, his eyes visibly awakened from their trance and froze before he awkwardly turned his stout frame to ask, “Are you in pictures?” Upon confirmation, he confidently returned his finger to his nostril. “I knew I recognized you. You were in that Adam Sandler movie. I knew it. I knew I recognized you. You have a certain je ne sais pas.”

“Je ne sais quoi?”

“Chacun a son gout, I suppose!” Still a dog on all fours, he cocked his head further askew, glistening the sloppily spread rim of wax inside his right ear. “I like the movies. They give a false impression of immortality. But Jack Nicholson would never reside in such a… such a… comme si comme ca abode. Être serrés comme des sardines!” he laughed. “But you were in that Adam Sandler movie, weren’t you”

“Yes, and I am Jack Nicholson.”

“If you like,” shrugged the exterminator, and he officiously picked his nose before justifying his body’s refusal to stand on hind-legs by peeling up a corner of bathmat to sniff an untraceable scent.

More humane than the non-fatal cage described a couple of blogs back were attempts to live harmoniously with mice. But making a pet of a former intruder like Little Orphan Oban had meant droppings on the floor, gnawing at the books, and slippers constantly covering our hero’s feet. Eventually, a cat was borrowed from a teammate on his amateur baseball team. If this cat’s proud march from the bathroom – a decapitated Lil’ Oban hanging from its mouth – was nature in motion, Jack Nicholson was happy to call the exterminator this time around.

Jumping to his feet, he assessed: “She’s an eater! I’ll throw some poison packages around the place. Baby will chew on those and in fifteen minutes… Well… Adieu.” He winked.  “For safe keeping, I’ll lay out a few glue-traps for mon petite poupée to stumble on for easy disposal. After all, we wouldn’t want Baby wandering off to some undisclosed location to pass on to the hereafter, would we? A mouse should die in the home. Before the later part of the 20^th century, we used to die in our houses, surrounded by: family, neighbours, clergy… Mon dieu… those cursed hospitals have taken all the life out of death.” Though he was without tail, it seemed the exterminator wagged his when walking out the door.