Cockroach

“C-o-c-k-r-o-a-c-h,” I spelled it out to Jelly at lunch. Of course, we did not have it for lunch. The restaurant was clean and quiet, to my surprise, with only a few people sitting sparsely around. We occupied the table at the farthest corner. Crystal was talking about her research on cockroaches, while the rest of us listened with mouths slightly agape, except for Mimi, our new CEO, screwing up her pretty face and making noises of disagreement. And then Mimi gave a vivid account of what once happened at her home in Taipei, dozens of cockroaches fled for life from a hole of a pipe in the kitchen because of pesticide spraying down in basement, very much like a scene of horror movie. Although I didn’t like them, either, Crystal made her research informative and sort of entertaining. John asked how to catch them effectively. A bottle with a little sugar and wine in it and petroleum jelly around its mouth can do the trick. As if thinking of speaking English, the official purpose of our meeting, Jelly asked how to spell cockroach, one of the very few words we spoke in English.