2

What any number of credible dentists would call adequate or sufficient or even satisfactory oral hygiene consists not only of the familiar brushing-and-flossing ritual but also liberal application of antiseptic mouthwash in the form of Crest or Listerine or what have you. The point being to eradicate as many germs and as much plaque as possible in the most efficient and frugal manner. Most dentists tend to lean toward Listerine as being the first-line choice, due in no small part to the substantial subsidies paid out by Listerine to select dentists to help promote their product, but also because it’s been around the longest and is generally agreed upon to have the highest germ-per-swish kill ratio of all modern antiseptic mouthwashes. Not to say that Crest’s or Scope’s offerings are in any way deficient; indeed, the average consumer would notice such little difference between brands other than taste and mouth-feel, i.e. alcohol content, that one could probably place all three in cups and blind-test the consumer, and the consumer would likely not be able to pick out one brand from the other. This fact is what led Listerine, in the late 90s, to noticeably reduce the price of Listerine antiseptic mouthwash to compete better in the emerging consumer-antiseptic-mouthwash sector of the oral hygiene industry. Thus, another reason to prefer Listerine.

      There are typically three types of dentist-goers. The first group is notorious for putting off going to the dentist until there is a problem with one of their teeth that no amount of over-the-counter non-steroidal-anti-inflammatory drugs can seem to alleviate. This group irks dentists the most, not only because dealing with poor oral hygiene in a patient is tedious and costly (for the patient, not the dentist; let’s not pretend dentists don’t care about their patients now) but because dentists, for decades, have been trying desperately to nurture an aura of care and trustworthiness, and any patient that comes in with a teeth-chattering (no pun intended) case of the willies; the heebie-jeebies, if you will, vis-à-vis their dentist, rather undermines this whole carefully cultivated image. This group typically consists of those in society who rather stick to themselves, the party-goers glued to the wall, the manic depressives, the drivers who never use their car’s horn out of fear of cosmic retribution, the musicians and artists and actors, the fringe-seekers whose chief happiness comes from binging a TV show on a Saturday evening with their Jack Russell firmly entrenched between couch cushions and a bag of Lays open on their Ottoman and an auspiciously non-diet (i.e. full-sugar) two-liter soda on the end table. You can tell a lot about a person by the state of their mouth. The second group is only slightly less reluctant to visit their dentist. They don’t suffer the same manic phobic ideation about dentists, but they don’t relish the fact that somebody has to poke around in their mouth once every six months, either. This group is your textbook brush-and-flossers. Your prototypical day-to-day, pack-your-toothbrush-in-your-overnight-bag-but-forget-to-use-it-in-the-morning, mouthwash-on-special-occasions floss-and-brushers. Typically you’ll see people in this group have more of a blasé attitude about their oral health until like the week before their visit to the dentist, when they’ll brush and floss to the T to make it look like they give more care to their teeth and gums than they actually do. Dentists can see right through this but often pretend not to, which gives the patients a sense of satisfaction at having, pardon the expression, gipped their DDS. This group is made up of businessmen, everyday stare-at-the-floor civilians, the guys and girls in high school who weren’t nerds or jocks or s***s or geeks or richies or poories or wallflowers but were more like just nothing at all, the B- students of the world, the magazine writers, the retail workers, the restaurateurs, the painfully average nobodies who secretly make the world spin on its axis underneath those in the third group. The third group is never reluctant for a visit to their dentist. This is the group with meticulous oral health habits, the ones who never go a day without brushing and flossing at least twice, or once after every meal and once before they leave the house and once when they get back. The idea of dental caries to this group is so repellent they carry little travel-size bottles of mouthwash in their handbags or cars and break them out whenever they feel their breath has gone even slightly sour from their morning protein shake or their early-afternoon chicken salad or their late-afternoon protein bar or their evening Cornish hen. This is the group that, after having thoroughly impressed their DDS., leaves the clinic laser-beaming their smile at everyone in the immediate vicinity: kids in the waiting room playing with little wooden puzzle-toys, their parents reading out of a home cooking magazine, the guy in the corner picking at his face, the elderly woman who is either deeply asleep or lightly dead, the man in the suit coming out of his Mercedes in the parking lot barking into his cellphone, etc. This is the group of winners, achievers, high school swimming stars, alpha-male testosterone-tanks, CEOs, people who drive like the speed limit is always 10 M.P.H. lower than it really ought to be and who reach their destinations barking into their cellphones, perpetual suit-wearers, throwers of cocktail parties, Jesus freaks, the new parents who can’t stop talking about their child, and the occasional D-list celebrity who isn’t chemically impaired.

      You’d be surprised how much of an even ratio of each of the three groups you get in the Greater Las Vegas Metropolitan Area. It isn’t skewed one way or another or another, it’s basically 33.3% of each group walks into your clinic. Santiago Hernandez, DDS, was surprised at this little factoid when he moved to Las Vegas from suburban Michigan, which gets more like 10% manic-phobic group, 20% laser-beam group, and 70% textbook group, conservatively. Lots of caries in Michigan, though; probably because the cold air from Canada causes lots of dry mouth in the wintertime. Like a disproportionate amount of caries compared to the proportion of textbook brush-flossers.

      Santiago still considered himself new to the Las Vegas area, even though he’d settled down into a superfluously cozy three-bedroom townhouse in the West suburbs four and a half years ago. His move had been precipitated by a nasty divorce; his now-ex-wife, name Charlotte Fleming-Hernandez (she had since dropped the -Hernandez), had left for a business trip to Greece and scuttled off with one of her partners to a snug little one-bedroom thing on the East coast of Crete, never to return. Santiago would have been heartbroken had their married life been at all what one sees in the movies. Their married life had been plagued by a spate of arguments that, at the time of their separation, had turned into more of a tiring daily ritual, leaving Santiago metaphysically gasping for air and Charlotte to seek the intimacy of aforementioned business partner. Thus, their divorce; Santiago had sent the papers off to Crete for Charlotte to sign and send back, which she did in a punctual manner, and had sold his two-bedroom two-story home in suburban Detroit, which home sold surprisingly quickly given the slumped housing market in that area of the country, and picked Las Vegas from a narrowed list of eight cities¹.

      At this moment, Dr. Hernandez was drilling a particularly nasty cavity on a one Mr. Hannibal Achterberg, an octogenarian sufferer of chronic tooth decay, among other things. It’s not the worst mouth he’d seen today; that dubious honor has to go to little 8-year-old Jimmy Page (of course named after the guitarist) who’d eaten his way through Halloween and Christmas candy over the past several months and had developed not one, but seven cavities in assorted chompers. Jimmy had only come in for an exam, however; no drilling today (although Santiago had scheduled him for a quadruple-drill-and-amalgam appointment next month, what a doozy). Mr. Achterberg winced slightly as the drill’s alloy burr bit deeper into the distal facet of his right maxillary lateral incisor². Dr. Hernandez apologized noncommittally and, as he had been trained, continued drilling without interruption. Most dentists will tell you straight out before they start drilling, if you feel any pain just let me know and I’ll stop and numb you up some more. But they’re trained not to stop; stopping would mean losing the drill’s place in the tooth and potentially causing more pain upon relocating it.

      The tooth smells only the way burning enamel can smell, an industrial, chemical smell not unlike burning plastic. Dr. Hernandez readjusts his soft paper surgical mask almost unconsciously, a habitual reaction to the smell he’s become so accustomed to. The mask has like 95% bacterial filtration efficiency, which is great and all, but it does nothing for the smell.

      Hannibal Achterberg groans slightly, a nasally groan brought on both by the overlarge condition of his adenoids as well as the mask over his nose feeding him a steady stream of 70% nitrous oxide and 30% oxygen.

      The drilling is finished. The hole in the tooth is bright and clean and moist, with only a small sliver of pink-red root visible. Not deep enough to warrant a root canal, luckily for Mr. Achterberg who seems sort of overly susceptible to dental pain to begin with. Dr. Hernandez prepares the amalgam to fill the freshly drilled hole. Mr. Achterberg looks serene and complacent, his surgical bib lopsided and stained with spittle and blood where Dr. Hernandez had wiped his instruments clean. He (Mr. Achterberg) looked out the window directly in front of him. There was a desert willow just outside, leaves swaying in a hula-dance kind of way, back and forth, back and forth. It was almost hypnotizing; or maybe that was the nitrous oxide. It made his head feel funny, like it was floating on its own on a restless ocean.

      Santiago Hernandez was tall and thin, and had a slender, angular face. He wore gently rounded wooden glasses. His skin was the color of the desert outside the window. His black hair was styled into a short Caesar that made him look, with his angular face and strong cheekbones, like he ought to be in an underwear catalogue instead of drilling holes in teeth. Despite his looks, he had always been a top student, first at the prestigious Cass Technical High School in his hometown of Detroit, then at University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, and finally at the UMich School of Dentistry from which he had graduated second in his class. He joined a practice basically right out of dental school in downtown Detroit, at which he had met his wife Charlotte, who was a Laser-Beam-Type businesswoman who came in for cleanings once every six weeks, instead of the recommended minimum of once every six months. Santiago had been smitten with her instantly, himself being of the Laser-Beam-Group philosophy re dental hygiene. Charlotte had taken some time to come around to Santiago, ignoring his admittedly quite modest advances at first. Once won over, however, their romance had been meteoric, and they married within six months of meeting each other.

      The amalgam slides into the hole in the tooth with an audible squeak, perfectly filling every gap and leaving the tooth with a shiny surface on one side, which wouldn’t be visible from the front at all (a talent for which Dr. Hernandez had won quite a reputation among those in the Las Vegas jet-set who neglected to pay adequate attention to their oral hygiene but wanted no one to know they got cavities just like everyone else: Laser-Beam-Group wannabes). Dr. Hernandez goes over the be-amalgamed part of the tooth with a slow, gentle action from his tooth polisher. As the procaine begins to wear off, this process actually causes Hannibal slightly more pain than the drilling had, owing to the severely heightened sensitivity of the freshly drilled part of the tooth. He shifts in his seat slightly as the polisher scrubs the tooth and amalgam clean, breathing in deeply to take advantage of the analgesic qualities of nitrous oxide, which had now been adjusted down to 40%.

      “All finished. It looks great. Here, take a look.”

      “Thank you Dr. Rodriguez.”

 

**

 

      Gavin was standing on the top of a very tall building; surely nowhere in Pahrump. Nowhere in Nevada, even; no place here had buildings this high. High. High. The word echoed in the howling air. He looked down at his overlarge feet, inching silently toward the edge of the building. Was there a parachute? Parachute. No parachute, of course. A bird behind him, a giant bird talks. “What are you doing here, now, Gavin?” He tried to answer back, I don’t want to be here, but no words could escape his mouth against the hurricane-force winds. Winds. Winds. His feet inching slowly, slowly toward the edge. “Stop that now, Gavin.” He tried to ask, how do I stop, but the words tumbled away in the gale. He could see them, the words. Rushing away like twigs dropped into a river. Forward, forward. He could see the ground below him now, completely flat and gray. No, not the ground. They were clouds; gray clouds swirling hundreds of feet below him. How high was this stupid stupid building, anyways? Just a few more inches, and he would surely find out. The bird, it had to be the bird that could save him. He turned to look at the bird, but its face was as black as night, no eyes, no beak, no feathers, just flat black. He cried out, and felt his toes leave the edge of the building. He looked forward, just as his body tips over the ledge.

      0404h. His alarm won’t sound for another nearly three hours.

 

**

 

      Alice was having what was amounting to a crisis of personality, and on the way to this crazy lady’s house no less. She had convinced herself that this Enola Blackshoe was a crazy old lady who had left the bag in the car on purpose, and this was all some kind of scam to, I don’t know, steal her stuff or something. She also hadn’t eaten anything in like twelve hours, and was suffering from acutely low blood sugar at the moment. This wasn’t helping things. Why she had agreed to return this stupid bag was now anyone’s guess, least of all Alice’s, and she considered turning around at every cross-street she came to. Only three miles to go, and only seven more cross-streets to make up her mind.

      Maybe she is overreacting, but seriously, an ex-psychic here in Pahrump who just happens to leave what looks like a relatively expensive and well-taken-care-of bag in an old car for anyone to find, and it had to be Alice. What are the odds of that, even?

      Her car’s tires bite the pavement well in the heat. The air above the road dances like it’s alive. Visibility is good, several miles at least. She can see the mountains over her right shoulder. Her left heel has a wen, and she reaches down to scratch at it, not taking her eyes off the road but performing surprisingly limber contortions with her back and neck; safety first. The interior of her car smells like vanilla. The sun is at its late-March zenith in the sky, and she needn’t use the sun visors, but she is anyway just for that extra bit of shade.

      In the distance, she thinks she can see the mysterious blue house Mme. Blackshoe had spoken about over the phone. It is but a glimmer in the sun, but she can make out the colors: blue and yellow, just like the lady had said. Her stomach does a flip out of anxiety as she realizes she’s but minutes away. She can’t explain, even to herself, why she’s so nervous. She’s only returning a bag. This Enola lady is probably just as sweet as your average Pahrumpian elder, even if she is Indian. Alice looks at the bag perched on the passenger’s seat. It too gleams in the sunlight, as if it were sequined. She glances out the passenger window, desert shrubbery flying by at a steady 45 M.P.H. Jet contrails in the sky overhead crisscrosses each other.

      She’s approaching the house in earnest now. She can make out a small wood-and-wire fence extending from the right of the house demarcating what she assumes to be the backyard. The front of the house, facing the road, is littered with what Alice would describe as oddities: several rocking chairs, sculptures of naked men and women, a small nonfunctioning fountain, figures of what appear to be woodland animals (deer, squirrels, etc.), and numerous pots and pans, some hanging from the wooden awning of the front porch. It’s a modest house, but the land seems spacious from what she can see from the road. The drive is loose gravel. Her car’s tires bark against it as she pulls in. She hadn’t noticed until now, but the woman who must be Enola Blackshoe is sitting in one of the rocking chairs near the porch. Her stomach lurches again. She stops the car about halfway up the drive, putting it into park and leaving it running as she opens the door, eager to convey a sense of urgency in the hope that Mme. Blackshoe will think not to keep her long.

      She grabs the black bag and steps from the car, closing the door with an elegant metallic thud. There are large shrubs bordering the drive. She begins to walk toward the woman, who stood from the rocking chair as Alice got out of the car. Her sneakers find the gravel troublesome, and she ever so slightly stumbles only a few steps from her car. The woman simply stands there, in front of her rocking chair, looking composed and tranquil. Alice can’t quite make out her face yet, but it looks fairly gnarled. Not disfigured, exactly, but not quite a human face, either. She says, in the friendliest voice she can muster,

      “Hi, I brought your bag,” waving it in the air.
      No response from the woman. Maybe she has difficulty walking, and that’s what all the rocking chairs are for. There are four of them, scattered around the front lawn, facing all different directions. Mme. Blackshoe’s face is definitely knotty. She has dark skin and hair, and seems bent over as if her arms weigh twice what they should.

      “You weren’t joking, this really is the only house for miles.”

      Still no response, even though the two women are within easy conversational distance now. Mme. Blackshoe has dark eyes, too, the kind that seem to look right over your shoulder. Alice stops just feet away from her, holding out the bag in front of her. Finally, the woman speaks.

      “Thank you, child. This bag is important to me.” Her lips seem to barely move as she speaks.

      “It was really no trouble, Mme. Blackshoe. I had nothing else to do today.” The tension in Alice’s stomach is slowly relieving itself.

      “In all the places I looked for this bag, I never once thought to check my son’s old car.”

      “I guess we were lucky I bought it, then. Not a lot of people I know around here would have likely returned an empty purse.”

      “I suppose you’d like a reward, then?” She raises her eyebrows, though not accusingly at all.

      “Oh, no, no, that’s not what I meant. I just meant I don’t know a lot of people around here that are nice enough to think to return a purse.”

      Slight pause.

      “Will you come in and have a coffee with me, child? I have no money to give you, but I have coffee.”
      Alice ponders the invitation for longer than she ought to. She doesn’t feel troubled by the old lady anymore, but doesn’t want to impose herself, either. She honestly hadn’t expected any sort of reward, even a free cup of coffee. The lady seems nice enough, though, and to decline would surely be more rude than to stay for a simple cup of coffee. Mme. Blackshoe looks like she could use the company, anyway.

      “I guess I could stay for a cup of coffee, yeah. Thank you.”

      Mme. Blackshoe gestures toward the front door, a weathered old thing not unlike the woman’s face. The wood of the door is tightly knotted in places, and the edges have been worn down. Alice looks back at her car, still running, and back at the door. Mme. Blackshoe walks up the wooden steps to the porch, and Alice follows. The front door creaks very loudly as the woman opens it inward. Alice can see beyond it a simple sitting room with few decorations. There is a large ornate dream catcher on the wall next to the door. She steps over the threshold as Mme. Blackshoe walks farther in, veiled by the darkness of the unlit room beyond. The sitting room is small and square. There is a tan couch facing the side window and a small television set in front of it. There are pictures on the wall of desert landscapes and one of a waterfall. Another dream catcher hangs above the wall nearest a hallway that leads into an even smaller kitchen. The tiled floor of the kitchen is very clean. There’s not a single light on in the whole house, and the blinds are drawn. Alice has lost sight of Mme. Blackshoe, but her voice echoes from the kitchen and makes Alice jump slightly.

      “Please have a seat. The coffee is already made from this morning.” She speaks no louder than she had outside, yet her voice is more commanding than inviting now.

      Alice obediently places herself on the small tan couch. The view out the window is perpendicular to the fence, and Alice can just see the foothills of the mountains. It’s not a bad sight with nothing else for miles obscuring the pristine view. Alice can smell the coffee now; it mingles with the other smells of the house: dust, lavender, and pinewood. The walls are papered in a simple pattern of tiny roses against a white background. A soft bang echoes from the kitchen as Mme. Blackshoe evidently searches for mugs into which to pour the coffee. Alice hopes this woman won’t keep her long, but after buying her old car, she feels like the least she owes this woman is to have a cup of coffe with her.

      Mme. Blackshoe emerges holding a tray on which rest two mugs of coffee, steam emitting from both. She does appear to have some trouble walking, even on the soft carpet of the sitting room. Alice stands to help her, but before she can stand all the way up Mme. Blackshoe has placed the tray on a small folding table next to a door which Alice presumes opens to some sort of coat closet. Mme. Blackshoe hands one of the mugs to Alice with a gently shaking hand. Alice takes it, looking Mme. Blackshoe in the eyes in a gesture of thanks. The woman then slowly draws a dining chair from the corner of the room nearest the door, and gingerly seats herself in it, facing Alice from the side. She speaks.

      “I’m grateful my son’s old car went to someone as generous as you. Not just so I could get my bag returned to me, but because it’s someone like you who truly deserves it. My son was a good man.”

      “He’s- he’s still alive, though, your son, isn’t he? I don’t mean to sound creepy, but Mario- the guy who sold me the car- Mario and I emailed about the car’s previous owner- which would be you.”

      “Yes, he’s still alive. “

      Pause.

      “You have a lovely home, Mme. Blackshoe.”

      “You may simply call me Enola, child.”

      “Enola. I’m Alice, by the way. I’m not sure I ever told you my name.”
      “Alice. A lovely name.”

      Pause.

      “So, your son- what did he do? For work, I mean.”

      “Oh, he did several things. He worked in a garage in town, he sold books in the bookstore. Before he left he worked in a hotel in Death Valley. He loved it. The desert, it sort of drew him there.”

      “That sounds very interesting, E- Enola.”

      “Enola is Cherokee for ‘solitary.’ Did you know that, child?”

      “I- I didn’t. That’s very interesting.”

      “I find myself living up to my name more and more as I get older. My son- he didn’t want to stay here. The desert drove him away.”

      “The desert?”

      “Yes, child, the desert.”
      Alice had finished her coffee. By the looks of it, Enola had, too. They sat in silence for a few moments, a silence which was at once uncomfortable and comforting.

      “Well, Enola, I really should get back home. I’ve got to start applying for some jobs before long.”

      “Of course, Alice. I don’t mean to keep you.”

      “That’s very kind of you, Enola. Thank you for the coffee.”
      “Thank you again for returning my bag, child. It means more to me than you know.”

      The two women stood simultaneously. Enola strode toward the front door, Alice close behind her.

      “If you ever need anything, child, you have my phone number. I don’t do readings anymore, but I have a feeling I could help you in other ways.” She opened the door for Alice to walk through. The sunlight was truly blinding. Alice’s eyes had adjusted to the gloom of Enola’s home.

      Walking back to her car, Alice was glad she’d accepted the offer of coffee. She found she had liked talking to Enola, however annoying her habit of calling Alice ‘child’ was. She felt good about herself as she approached her humming car. Getting in, the air was searing. As she backed out she turned the A.C. up to full, blasting herself will lightly chilled air. Enola stood in the doorway, simply watching Alice leave. What a truly strange old lady, she thought to herself as she joined the road back into town.

 

**

 

      Santiago stood outside the back entrance to his dental practice with a lit cigarette in his left hand and a cup of water in his right hand. He said the word water so it sounded like “what’re,” and the word “because” like “cuss.” He sipped the what’re and breathed through the cigarette. He no longer got a rush from cigarettes like he did in college. He knew he needed to quit. Every time he bought a pack, he thought to himself, he thought, “this will definitely be the last pack I ever buy,” and he made it feel special, so that it would definitely be the Last One, and then he’d switch to Nicorette or those little patches. But every time he ran out, the cravings drove him to the convenience store down from his townhouse, and this time was really the Penultimate one and that this time, definitely this time, is the Last One, and he’d smoke one outside before walking back to his townhouse. He took another draw from the cigarette, which was reaching its end already after what seemed like only three or four good draws. He’d only been outside for, what, six minutes? It was hot outside for March. Las Vegas didn’t get a lot of tourists in March, so most of his patients the past couple months had actually been people who lived in Las Vegas, and weren’t just visiting. He thought he liked that better, actually, because sometimes the people who visited needed emergency procedures after being punched at a casino, or putting off a root canal until it turned into an abscess on the second day of their Vegas vacation. Lots of the visitors, then, were of the manic-phobic group of dentist-goers. The kind that got a thrill from going to the casino, and playing fast and loose with their dental hygiene. Santiago resented them; every time one came in he felt disliked and begrudged by them, even though he was just trying to help them and get them out the door in a better shape than they’d come in.

      He looked down the street than ran in back of his practice. It wasn’t actually his own practice; he shared it with three other DDS’s. Dr. Matthews was the oldest dentist Santiago had ever seen, probably touching 90, but he was friendly and good at what he did. Dr. LaVonne was at the other end of the scale: young, full of himself, just out of dental school and headstrong. The fourth dentist was also a Dr. Hernandez, although unrelated to Santiago. Patients differentiated them by calling Santiago Dr. Hernandez and the other Dr. Hernandez Dr. Diego. Dr. Diego was middle aged, with a kind face and small hands. Drs. Hernandez and Hernandez had sort of a shared professional hostility toward each other, for no other real reason other than they saw the shared-name situation an excuse for professional competition. The street was more of a back alley where delivery trucks pulled in to the various shops and warehouses packed along it. The smell of the air was that of the city: burned hot dogs, sewage, car exhaust, and Mexican food. The practice was downtown, not on the strip but very near it. He could hear the sounds of the strip from where he stood behind his practice near the warehouses and shops of the street opposite. Cars honking, billboards blaring show tunes clashing with other billboards playing rock music or advertising loudly their casinos or shows or restaurants. He thought the rock music sounded probably like the Ramones or Elvis or the Beatles, or maybe all three coming from different speakers.

      He’d only had coffee for breakfast. The cigarette was helping with the hunger he felt now, but he’d need to get something to eat soon. He had appointments lined up all afternoon, and one was a root canal, and that would take some energy indeed. There were several restaurants within walking distance, most of them Mexican, but one Thai, one Chinese, and one American diner-style. Maybe he’d walk to one of them on his next cigarette break.

      It was hot for March. He was starting to sweat already. He took one last draw from his cigarette and opened the door to go back inside, letting the cool air wash over him. He went straight for the bathroom reserved for the dentists, to wash his hands and brush his teeth. He removed his jacket (which he hadn’t needed in the 85-degree heat outside, but wore it to keep his white coat from smelling like cigarette smoke) and placed it on a hook in the back room where the other dentists kept their bags and coats, only his was the only coat there today. His next appointment was in less than five minutes. The patient will have already been prepped and cleaned, and he would only have to examine the teeth and deliver his verdict to the patient. It was like judging at a state fair, he thought, as he made his way back to the front rooms of the building. The walls were a pale pastel green, and the procedure rooms were robin’s-egg-blue. He stepped into procedure room two to meet his next patient.

      Another child. Great. That means he’s bound to have cavities. He picked up the girl’s chart from the receptacle on the wall near the entrance of the room. The girl’s name was Lila Zimmermann, age 6. She had shocking blonde hair, of which only the top was visible over the back of the dental chair in which she was seated. There was a balloon in the corner of the room.

      “Good morning, Miss Zimmermann. Let’s have a look at those little chompers.”

 

**

 

      Here’s Gavin Stuttsky, twenty-five, slender as all get-out and five-foot-nine, practically like one hundred pounds even, with an attractive bit of stubble on his sharp chin, and eyelashes a bit too long for his face. He looks exactly like a parody of an action hero. He sits in the apartment’s small living area on a peanut-shell-brown couch watching Saturday morning cartoons. His girlfriend is Sarah Reynolds. She’s in the kitchen area making French toast for the two of them. Gavin looks up from the television to watch her. She’s desperately pretty, even when her back is turned to him. She has the kind of figure you can just stand back and admire like you’re in an art gallery. Gavin looks back to the television. The smell of the French toast fills the small apartment almost as soon as Sarah puts the little egg-soaked slices in the pan to toast. She knows it’s Gavin’s favorite, too. That boy’d eat French toast any time of day, for any meal, even if he’d already eaten. Sarah knew just how to make it the way he likes it, too. The slices have to be thick cut whole wheat bread, and he likes them to be just slightly buttered before they’re dipped in the egg, which she does for exactly 90 seconds per side, then plops them into a buttered pan to toast for exactly 150 seconds per side, then takes them out and lets them cool for exactly four minutes, then calls Gavin to come and get them before they get cold. That’s how Gavin likes his French toast, and she prides herself for knowing that.

      Sarah’s taller than Gavin by a full inch, and (much to her chagrin) several pounds heavier. She likes to attribute this to her breasts, which have always been especially large and made her back hurt even at twelve years old, when all the other girls were starting training bras and she, Sarah, had graduated already to a full underwire push-up with front-adjusting straps and four rows of clasps in the back. She remembers her boyfriends in junior high being frustratingly aroused as they tried desperately to unclasp her bra in the back, and she secretly giggling to herself. She’d always had very good posture, as well, which emphasized the size of her breasts even more. She was starting to get pains in her back, though, right between her shoulder blades. Some nights she’d ask Gavin to rub her back, and he’d say what? and she’d say Gavin come rub my back, it hurts, and he’d sit in back of her in their bed and rub her back and shoulders like he was touching something made of eggshells. She’d always loved the way Gavin’d touch her, like she was fine china, for display only.

      Sarah and Gavin had met in a call center, where they both went to work out of high school. Sarah had planned to go to college, but her mother had died years back, and her father had had a stroke literally the day before she graduated high school, and she had to take over the family computer repair business which she did by selling it to a local entrepreneur and used the funds the sale had generated to put her father in a special care facility in Las Vegas. By the time she could even think about starting college, she was out of money. The call center had originally been a temporary way to pay for tuition, but she found that, without her father taking care of things, every penny she earned went to the mortgage on the family home, groceries for two weeks, her father’s medical expenses, phone and electricity and water and cable bills, and exactly none left over for anything else. The call center was a customer service line for a big East Coast cable company; she forgets the name now. It was set up in Pahrump so that customers on the East Coast could call at like 8 P.M. their time and still get connected to someone, because the call center was in Pacific Time. So she eventually listed the house and got a tiny apartment where the rent left her a little wiggle room as far as money went. Then she met Gavin. Gavin’d come in to the call center one day practically begging for a job. He’d just been fired from working janitorial at a casino, for who knows what reason. Gavin had never planned on going to college; he knew himself, and he knew he’d never make it through college. He’d barely graduated high school as it was. So this Gavin comes in to the call center at like 10 at night begging the shift manager to hire him, which shift manager was kind enough to tell him to Get The F**k Out Of My Face Before I Pepper Spray You and nearly called the police. The whole incident caused a disturbance whereby several East Coast cable company customers’ calls were simultaneously put on hold so that the staff of the call center could watch this rare drama unfold in their gray-cubicled world. So but this Gavin guy had come back the next night when the call center’s general manager was there, and begged this GM for a job, and the GM actually gave Gavin an open position right then and there, since persistence was basically the only trait you needed to handle complaining customers from across the country, and he, Gavin, had taken the cubicle right directly adjacent to Sarah’s. They started dating within the month, and Gavin moved in to Sarah’s apartment not long after, and they’d been that way for two and a half years now, during which time Sarah had become shift manager herself and Gavin had moved on to driving delivery trucks on weekends to and from Las Vegas.

      Sarah liked things the way they were. Sure, her life hadn’t turned out like she’d always planned for it to, but she was happy with Gavin in their little apartment. Her job was easy, and she got paid $14 per hour now, and was pushing close to 50 hours per week, with 10 of that even being overtime, and Gavin was home most days taking care of the apartment. She found she didn’t need him to have a full-time job to be satisfied in picking him over, say, someone with a college education. She liked all his little quirks and idiosyncrasies. She liked the feeling of taking care of him, sometimes, and felt that even though she was the quote unquote breadwinner that she was never dragging him along, or letting him bring her down to a level above which she really deserved to be. She was content.

      Gavin too was happy to have found someone like Sarah. He’d come from an abusive home, which he didn’t talk about much. He’d gotten into some problems with drugs as a teenager and barely scraped by in high school, getting his diploma by what he was sure had been dumb luck, and having never been selected for one of those quote unquote random drug screenings in high school by even dumber luck. But he’d been clean for the whole time he and Sarah’d been together, and was proud of himself for staying that way for her. He felt like she deserved that, at least. He felt she did so much for him, and he so little for her.