I used to have a roommate who had a flea fixation. He was certain that our apartment was overrun with the things. The weird part is that I never saw a single flea, honest to goodness. He swore that they infested his bed and sucked his blood at night. He was so tormented that he would put all of his clothes and bedsheets in a garbage bag and take them to be sanitized at a dry cleaner. He also washed his hair with dog shampoo. Periodically he would warn me not to come home for twelve or fourteen hours because he was going to set off an insect fogger. Despite his efforts he just couldn’t be rid of the buggers.
I hadn’t known this fellow before moving in and just tried not to rock the boat, especially since he would sometimes get quite agitated over the issue. When he complained about the fleas and inquired into my inexplicable immunity to them I tried to say as little as possible and certainly never suggested that there were no fleas. “That’s weird. I guess they’re only in your room,” I’d say. “I’m going to go to my mom’s house for the weekend.” Sometimes he’d say something to the effect that I must think he’s crazy, which I’d very faintly protest. At some point I guess he determined that the fleas had dispersed. That didn’t mean that things got normal, though. At one point he asked me if I had put a Kleenex in his bed (I hadn’t). Someone had sneaked into his bedroom and left it as a message of some sort. “I’ve made a lot of enemies in this town,” he said darkly. I moved out as soon as I could, which is the subject of another story.
