The narrator of this week’s story, “Nocturnal Creatures,” works for a pest-control company. Why did you want to make your protagonist an exterminator?

It seemed to me to be a fascinating profession that has considerable possibilities for conflict—and comedy. For starters, there are the day-to-day tasks of the job which involves contending with rats and roaches, etc., and which is essentially an unwinnable war. In the opening scene, the narrator even acknowledges that “cockroaches are here forever.” Then there’s the fact that he works nights, that he’s privy to the inside of people’s homes, as well as the back rooms and basements of businesses. He provides an essential service and yet is not necessarily revered or respected. I think that the majority of my short stories for The New Yorker have featured a main character whose job is a central component of the plot, not to mention the main character’s identity. Often, it’s the place of employment that launches the story. In the case of my exterminator, I liked how I was able to convey some of the built-in contradictions that he has with the larger society. Unlike everyone else in the city, he actually benefitted from the bedbug scare, and, as the story draws to a close, that’s soon to be followed by the termite scare. Or, as his dispatcher puts it, “Get while the getting’s good.” He describes himself as an excellent exterminator, and yet he has no misgivings over how he’s profited from other people’s terror. “I did my part to help fan the flames of fear,” he says. I’m asking the reader to empathize with a character who is unapologetic about this.

Did you know much about pest control before you started writing? Or did you have to do a lot of research?

I knew almost nothing before I began writing, except, of course, what I observed whenever I’ve been unfortunate enough to need an exterminator to come to my apartment. The references to chemicals, the allusions to the insects’ life cycles, the equipment that my narrator carries—all of that I had to learn. I had to make sure that the narrator comes across as an authority, even though I (the writer) am a novice. But I needed the references in the story to sound casual, almost offhand. After all, this is someone who has been doing this for a long time and barely needs to consider what he’s saying. If I was too showy or excessive with the references—look at how much I know!—I might risk drawing attention to the fact that I’m trying to prove to the reader that I’m an expert. I think a writer has to be willing to accept that most of their research will be a waste of time, and to use only what is absolutely necessary. In other words, less is more. The narrator’s also burned out by the job, and a bit jaded—and even unscrupulous, as I mentioned above. He’s been doing this long enough to know how to game the system. These may not necessarily be traits specific to exterminators, but they are specific to anyone who has worked manual labor. I wanted these details to make him more believable, and, frankly, human.

The narrator works the night shift, generally returning to the sites he’s treating on a two-week rotation. How much has that schedule determined the shape of his adult life?

In some ways, everything is upside down for him. Or backward. He talks about how A.M. is the new P.M.; how it’s dinnertime, but he should be eating breakfast. Moreover, he walks around during the day with what he calls “low-level fatigue.” When he’s playing catch with the mom and her son he’s met when treating their apartment, he gets winded quickly. He’s become unaccustomed to living in the world of daylight. As the title seems to suggest, he is one of the nocturnal creatures of the story. He’s been doing this job probably since his early twenties and his psychology is further compounded by mostly working in two-week increments with the establishments that he treats. This is not someone who has regular contact with people, except perhaps the proprietors of the businesses. He hasn’t seemed to be able to develop much of a life among, as he refers to them, “civilians.” When the mom suggests that he see her paintings, he can’t really think past two weeks in the future. I wanted to mirror this somewhat by having the chronology of the story continually jump two weeks ahead in the narration. But, as much as his schedule has impacted him, the reader might want to consider that this is something that he has actively chosen. We know that he has had a difficult upbringing with his own single mother and absentee father. How much has his own childhood caused him to seek out a profession where he would not be able to develop any relationships beyond the vermin with which he occasionally seems to identify? When the boy asks him why anyone would dream of growing up to become an exterminator, his initial response is “natural aptitude.” That might be true in more ways than he knows.

When he’s sent by his dispatcher to treat the apartment of the woman and her young son, he initially thinks that she’s married and her husband is out, but then he realizes he’s made a mistake. Why does he jump to the wrong conclusion?

Perhaps the nuclear family is the default setting, never mind that he himself did not come from a nuclear family. The mailbox in the foyer reads “Armstrong/Abernathy,” and so he immediately assumes that this apartment has to belong to a married couple. My main objective was to surprise the reader. I wanted readers to think they were going down a certain path in the narrative, and then quickly change direction on them. Besides the fact that “surprise” is fun, I also felt that at this point in the story the reader might still be saying to themselves, “What exactly am I supposed to be following?” The narrator’s sudden awareness that the mother is single was my way of subtly indicating to the reader that this is what the story is going to be about. This is a big moment, of course. Two pivotal characters are being introduced, and I wanted to emphasize their importance. The information about their situation is revealed to the narrator at the same time that it’s revealed to the reader. If he had somehow come in knowing that it was a single mother and her son, I might have squandered the emotional impact of the revelation. What’s more, though, is that it shows that our narrator is not omniscient—we can no longer assume that he is going to get everything right, as evidenced by the final scene where, despite his expertise, he is surprised by the scratching in the walls.