Q: I sometimes imagihat I am i trol. I have a small white truck with a red diamond-shaped emblem on the door and a white jump suit with the same emblem on the breast pocket. I park the tru front of a subscribers hree-huhousand-dollar home, extract the silver ister of deadly pest-killer from the back of the truck, and walk up the brick sidewalk to the houses front door. Chimes ring, the door swings open, a young wife in jeans and a pink flannel shirt worn outside the jeans is standing there. "Pest trol," I say. She smiles at me, I smile bad move past her into the house, into the handsomely appointed kit. The ister is suspended by a sling from my right shoulder, and, pumping the meism occasionally with my right hand, I point the nozzle of the hose at the baseboards and begin to spray. I spray alongside the refrigerator, alongside the gas range, uhe sink, and behind the kit table. , I move to the bathrooms, pumping and spraying. The young wife is in another room, waiting for me to finish. I walk into the main sitting room and spray discreetly behind the largest pieces of furniture, an oak sideboard, a red plush Victorian couch, and along the inside of the fireplace. I do the study, spraying behind the masters heavy desk on which there is an open copy of the bia Encyclopedia, hes been looking up the Seven Years War, 1756-63, yellow highlighting there, and be?hind the forty-five-inch RCA television. The master bedroom requires just touches, like perfume behind the ear, short bursts in her closet which must avoid the two dozen pairs of shoes there and in his closet which ?tains six to eight long guns in vas cases. Finally I spray the laundry room with its big white washer and dryer, and behind the folding table stacked with sheets and towels already folded. Who folds? I surmise that she folds. Unless one of the older children, pressed into service, folds. In my experiehey are uo fold. Maybe the au pair. Finished, I tear a properly-made-out receipt from my receipt book and present it to the young wife. She scribbles her name in the appro?priate spad hands it bae. The house now stinks quite palpably but I know and she knows that the stench will dissipate in two to four hours. The young wife escorts me to the door, and, in parting, pins a silver medal on my chest and kisses me on both cheeks. Pest trol!
Four oclo the m. Simon listen?ing to one of his radios, sipping white wiwo horn players are talking about Coltrane.
"The thing is," one says, and the other bursts in to say, "Yeah, but wait a minute."
A Woody Shaw record is played. Simons using ear?phones so he play the music as loud as he pleases without disturbing the women. At low volume you lose half of it, a thing his wife had never uood. Now one of the guests is praising D flat. "This is on ITC," the host says. "ITC is a new label thats just getting started in LA. Theyre getting new guys and doihings." The drummer on the Woody Shaw record is wonderfully skillful if a bit orotund.
"Great one," says one of the guys on the radio, when the Wynton Marsalis track is over.
"A lot of humility," says the other. "I mean he do it all."
Simon suddenly remembers putting on his daugh?ters shoes, in the m, before his wife took her to nursery school. His wife brought in the child and the shoes, and Sarah would sit on his lap as sneaker was fit?ted to foot. "Make your toes little," hed say, and shed perversely spread them.
"New York is a bitch," the radio says