William Lashner - Falls The Shadow

I dreamed that I awoke and a bright light was shining on my face. My mouth was propped open with a piece of rubber jammed between my teeth. A dentist, in mask and cap, his face blanked out by the light shining behind him, had his hands in my mouth. They say you can’t feel pain in your dreams, but that is a lie, because this dream hurt like hell.

I heard voices. I must still have been dreaming, because the voices became part of a fabulous panoply of shapes and colors. I was in a magical world where flowers blossomed and sprites flitted and shiny white teeth with straw boaters danced on their roots, swinging toothbrushes like vaudeville canes while singing bright songs of oral hygiene. Two women strode onto the scene, beautiful, beautiful women, all in white. One spoke with a Scottish burr, one spoke with a German accent, so sexy for all its harshness, and both of these beautiful women were speaking about me. What I felt for these two women in white was as real as anything I had ever felt before in my life. What I felt was love, sweet and painful and true as the dancing teeth before me.

There was someone knocking at the door. Knocking and knocking. Answer it, I tried to call out, but it emerged as a muffled grunt, because again I couldn’t open my mouth. Knocking. Knocking. And then I realized the knocking wasn’t on a door, it was on my skull. I opened my eyes, and there was Dr. Bob, lightly knock knock knocking on my forehead.

“Hello, Victor. Are you ready to come out and play?”

I started to the surface of my consciousness, and for a moment everything was clear: the light, the darkness behind it, the damp of a basement, the chair in which I was somehow bound. And of course Dr. Bob, smiling paternalistically as he watched while I slowly started to drift back down to the lower depths.

Dr. Bob knuckled my head once more.

“It’s so good to see you finally awake,” he said. “How are you feeling? Quite rested, I should think.”

I grunted something and ran my tongue across my teeth. The gap was still there, but my two temporary crowns were now gone, and in their places were the nubby posts, sticking up forlornly from the base of each tooth. I felt somehow denuded.

“A dentist walks into a bar,” said Dr. Bob. “Stop me if you’ve heard this one. He walks into a bar and meets this girl. When he tells her he’s a dentist, she’s suddenly all over him. ‘What’s so great about dentists?’ he asks. And she says, ‘They’re the only men who tell me, “Spit, don’t swallow.” ’ Ha ha ha.”

I tried to struggle out of the chair but failed. My head was somehow stuck in a position that made it impossible to see my arms or legs, but I could feel some give in the binding, so it wasn’t my muscles that didn’t work, which was a relief. Whatever the bastards had injected into my neck hadn’t paralyzed me.

“Wait, there’s more,” said Dr. Bob. “So the dentist, he takes this girl home, and after they’re done, she says, ‘You must be a very good dentist.’ ‘How do you know?’ he says. And she says” – he paused for effect – “ ‘Because I didn’t feel a thing.’ Ha ha ha.”

I struggled once again against the binding, groaned loudly.

“I don’t blame you,” he said. “Dentist jokes are the lamest things in the world. Maybe because there really is nothing funny about poor oral hygiene. How about this one? A dentist says to a sexy woman patient, ‘Will you have sex with me for a million dollars?’ She says, ‘Sure.’ He says, ‘How about for a buck thirty-nine?’ She says, ‘Certainly not. What do you take me for?’ And the dentist says, ‘We already established what you are, madam. Now we’re just negotiating the price.’ Ha ha ha.”

He pulled back a bit, put his fist to his chin in thought, considered me like he was a grade-school teacher determining what to do with a recalcitrant pupil.

“You’re still not laughing, Victor. Maybe it’s because you’re gagged. Or is it because it hits a little too close to home? Hmm? Is that it? But isn’t it better to be up-front about these things, especially when all my subtle hints and warnings have had no effect?”

He showed me the tiny tape recorder I had hidden in my jacket pocket. He switched it on for a moment. Out came Whit’s voice, slightly muffled but still clear enough. “She was supposed to be dead asleep, it was supposed to be so easy. But the woman awoke and was so frightened at the intrusion that she came at him with a gun. And he reacted badly. There was a struggle, there was a shot, and the bullet-” Dr. Bob snapped off the tape player.

“So, Victor, tell the dentist your price. What? You want to say something but you can’t? Maybe it’s the duct tape over your mouth. How about we do this?”

He reached for my mouth, quickly pulled something off with a searing rrrrrrrrippp .

“Aaaargh,” was the best I could manage.

“Much better,” said Dr. Bob. “I do love a good negotiation. So, Victor, let’s – how do you people say it? Hondel ? You first. What will it cost to buy the tape and stop you from bringing me into this mess?”

“Where am I?”

“Mr. Robinson’s basement. He has this wonderful vintage barber’s chair, which is where you’re sitting now. I can pump you up or down, just like in the office.”

“I can’t move.”

“Isn’t duct tape wonderful? I used two whole rolls to tape you to the chair. That’s enough to affix a Buick to the wall.”

I struggled some more, felt the tape give a bit again, but failed to gain anything close to freedom. “What did you put in me?”

“Oh, nothing serious. Something I use for my more squeamish patients. FDA-approved, very mild. Nurse MacDhubshith might have been a mite overly enthusiastic in the dosage” – he shook his head in disappointment – “but still nothing to worry about. So, we were talking about price.”

“A trip to California, like you gave Mrs. Dent?”

“If that’s what you want.”

“I like it here,” I said. “No price. I’m for sale, always, but not to you.”

“Oh, come on, man, don’t be obtuse. Who can give you more than I? Do you want Carol Kingsly back? Have you been pining for her smile? Or maybe you’d like a position on Mr. Takahashi’s legal staff? Quite a lucrative position, I might add. No more nickel-and-dime cases for you, Victor. Think of it, zipping around the world on the corporate jet, staying at the best hotels, growing fat on expense-account meals. You could use a few pounds, I daresay, especially after this little ordeal. Are you hungry?”

“I want to throw up.”

“I suppose, then, food right now wouldn’t be the best inducement. I know what you’d like. One of my patients is the wife of the hiring partner at Talbott, Kittredge and Chase. Quite the white-shoe firm, Victor. They have an opening for a trial lawyer in their criminal-defense department. You’d be perfect. Think of it. A little staid, maybe, but a very prestigious outfit, and your clients would be all the best people.”

“I have a client.”

“Of course you do. But he’s a witless scumbag who abused his family, cheated on his wife, abandoned his child, dived deep into debauchery, and now is playing games with your partner’s emotional life. What do you owe a creature like that?”

“The best I have. Let me out.”

“Oh, I can’t do that. Consider all my endeavors, all those souls I’m in the process of helping.”

“There are a lot of people in prison you can help, too.”

“I’m not a criminal.”

“Then what are you?”

“I’m someone who won’t sit back and let people’s lives fall apart without doing what I can. I am an optimistic man of action. A fighter of dental disease and the malaise of life. Looking for a love connection? I’ll make it. Your boyfriend stalking you? I’ll keep him away. Is a young girl missing? I’ll find her.” He paused for a moment, looked at the tape player in his hand. “Is your father abusing you? I’ll make sure he doesn’t have the opportunity anymore.”