The Gastrells

A short story published in The Queens Review Spring 2026/Issue 3

Trudie Gastrell finishes her New York Times crossword, leaving two rows and one column for the gods. A tickle of sweat rolls down the back of her knee under her linen dress. She gets up from the antique acacia table and cranks open the window, but there’s no relief. August in LA. Still, she’s trying to keep the utilities down, so she and Mitchell will grin and bear it until they can’t.

“I have an interview with the Beverly Hills Health Department next Tuesday,” Mitchell says without making eye contact. His fingers move quickly to secure his Bratwurst and red onion sandwich, except a large piece of cheddar falls to the linoleum kitchen floor as he takes an enormous bite.

“Huh? Why?” Trudie doesn’t mean to be obtuse, but her husband of forty years has been going through it the past, well, two decades if she’s honest, and this announcement catches in her ribs. She has to cover her mouth, so she won’t spit out a laugh.

“Shit,” he’s able to say through a mouthful. He kicks the rogue chunk of cheese across the floor toward the stainless trash can. Mayonnaise drips unfortunately from his lower lip onto the rust colored Sferra tablecloth, one of the only wedding gifts that has stood the test of time or, in Mitchell’s case, clumsy hands. He barely lifts his pointer finger into the air.

Trudie understands that he’s saying, “hold on.” After living together so long, the micro-motions, expressions, grunts, all mean something very specific.

Mitchell has never looked less appealing than at this moment. She barely recognizes the promising, attractive man she met while working as a receptionist at CAA––Mitchell’s then tight, tennis-fit body, thick wavy hair, dressed in Hugo Boss and bathed in Bijan, beginning his illustrious career at the agency, working his way up to the corner office overlooking the Hollywood Hills. Instead, she observes an unemployed gargoyle in navy heavy-gauge sweatpants paired, illogically, with an old Brooks Brothers blue checkered dress shirt that’s had a weird stain near a buttonhole for years. Christ, his feet are hairy, his toenails have fungus, and he has a phlegmy, coughing tick that comes out when he’s nervous. She tries her best in this moment to excavate the hot yuppy who exists somewhere inside the mess before her.

Mitchell talks through the enormous bite he’s taken. “You know…” Trudie moves her eyes to another plop of Best Foods that just landed on the expensive linen, noting she’ll need to scrape off the oily blob, then dab lighter fluid before washing. “You said it yourself: If we want to stay, I’ve got to get a steady job.”

It’s true. Trudie threatened to move them to Glendale or even Woodland Hills if they couldn’t figure out the finances but leaving the enclave they’ve lived in most of their lives would count as yet another epic fail.

As it was, after Mitchell was fired almost fifteen years ago by the agency, and Trudie threw her neck out, they had to sell their four-bedroom, four-bathroom ranch in the much sought-after Beverly Hills flats (next door to Billy Bob Thornton, and at one time, Angelina Jolie) and move to the multifamily area of Beverly Hills with its own zip code: 90212, near the famous high school, incorrectly credited on TV as being located in Beverly Hills, 90210. After being evicted from a more upscale, modern duplex a couple streets down, they now live on the first floor in a deteriorating Spanish courtyard fourplex, across from a Middle Eastern man who has no window coverings, and never turns off any lights; directly under a reclusive older couple from Michigan, the only hint at their lifestyle coming from their 1980s Mercedes with a bumper sticker that says “Stop honking - I’m crying to The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald”; and diagonal to Greg Louganis, the once lauded Olympic diver.

The neighbors have shared the same yard for four years and have spoken a total of maybe twenty words, collectively.

“Health Department? But you don’t know anything about environmental health, Mitchell. What, you’re going to walk up and down Rodeo wearing a lanyard and a pocket protector checking on rat droppings in restaurants? We’ve worked hard to fix…” Trudie halts before finishing that sentence. Her husband is fragile. Yet, it’s his fault they’re where they are. His proclivities––his errant choices, she reframes, as per the therapist––didn’t show up until year five into the marriage. Has she ever thought about leaving? For a moment, after the unsavory incident on the rooftop of what is now Gucci, but Trudie is from Kansas Presbyterian stock––no quitting. “My lord, Mitchell, there’s got to be other jobs. Can you even get a government position with your track–”

A quick couple of raps on the front door saves Trudie from hearing her ugly, shrill nag. It’s as if what they’ve gone through caused her actual voice, along with her image, to go tinny, strident. To think that at one time, she sat on the board at the Hammer Museum, had her hair done weekly, and enjoyed lunch every Friday at the Peninsula, a stone’s throw from their apartment.

“I’ll get it. Probably a package. Why doesn’t the guy simply leave it?” Trudie winds through the dining room, past the old Bergère chairs she’d had reupholstered in gold lamé when that was a thing. Each time she passes the nineteenth century armchairs, she makes a mental note to Yelp an upholsterer, but it’s going on thirty years, so…

She peers into the peephole. It’s the landlord, Artie Eggebratten, with a young police officer. “That’s odd,” Trudie mutters before opening the door. They missed a rent payment in June, and a woman across the street, who’s since moved, complained that Mitchell was often at the window with binoculars, trained on her windows, which is absurd because he’s an avid birdwatcher. Other than that, they’ve been minding their p’s and q’s. “Hello, Artie.”

“Trudie.” He nods once. “What’s that…smell?” He lifts his nose into the air, his eyes inquisitive.

“I don’t know––I made some German food. Everything okay?” Trudie glances at the officer, who’s looking past her into the apartment.

“Is your husband home, ma’am?” The officer holds both sides of his belt like his pants might collapse in a heap on the ground.

Her first instinct is to welcome them both in, but something stops her. “He stepped out.” She can sense that Mitchell is lurking in the recesses of the apartment, listening. Movement catches her eye in the direction of the hallway, but she doesn’t react.

“We heard voices. Is there someone else in there with you?” Artie asks, bending his body as far right as it will go, nowhere near being able to look through the dining room window.

Being questioned floods Trudie’s stomach with acid. She pulls her lips away from her teeth. “It’s really none of your business, but I was on a video call with my brother, Bill. Is there something I can help you with?” She knows she can’t possibly assist them, but the words sound correct.

“No, ma’am. We just want to ask your husband some questions. Do you know when he’ll be back?” The officer reaches inside his shirt pocket and withdraws a business card just as a hot waft of air blows Trudie’s coarse, gray bangs into her eyes. She’d kill for a proper, elaborate updo, but that ship sailed with the house and the 401K.

“I don’t. He goes for a walk this time of day. Could be an hour, could be three,” she lies––sort of. Mitchell leaves the apartment for chunks of time––she assumes, for walks. At least that’s what he tells her, but now that a man in a uniform wearing a badge, a gun attached to his waist, maybe “walking” is code for something else.

“Here’s my card. Would you kindly give this to your husband, and have him call us?”

As Trudie takes the shiny BHPD card, a large horse fly (must be the tenth damn one just this week) bumps briefly into her bare, crepey arm on its way inside to buzz around loudly for hours and hours, unable to escape, driving her mad until she’ll find his corpse lying upside down a few days later. Maybe most people tolerate them––she never hears anyone else in the neighborhood complaining. Honestly, she’d rather have cockroaches. They’re quiet. And, although she’s become something of a homebody, she usually has to up and leave––get away from the pestiferous buzzing––walk to Century City, or Roxbury Park––tire the insect out. She’s wondered why they fixate on her place. Is it all the cooking in this heat? Or perhaps it’s just like that this summer. Big suckers, though.

When the officer and landlord leave, Trudie stares at the backside of the closed door for a few seconds, then takes in a sharp breath, and turns to see Mitchell sitting on the edge of one of the Bergère chairs, a gun pointed to his head. She guffaws. “Well, that’ll be a forcing function to get those damn chairs redone.”

“Don’t joke.” Mitchell doesn’t even have his finger on the trigger. He starts the phlegm coughing. At first, it’s just one clear of the throat, but quickly escalates into a series. “This will be a favor to you. You know where the important paperwork is.”

“You mean the credit card statements? The debt? Oh, gee, thanks.”

Mitchell is shaking.

The horsefly whizzes past, bumping violently on the gilded mirror hanging on the opposite wall in the dining room. Trudie catches a quick glimpse of herself as the fly throws its body at the reflective glass. She’s lost two inches, and the bags under her eyes eclipse her once baby blues. She’s turned “handsome” from pretty. “Why was there a cop outside with Artie? Are we revisiting what you did at the agency? Or, let me guess, you had a little fun outside of Neiman Marcus? We can’t afford a PR person this time. We can’t afford anything!” Prickly electrical shocks migrate from Trudie’s belly up her chest. She holds her hands in fists.

The fly hits Mitchell’s forehead, then ricochets to Trudie’s hand, landing on a thrombosed vein. His wings stop momentarily, then he’s off, bouncing from one side of the dining room to the window to the ceiling.

“Please…don’t judge me.” Mitchell hacks up a fake loogie, then another phlegm-less hock. His shoulders shake the gun from its aim to his lap, and he collapses into himself, a complete disaster of a human being. “I’ve been working on…something in the basement.”

The fly may as well be a hummingbird as he bumps and bashes––the size of him. “What now, Mitchell? If I went down there, am I going to find something that’s going to make me call Dr. Artegian? I thought we were past all that.”

Mitchell’s sobs grow more pathetic, almost performative, and his coughing fit escalates with disgusting croaks and croups, until Trudie senses herself moving toward Mitchell, as if out of her body.

“Maybe.” Snot drizzles under Mitchell’s cauliflower nose, his crying now pitches higher––louder, as the goddam (she never lets herself even think that word) but the goddam fly hits the side of her nose. The sounds are competing. She can’t breathe. Her veins pulse painfully from her neck. Before she knows it, she’s grabbed the gun from her husband’s lap. She aims, her hand surprisingly steady as jolts of electricity pulse up from her unused womb to her head.

She feels the cold metal of the trigger inside her finger and pulls. The force of the shot sends a vibration up her arm, into her troubled neck.

The mirror crashes to the floor.

There’s complete silence. Nothing moves. Peace. Quiet. Just the whistle of her nose as she breathes in and out. Until sirens sound in the distance.

“That was my mother’s.” Mitchell is now standing, arms out at his side, eyes haunted like a Frankenstein, viewing the shards of broken glass.

“Got him.”