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Parker awoke to a broken air conditioner unit and the hot Californian sun bearing mercilessly down on him through the cracked window of his one bedroom apartment. He ran his fingers through his dirty hair and tossed his sweat soaked t-shirt in the corner with the rest of the clothes he had meant to take to the laundry mat last week. The small fan he had found in a dumpster near the quick mart where he worked, sputtered and then died completely, but Parker was so surprised that it had even switched on, he forgot to mourn its death.
The humming of the refrigerator drew him like a moth to a flame, but it could only offer temporary relief from the summer heat.
It had been two weeks since Parker had bought groceries for himself and the refrigerator had long since grown bare. There was barely even a cup of milk left and even though the cartoon warned that it was well past its expiration date, he figured as long as it wasn't lumpy, it would do fine over cereal.
He picked out what appeared to be the cleanest bowl from the sink and carelessly rinsed the remains of yesterday's breakfast from it.
The aged and water stained wallpaper struggled to remain adhered to the crumbling apartment walls. Parker uncurled one corner of the paper and pressed it back against the wall, but the wallpaper once again fell as soon as he released his hold on it.
Movement caught Parker's eye as he opened the cabinet he had turned into a makeshift pantry and he quickly tossed the box of cereal to the floor. The contents of the box scattered across the broken, unswept tiles, and the culprit scurried beneath the refrigerator.
Parker cursed.
If there was one thing in this world that he could not stand, it was cockroaches.
After searching for the roach for several minutes, he gave up, scooped a bowl of corn flakes up off the floor, and proceeded to eat his breakfast.
Two weeks went by, and even though Parker had reported the infestation to the landlord numerous times, the cockroaches continued to grow in numbers.
They took over his kitchen, invaded his shower, and crawled between his tattered bed sheets at night.
Parker could not wait on the landlord any longer and decided to take matters into his own hands.
The next day he took out an advance on his paycheck, stole a phonebook from the phone booth in front of the dingy laundromat, and which just about every clothing article he owned revolved behind the glass door of a leaky washing machine, he used the laundry mat attendant's phone to call every single exterminator listed in the Yellow Pages.
Out of the dozens of numbers he dialed, he could only find one who was both affordable and available to spray that week.
He gathered up his handful of wet clothes from the washing machine and thanked the attendant for letting him borrow his phone. He could not spare the fifty cents needed to operate the dryer, but it was hot enough inside his apartment to dry them just as fast.
On the day the exterminator was scheduled to spray his apartment, Parker traded his day shift for graveyard in order to be home. He cleaned his living quarters as best as the dingy building allowed and brushed his hair out of his face.
The exterminator knocked on his door a minute and a half after three in the afternoon.
He introduced himself as Jamison and appeared to be everything that Parker was not.
Jamison was tall and thin. His brown eyes peered out from behind dark lashes and even though his hair stuck up in a hundred different directions, it was still perfect. The shoes he wore on his feet, although dusty from climbing the stairs of the apartment building, cost more than Parker's entire wardrobe.
Parker followed him around the small apartment, listening to every word he said.
The extermination business was his dad's, and he was only working for him until he could establish a career in modeling. He thought Parker was brave for living in this part of town by himself; and when Parker had blushed, embarrassed about his lack of air conditioning, Jamison had merely smiled. He claimed the heat was a nice change from the freezing temperatures his parents kept the thermostat set to at home.
After he finished spraying, Jamison wrote his name and number on the back of one of his father's business cards. He handed the card to Parker with instructions to call him in two weeks if the roach problem had not improved, or sooner if the Californian nightlife started to scare him.
Jamison winked at Parker before the door shut behind him and as soon as Parker was sure he had left, he let out the breath he had not even realized he had been holding.
That night at work, Parker continuously found himself thinking about Jamison. Every time the bell above the door signaled the entry of a new customer, Parker would look up, silently wishing that it would be him standing before the counter.
When 6 a.m. arrived, Parker clocked out and walked back to his apartment. But instead of sleeping a couple of hours before he had to be back at work at 10 a.m., Parker swept up the bodies of a hundred deceased cockroaches. He could not find a single one that remained alive.
Jamison's image haunted his dreams and every one he passed on the street seemed to favor him. One man might have the same hair cut. Another might have similar eyes, but none were ever as perfect as Parker had perceived Jamison to be.
In fact, Parker's obsession with Jamison became so prominent that Parker began searching his apartment with the hopes of finding a living cockroach.
He figured that if he could just find one of those putrid creatures, he would have reason to call Jamison back. He believed that if he could just see him one more time, he could get him off his mind.
Days turned into weeks, and Parker still had not been able to find any evidence that there were still cockroaches calling his living quarters home.
Parker became desperate.
He looked under the shelves at work and went through the dumpsters in the alley. Before, the pests had been inescapable, but now that he had need for one, they were harder to come by than finding Mel Gibson in a Jewish synagogue.
Then Parker got an idea. He convinced his boss to give him another advance on his paycheck and went back to the laundromat. But instead of calling exterminators, he called every pet store within walking distance of his apartment.
None of them sold roaches of any kind, but one pet store did sell Mexican grasshoppers.
Parker explained his situation to the laundry mat attendant and, together, they decided that giant crickets were better than nothing.
The grasshoppers were black with huge red goggled eyes. They were, without a doubt, one of the ugliest creatures Parker had ever laid his eyes on, and to top it off, each grasshopper was as large as his hand.
Parker bought three of them at $10.00 each.
He had to admit they looked extraordinarily out of place perched in various locations in his apartment. Even worse, they were the loudest bugs he had ever heard.
They could even be heard in the hall.
The man who lived next door was more than willing to let Parker borrow his cell phone to call the exterminator.
Parker explained that the situation was hard to describe, but none-the-less serious, and since he was in the area, Jamison agreed to check-out the apartment that night.
Never before had Parker ever felt as nervous as he did then. He paced back and forth in his dingy kitchen, continuously checked his reflection in the broken bathroom mirror, and occasionally hunted down his extraterrestrial house guests and placed them back in plain view.
He hoped the grasshoppers did not seem too out of place among his water stained walls and cardboard covered windows.
When Jamison arrived, Parker's breath caught in his throat and, at that moment, he would have traded his very soul for a stiff drink to calm his nerves.
Jamison asked where Parker had seen the pests and then began searching for a trace of their existence. He searched the small apartment for a full thirty minute before he came across one of the exotic grasshoppers.
Wide-eyed and shocked, Jamison picked up the enormous insect by one of its hind legs and showed it to Parker.
It was obvious that he did not believe the grasshopper had found its own way to the apartment.
All of the things Parker had planned on saying to Jamison left him. He blushed and shifted his weight from foot to foot in an attempt to think of an excuse, but found himself unable to form a complete sentence.
Not knowing what else to do, Parker turned away from the man he had spent the past two weeks fantasizing over and left the room.
He had never been so embarrassed in his life.
One of the grasshoppers chirped loudly from cross the kitchen and Parker threw one of the dirty dishes from the sink in its direction. Tears welled up in his eyes.
Jamison's hand on his shoulder caught him off guard. He had expected Jamison to be upset or angry with him, but instead found Jamison's brown eyes soft and inviting.
He opened his mouth to apologize, but Jamison cut him off before he could form a single word.
"Don't speak . . ." Jamison whispered as he closed the space between his and Parker's lips.
A sense of relief washed over Parker, and while the crickets sang their songs in the background, he felt like he truly was the luckiest man alive.