Phillip’s family bounced down the stairs like a cluster of pachinko balls. They rolled into the overheated kitchen and lodged themselves around the cramped breakfast nook. I sat shoulder to shoulder with them, so close together that the rims of our dinner plates practically touched. Phillip’s siblings—all of whom were significantly older than Phillip and held down white-collar jobs; two of his brothers were still wearing their Wall Street ties—had vacated their Manhattan apartments and moved back home, back to Yonkers, after their father died six months earlier. He’d had a heart attack on the subway during rush hour, no doubt bringing the number 9 train to a halt, and no doubt making several thousand irate New Yorkers late for their suppers that night. After the funeral, the family had returned here, circling their wagons against further tragedy.

Everybody laughed and joked and touched their iced tea glasses together. At the center of it all was their mother. She worked the table like a head waiter, delivering more oven-warm bread and refilling plates. She was a blur of activity, but whenever she stopped moving, you could see how bruised and fragile she still was.

“Come on, ma, sit with us.”

“Yeah, sit down. Tell us about this cruise you’re planning.”

She wiped her hands on her apron. “It’s just some silly cruise I’m going on with Angie,” she said.

They kept after her, trying to coax information out of her. She was reluctant to share anything at first, but after more requests, she stepped into the spotlight. She suddenly seemed to grow in strength. “So Angie telephones me today and says, ‘Guess what? There’s a bowling alley on the ship.’ Can you imagine? Who wants to go bowling in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean?” she asked. She paused for a moment for dramatic effect. “I’ll tell you who wants to go bowling in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean: Angie, that’s who.” Everyone laughed. She was funny and cutting. I understood now where Phillip got his swagger from.

Once the plates were cleared from the table, I asked Phillip’s brothers to recommend a mechanic for the ailing Subaru. One of the tie-wearers suggested a place down the street called Hal’s Autos. He’d call Hal in the morning and tell him to take care of me.

When it was time for bed, Phillip ushered me down to the basement where I’d be bunking for the next few nights. “My apologies for having to put you in our hotel’s most terrible room,” he said, “but, as you can see, we’re at capacity.” The basement was dark with a cold fireplace on the far end. Phillip lit a joint. He took several quick puffs, then exhaled the smoke up the fireplace chimney. “Don’t be such an old woman,” Phillip said when he noticed the panicked look on my face. “Mother never comes down here.” He offered the joint to me. I’d never been a fan of pot, but I took a puff anyway out of a sense of obligation.

As I unrolled my sleeping bag on the sagging couch, I noticed a small, murky tank in the corner. Inside the tank, a heat lamp beamed down on a length of driftwood. Phillip tapped a finger against the glass. His pupils were now dilated to the size of peacoat buttons. “There’s a tarantula in here somewhere,” he said.

I asked Phillip to tell me that he was joking.

He wasn’t. “We have an arachnid in our midst,” he said. Phillip explained that the spider belonged to one of the tie-wearers. “The only way my mother would allow it in the house was if it was confined to the basement.” Phillip looked me over. “You’re not afraid of spiders. Are you, Herr Jones?”

The truth was this: I lived in mortal fear of spiders. Nothing sent a jolt of unbridled terror through me the way that finding a spider did. I didn’t want Phillip to know that, so I affected a brave front. I explained that the damp basement air was detrimental to my allergies, and that the living room couch upstairs might be more suitable for me. His mother, he countered, suffered from insomnia and watched the living room television through the night. I asked if I could sleep on the carpet in Phillip’s room. “Negative again,” Phillip said, explaining that he needed his privacy that night because an old high school girlfriend was coming over in a bit and he was planning to put the moves on her in his room.

I looked at the tank. I’d never seen a tarantula before—not a live one anyway—let alone spent the night in the same room with one. Inside the tank, several grasshoppers, which appeared almost translucent under the heat lamp, flitted about. They seemed to be in a panicked state. “Budweiser hasn’t eaten his dinner yet,” Phillip said. “By the way, that’s his name—Budweiser.”

Phillip began climbing the basement stairs. “Mother requests that the basement door remained closed at all times,” he said. “She’s worried that Budweiser will get out again.”

I asked what he meant by “get out again.”

“Budweiser escaped once,” Phillip said from the top of the stairs. “Before we could find him, he killed two dogs and a Korean baby. He dragged their bones back here, to his lair.”

I can sleep in the car, I thought. It’s February, but maybe, if I ran the heater for a few minutes, just enough to warm it up in there, I could sleep in the car…

Phillip called down one final time. “I read once that no matter where you are—even when you’re on an airplane or in a subway car—there’s always a spider within three feet of you. Always. Well, tonight you won’t have to wonder where your spider is,” he said. “Bon nuit, Herr Jones.”

Spending the night in the car was out of the question. I’d freeze to death out there. It was a stupid way to die. I had no choice but to spend the night with the spider. My first order of business was to switch on every light I could find. If there was one thing I knew about spiders, it was this: spiders, like vampires, didn’t like light of any kind. Once I’d plugged in a few lamps, I realized that the stacks of boxes surrounding me contained the personal effects of Phillip’s dead father. A nearby box was popped open, and at the very top of the box was a large hairbrush and a half-used tube of Brylcreem. One of his father’s dark suits loomed like a headless phantom in the corner.

I got into my sleeping bag and zipped it closed, leaving an opening large enough for me to breathe through. I remembered how Phillip had mooned around campus for a few weeks after his father died. I remembered seeing him once walking to the library by himself in a snowstorm. I could have caught up with him, could have walked to the library with him. I didn’t. I had no idea what to say to someone whose father had just died, so I decided to walk in the opposite direction and not say anything at all.

From the confines of my sleeping bag, I could still hear the flicking sound of the grasshoppers hurling themselves against the tank’s glass. I was certain that I’d never fall asleep, not with all the lights on and the suit of a dead man hanging from the rafters and the wind moaning in the chimney of the dark fireplace and a spider in the corner.

I shut my eyes, just for a second, and when I opened them again, it was already dawn. I was thrilled to find myself still intact, still in the world. I felt like I’d survived the night in a haunted mansion, and now it was time for me to collect my million dollars for doing so. I unzipped myself from the sleeping bag and cautiously approached the spider’s tank. There was still no sign of Budweiser, but the grasshoppers—every last one of them—were gone.