“We don’t have bugs that I’m aware of.” Isabelle leans hard against the cabinet. “But Mrs. Drayton on three says they have terrible roaches, so I thought I’d have you just take a look while you’re in the building.”

“Evaluation,” he mutters, checking a box. “Partial or comprehensive?”

“What’s the difference?”

“Partial is kitchen, bathrooms, windows, fireplaces. Comprehensive is all that plus AC/water heater closets, TV/cable wall lines, plumbing penetrations, voids at baseboards, built-in cabinets, appliance conduits, and all other cracks and crevices.” He looks up from his clipboard.

“God,” her mother says. “I don’t know. Do you recommend one or the other?”

“It’s up to you, ma’am.”

He runs his finger underneath his nose, sniffing. Isabelle wonders if he can smell himself; she can smell him from here, a putrid mix of cigarette and lemon cleaning fluid that she knows will trail him through the apartment and linger for days. She shouldn’t have been so quick to get her mother, Isabelle thinks. She should have peered through the peephole to see who it was first. Why had she not even entertained the possibility of the exterminator? Why hadn’t it even crossed her mind? Stupid, she thinks. Stupid, stupid.

“Well then, comprehensive, since we’re doing this.”

The exterminator makes another mark on his clipboard and picks up his tool kit. He gestures toward the kitchen table. “May I?”

“Oh, of course, come in,” her mother says as the man sets his clipboard on the table among Isabelle’s textbooks and worksheets. “Is all that in your way? Isabelle.” She looks at Isabelle and points her chin toward the table.

“It’s fine,” the exterminator says, setting his tool kit on the floor again and crouching to dig through it for whatever he first needs.

“Isabelle.” Her mother says her name firmly this time; Isabelle does not lift her eyes from the exterminator. Maggie enters into view, comes up to sniff the man, and Isabelle watches with clenched teeth as he runs his dirty fingers through Maggie’s fur. “Isabelle,” her mother says again, but the exterminator is standing up now, his clipboard again in hand.

“Should I start in here?”

“Ah, sure,” her mother says, an edge of exasperation in her voice.

Isabelle glances quickly at her mother, leaning now against the fridge, and then back at the exterminator, who has opened the cabinet beneath the microwave where Isabelle’s cocoa sits still unwarmed. He pulls out the pots and mixing bowls from the cabinet’s shelves, and over the clatter Isabelle can just hear her mother ask the man if he’s found many pests in his rounds so far today.

“What’s that?” he asks, pulling his head from out of the cabinet.

“How have you found the building today, bug-wise?”