Isabelle stands still in the doorway as her mother approaches, her palms gone sweaty and her shoulders tight with worry. Her eyes are fixed on her mother’s desk chair, the cushion there unburdened now and rising. The exterminator, she thinks, remembering all the times in the past when the building exterminator has knocked on their back door and she has not given a thought to whatever creatures he was there to exterminate. But her ants! Exterminate, she thinks; such a violent, calculating word. Her mother brushes past her; Isabelle hurries after her toward the kitchen. Normally at a time like this, when there is a delivery or the superintendent has come to fix the toilet, Isabelle retreats to the safety of her room until whoever has come is gone; her mother looks over her shoulder with surprise at the sound of Isabelle’s footsteps on the kitchen floor, and she pauses before pulling the back door open.

“Should I wait?” her mother asks, thinking, Isabelle thinks, that Isabelle wants to gather her homework or pour a glass of orange juice to take away with her before the exterminator comes in.

Isabelle shakes her head as the exterminator pounds on the door for the third time, stationing herself before the sink and the cabinet beneath it in which she can imagine her ants even now making their tireless march up and down the back wall. “Exterminator!” he calls. Isabelle swallows, digging her nails into her palms as her mother pulls the back door open. The door is heavy and opens with a familiar whine; Maggie appears at the sound, her eyes glassy with sleep, one ear flipped inside out. Maggie cocks her head, taking measure of the man in the doorway, her tail poised as if to wag, but uncertain yet. Isabelle looks from the dog to the exterminator, the man behind the voice she has heard so often calling from behind the door as he makes his quarterly rounds of their building. He wears white work pants gone brown with dirt on the thighs and knees and cuffs, a thick brown belt around his waist laden with sprays, a flashlight, a measuring tape, and, along the back, Isabelle can see when he turns around to set his tool kit on the floor behind him, a series of screwdrivers. His ponytail interrupts the T-shirt logo on his back, which Isabelle can make out as a foot descending upon an ant, the ant’s cartoonish eyes big with worry. The man turns back into the room, and Isabelle lets her eyes travel up to his face; it is tan despite the winter, and Isabelle can imagine the rough feel of the bristles on his chin and cheeks, longer than her father’s even when he hadn’t shaved for a whole week one summer, just to see.

“Carter?” he says, looking at the clipboard in his hand.

“Yes,” her mother says.

“Specific pests, or evaluation?”