Mark Dunn - American Decameron

Chewing tobacco. That was one of the other smells. The man smelled of chewing tobacco and cologne. Too much cologne, just like the generous amount that Mr. Romey is wearing now. And there was some smell on his hands. He put his hand up to my mouth to keep me quiet. What was that smell on his palm? Try to remember, Abby .

Abby’s hands began to tremble. She withdrew the probe and mirror from Romey’s mouth.

His mouth now empty, he was freed up to speak. “Are you okay?”

“I’ve been ill,” was all that Abby could think to say. After all, she had been ill. Everything had shut down after the attack. She had lain in bed, not eating, shivering in a warm room. She couldn’t sleep, and when she did, her dreams were disjointed, unsettling. They were displaced dreams — not about the attack itself but filled with everything else dark and menacing that her subconscious mind could conjure up.

Such things do not happen. A woman does not get knocked around behind a Dumpster, does not have her handbag ripped from her shoulder with such force that she is left with an ugly strap-width contusion. A woman does not have a strange man’s hands on her ass, looking for a way to get inside, and only by the grace of God — (What was it? Did he see someone approaching? Did he lose his nerve? What made him stop?) — a woman does not go through all of this and then find the man who did it to her seated in her dental chair two weeks later. Such things simply do not happen .

“I’m sorry to hear that,” said the man. The voice had a slight Brooklyn cadence. Abby knew Brooklyn accents. She had lived in Brooklyn when she went to school there to study dental hygiene. The man who’d attacked her had the same accent.

“It’s okay. I’m better now,” said Abby. Her hands had stopped shaking. She placed a gloved hand back into the man’s mouth to check for bumps and lumps on the floor of his mouth and inside his cheeks. “Stick out your tongue, please.” Abby took out a cotton 2 x 2 to look under the tongue. She gave the tongue a careful inspection. The man had said that he used to be a tobacco chewer.

Used to be. Abby’s assailant hadn’t given it up. In fact, it smelled as if he had been chewing a plug right before the attack. A thousand thoughts had raced through her head as she lay crumpled upon the pavement that night behind the Dumpster. One was this: that she hoped the man would get oral cancer. What a strange thing to think at such a moment. Yet only a minute or two after the attack, Abby was already thinking of how her assailant should be punished for what he did to her. He hadn’t raped her — not literally, but she had been raped in every other sense of that word. Men like that should have to pay for what they did.

“I’m sorry to hear that.” This was how he had responded. He had asked me, as he held me, as he had pushed himself against my back, as he had breathed his fetid tobacco-breath upon my neck, he had asked me if I had a husband or a boyfriend. I didn’t know how to answer. Should I have lied and said yes? How would he have reacted? Would he have shown my made-up husband or boyfriend that he didn’t own sole title to me? That I belonged to my assailant as well? Is this the sort of thing that psychotic men do to women in the dark? Assault both the women and the men they love?

So I told the truth. That I didn’t have a husband. Nor a boyfriend at the moment. “I’m sorry to hear that,” he had said, almost sympathetically — just as Romey had said it . Exactly as Romey had said it. “You’re much too pretty not to have a boyfriend.”

Abby closed her eyes.

Brass.

Abby opened her eyes.

The third smell — the smell on his dirty hands: brass. What is made of brass? Keys are made of brass. Locksmiths smell of brass .

It was clear to Abby now: the man in the chair was the same man who had assaulted her in the corner of the sandy parking lot. He had never asked what she did for a living. He would not have known that she was a dental hygienist. He had said that she was pretty, yet he had never gotten a good look at her face. He had come upon her from behind. He had done his dirty business in the dark. If he had fully seen her, something of this recognition would have registered on his face in the waiting room, wouldn’t it? Or there would have been a slow process of recollection there in the chair. Yet there was not.

In this respect, Abby had him at a disadvantage.

Abby rolled over to her ultra-sonic and took the water-blaster into her right hand. With her left hand she took up the suction — her “Mr. Thirsty.” She hooked it to one corner of Romey’s open mouth. With the foot pedal she turned on the ultra-sonic and began to clean her new patient’s teeth as her thoughts ran wild. Every moment of the assault came back to her. Every smell, every sound, the painful grip of her assailant’s muscular paws. It all came blasting back into her brain as the ultra-sonic — the sound of its shrill whirring — assailed the silence of the room.

Abby would have to find a way to detain him so that someone could call the police. It shouldn’t be that hard to do. He’d have to wait as she went back to retrieve the X-rays. Yes, this was when she would grab Loretta and have her make the call. The police would come quickly. Then it would all be over. He would be put behind bars for what he had done to her.

But I want him dead .

It could not happen that way. He had not killed her. He would be put away. Justice would be served.

But I want him dead .

Abby tried to shake the thought from her head. Her head shook with more violence than she expected. This drew Romey’s attention. He pushed her arm away — the arm with the hand that was blasting away at his fetid mouth.

“What is it? What’s wrong?” he asked.

She removed her foot from the pedal. The room grew quiet again.

“I’m not feeling well,” she said, the words shaped by fear.

“Maybe I should go.”

Don’t go. You can’t go .

“No, it’s okay,” she said, almost pleading. “Just give me a moment.”

Now he was looking at her. Now he was staring at her, studying her. He had not seen her face on the night of the attack. Or had he seen her face? In the club. Where Abby had gone for drinks with her friends. Had he been watching her from across the room? Did he follow her out to the parking lot? Is this why he was there, why he was almost on top of her before she had even reached her car? The club had been dark and smoky. Perhaps this is why it took him some time to remember her.

But now he is remembering me. Now he knows it’s me .

“You’re going to keep your mouth shut. I’m going to walk out of this place and you’re going to keep your mouth shut.”

“Okay.” This is what she had said that night. When he had said that he wasn’t going to hurt her, even as he had fumbled with the belt to her jeans. Now she was saying it again. The same way.

This is how he knows .

He sat up quickly. He hit his head against the lamp.

“I haven’t finished the cleaning,” said Abby with forced placidity. “I haven’t polished. We have to look at your X-rays.”

“Shut up,” he said, rubbing his head. He grabbed her by the wrist to command her complete attention. The tight vise on her wrist was painfully familiar. “Get this bib off of me,” he said.

He released her wrist. She put her hand upon the bib. She moved her hand to the bib chain. She turned the bib around so that the chain was touching the front of his neck.

I’m going to strangle him with this chain. That is what I am going to do. I am going to choke him until he dies .