Her real pride and joy is on the other counter. That’s where she keeps her 43 colonies of bedbugs....
Every few weeks, Ridge carries the bedbugs out to her red Honda, puts them behind the driver’s seat, and brings them home. There, at six in the morning, she inverts the jars on the skin of her right leg. She positions them just so, leaning them up against her left thigh and covering them with a blanket so they don’t move. Then, as the bugs suck her blood through tiny holes in the bridal veil, she leans back and listens to the radio news of “Democracy Now!”