A stranger had made their house a restaurant. We went to eat there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I didn\u2019t know the family at my table, but they loved me. I was a mother to the children, wife to a woman.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We sat at a long table in the living room, wallpaper fraying on the walls. A light fixture hung above our heads.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The light was dim, the fixture cobwebbed. Hanging in the webs were many corpses of thick-legged spiders.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One of them moved. All of them moved. What I\u2019d thought were many dead spiders was one the size of a housecat. It was alive. The proprietor of the restaurant house, a strange woman I would never want to see near food, reached up. The spider climbed onto her arm and she carried it to a stairwell I hadn\u2019t seen. The spider leapt off and crawled down.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I asked the woman where the stairs led. She answered but I couldn\u2019t hear. I tried to ask again, but I was squirming against the sheets, and the tugging of my body pulled me out and away.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I was sweating through the bed, face streaked with tears.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I leapt off and tore wet sheets away. No spider there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I pictured him climbing down the wall as I sat in my bathtub. I saw myself reaching into the cereal cabinet I can\u2019t look into, as it\u2019s too high up, as he waited in there for my hand to brush against him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I turned my apartment upside down. No sign of the spider. No webs, no dead or dying flies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I couldn\u2019t stand still. I felt everything on my skin. Crawling. Creeping.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He was such an awful spider. He was the biggest thing I\u2019d ever seen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I went outside. I wore no coat. But no one frowned or shook their head at me, Little Miss Muffet shivering her way somewhere. The sidewalks were empty.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I went into a diner where I go for breakfast when I\u2019m tired of being alone. I was halfway through a plate of eggs when the spider came through the door.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He wore a black suit, red shirt, and black fedora. His face was paler than mine and younger, but he moved like he was old. And I wondered if that\u2019s the worst thing about spiders, that they move like they\u2019re so old but none of them are.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He sat beside me. I knew it was him. He moved the way he\u2019d climbed into the woman\u2019s hand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI looked for you,\u201d I said. \u201cIn my apartment.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He didn\u2019t answer. He continued facing forward. No one took his order\u2014because of his species, I\u2019m sure. I watched his reflection on the napkin dispenser. His eyes were completely black.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I said, \u201cI didn\u2019t want to ever see you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I knew he heard me, but he didn\u2019t respond.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWhy were you at the restaurant? How did you find your way in?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He turned on his stool to face me, finally, so slowly, like he almost couldn\u2019t move.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He pulled a napkin from the dispenser, took a pen from somewhere, and wrote big letters, a pen stroke here, the next there, the meaning of the message accruing across the minutes I watched him work. A patchwork of scratches and dashes arranged with meticulous care appeared on the napkin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He leaned back. I read his webbish words.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I WAS COLD.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Of course. It had been warm in the light fixture he\u2019d emerged from. The restaurant house was hot as summertime. The fixture must have been the most welcoming thing in the city, to a creature that was drawn to heat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When it\u2019s cold out, bugs come in. Snakes and lizards, too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I said, \u201cYou are so frightening. It\u2019s horrible.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n He kept watching me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I covered my face.<\/p>\n\n\n\n All I wanted was for someone to come and take the spider away. But no one would ever do that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I had to leave and do it slowly. Move like a spider.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As gradually as I could, I pulled a twenty from my pocket and placed it on the counter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It took forever. The spider watched. I couldn\u2019t believe his patience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I stood and walked like a glacier to the door.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When I was outside, I looked back in. I swiveled my head on my neck so slowly, like I was almost not moving at all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I saw the spider unfold himself from the stool where he was sitting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n He started to leave. He went faster than I did. Spiders really move when they want to.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I took the shortest, most gradual steps, making my way up the street like my joints were rusted. I expected any moment to feel the spider\u2019s legs on my ankle or the back of my neck.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But I didn\u2019t feel him. All I felt was cold.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I stopped and turned around at last to see him climbing. With all of his legs he was creeping his way up a wall on his way to a window. It was shut, but he found a crack between bricks and slipped through, legs first, then the rest of him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n He was looking for warmth again. He would find it in another woman\u2019s bed, in a dream she had that morning of a sweltering attic or an endless pit of fire.<\/p>\n\n\n\n ________<\/p>\n\n\n\n Robert Long Foreman’s recent books are<\/em> WEIRD PIG and<\/em> I AM HERE TO MAKE FRIENDS. Read more and find out what Rob is really like at robertlongforeman.com.<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"