Bugs by John Sladek Page A

green eyes.
    ‘Gunats,’ she said.
    He was shocked to realize he was in the presence of a great beauty – though at the moment hers was a watercolourbeauty seen through a Renoir mist of tears: a fine cloud of red hair, pale golden skin, slightly tilted green eyes. Expensive pastel running gear in pink and turquoise. ‘Gunats. They like to take drink at the ice.’
    ‘The ice?’
    ‘The ice and the mout. You must use this, darlink.’ She held up a small plastic bottle. ‘Buck detergent.’
    ‘Ah, insect repellent. Good idea. Repels … er, insects. Seem to be a lot of them about, too. I’ve noticed that Minnesota favours every known type of blood-sucking insect: leeches, mosquitoes, ticks, deerflies, horseflies, blackflies …’ He heard his own fatuous flow and broke off. Shut it, shut it!
    ‘In Minnesota, buck detergent is absolutely necessary, darlink.’
    ‘Yes.’ Having stopped the inane babbling, he found himself unable to speak at all. Tongue-tied by her beauty, which was even more startling when the mist cleared. This woman had prominent cheekbones, even for America. Why was she calling him ‘darling’? No doubt an actress or something. ‘Uh, thank you so much.’ Say something clever, you jerk!
    ‘My name is KK.’
    ‘Fred Jones.’
    Her grip was solid, and she gave his hand a single violent shake, as though forcing him to drop a weapon.
    ‘Shall we have coffee?’ she suggested, taking it for granted that, having met her, he was ready to give up running. This was true. If she had suggested that he fly to South America and pick the coffee beans personally, he would have begun looking up plane schedules.
    He hesitated as they passed the McIntosh hamburger paradise, where McCoffee in a styrofoam cup would be exactly in his price range. She took his arm and firmly steered him past it, to an establishment called Geraldino’s, far beyond his means. He said nothing.
    ‘Is nice,’ said KK, as they took their seats at a pine table. He nodded. The waitress brought hand-written menus. Heread as far as the two-figure price for Spaghetti Pinocchio (‘A meld of robust pesto that segues with a quietly poshified generosity of pine nuts webbed in a spunky cloudlet of homely pasta that does not noble it up unduly …’).
    ‘Just coffee for two,’ he said.
    ‘Coffee menu’s on the back.’
    There were roughly twenty or thirty thousand coffee choices in tiny script, none costing as little as an entire meal at McIntosh’s.
    KK said: ‘So many choices! Only in America!’
    The waitress was helpful, leading them through the branches of a tree of choices. They could have regular or decaffeinated; Middle Eastern, European or American blend. The European branch led to Northern or Mediterranean. Mediterranean included French, Italian or Greek.
    Once the basic blend was determined, the choice was plain or flavoured (up to twenty flavours, including Marzipan, Mint-Caraway, Buffalo Chocolate Chip, Butterscotch Brownie).
    That settled, another cut selected the dairy additive: milk (hot or cold, whole, 2 per cent butterfat, skim or plant milk), cream, whipped cream, yoghurt, bean curd, buttermilk, or something called smetana, which sounded unpleasantly like a substance harvested from beneath the foreskins of sturdy Kurdish tribesmen.
    The final cut selected the sweetening agent: white sugar, light or dark brown, Demerara, honey (from clover, orange blossoms, buckwheat, heather, acacia or tobacco), molasses, corn syrup, maple syrup, Nutrasweet or saccharin. By the time their coffee came, in dramatically hand-made earthenware mugs scoured with the marks of natural fingers, Fred could not remember what he’d ordered. It tasted like cheap powdered instant with a pinch of chicory.
    He noticed that her sweatshirt was monogrammed. ‘What does the KK stand for?’
    ‘Kitty Katya,’ she said, after some hesitation. ‘Is stupid name. I prefer plain KK. Vat does Fred stand for?’
    ‘Manfred. Manfred Evelyn,