Saki has a short story in which the hero, St. Vespaluus, is meant to be killed by a swarm of bees. I’m quite convinced my demise will be something like the one planned for him. Only, I will be killed by a million stings, by a swarm of mosquitoes.

I have no big troubles. It’s not at all like that. No cataclysmic end for our Silas. No car crash, no lobbed bomb, no falling off a cliff, no homicide victim. No, I’m altogether sure I will be harangued, vexed, and eventually destroyed by a million little stings. Here’s what I mean. I have a Silas Curse. I can be walking down the road, an empty road, and the second I decide I want to cross that road, suddenly, as if my karma called it, a car, ten cars.

Whenever I come into my apartment building, my keys are always in the other pocket. No matter which pocket I check, they are always in the other one. Especially if my hands are full. When delivery men say stay home, we’ll be there between 9 am and 5 pm, they arrive at 4:59. The only time I take one bag with me is certainly the time Murphy has, um, digestive problems. The itches on my back are always just out of reach. It’s happened often where I hold the door open downstairs for people and those people will run and steal the elevator. If there’s a carton of milk on the shelf that’s turned or about to turn, I’ll buy it. When I bet black, it’s red. Whenever I’ve picked the shortest line in the grocery store, it always takes the longest. If I could buy my salvation for a dollar, I’d be sure to have 99 cents.

I know people who have bad luck. But I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about always. Always. Now maybe you think I’m just a negative person and I notice it more. Or even, somehow, expecting it, I might even bring it on. That might not be untrue. But all empirical evidence has shown that it has always been like this and it will continue to always be like this and I should expect it. This explains my dog’s name, Murphy.

Unconvinced? Let me explain why I’m up at 4:06 am. Last September I received a notice that men were coming to replace my windows. Essentially, they were going to break all of my windows on my south, my balcony wall, remove the framing and put in new ones. They required that that wall be cleared 5 feet in and that the balcony be entirely cleared as well. I’m a collector. I collect things. I have lots of things, mostly useless things that I want to turn into art or a photograph. My apartment is set on collapse. A hurricane, a slight settling perhaps, might just kill me under a debris of bric a brac. That would be not unlike being dispatched by a million mosquito stings. The men were coming on a Thursday, my notice said. I got the notice that Wednesday afternoon. My humble collapsible apartment is not very large. It was required that I essentially move half of my apartment into the other half. It took about 6 hours and rendered my bathroom and kitchen unusable. They also required that I couldn’t be home on that Thursday and neither could Murphy. I had packed a bag to wander the city with my dog, homeless for a day.

Why am I telling this story now, 10 months later? On that Thursday morning, the men didn’t come. On that Thursday afternoon, I tracked my super down and he advised that the window people had been fired the night before, Wednesday night. Nobody had told me. Not before I moved half of my apartment, not while I was moving half of my apartment, not after I had barred myself out of my own kitchen and bathroom. Thursday night and a good part of the Friday, I put my apartment back to normal with my old windows.

My building hired new window people in late May, two months ago, nearly. They didn’t recommence where their unlucky predecessors had ended. I awaited eagerly my notification. And not quite a week ago I got that notice, finally, that the men were coming “Monday July 13th” which, distressingly, doesn’t exist. It took me three days and a surprising amount of effort to resolve this. Nobody really seemed to remark that it made a bit of difference if they came on the Monday or the Tuesday. I was finally informed that they were coming on Tuesday July 13th. Well that made infinitely more sense. The very next day, yesterday, well, Tuesday, I received a new notice, identical, except this one said they were coming on July 7th, 2004. That’s today, now. I got that less than 24 hours ago, and less that 24 hours after I had resolved, at last, that they were coming July 13th.

I just spent the last 7 hours moving half of my apartment. There’s fine print on the bottom of the notice. It says: “In case of rain, the following day.”

Right now, it’s raining. It’s pouring. The weatherman reports that it’s going to rain all day Wednesday (today). Murphy, distressed again, is hiding in the bathtub. She had to carefully negotiate plants, cartons, boxes, to get there. And she’s not coming out.

I have to move my couch to get to the bathroom, to get to the exit. I have to move my couch again to get to the kitchen. And it looks like I’m living this way for the rest of today (Wednesday). And for Thursday, even though Murphy and I won’t be allowed to be here. And for as much of Friday as it takes to get it back just so.

When I think my back is broken, just another straw, just one more.

Quasimodo picks up the beleaguered Esmeralda and carries her into the church and cries, “Sanctuary. Sanctuary.” Where’s my church? Where’s my fair hunchback? Where’s my sanctuary?

A million stings. I think I’m up to 999,999. In the Saki story the keeper of the royal hives, meticulously, one by one, removes the stings from the bees. Where is my royal bee keeper? I need a royal bee keeper.

SS