Open Wide

by Saul Tanpepper

  She turned her back for a brief moment. I admired.

  Stop, I scolded myself. I told myself to behave, to stop looking. The last place I needed to go with Kerry Anne was the one place that had torn my life apart the first time. And yet, there was this deep-seeded urge to—

  What? Win her back?

  She tugged her mask down over her chin, shaking her head but smiling. The pleasure there was genuine, if not a little wistful. Was that remorse I sensed, regret at how things had turned out between us? Maybe if we’d known each other years later than we did, had waited, then everything would’ve been…better.

  Maybe if Dean had been the one to win her years before, he’d be the one sitting in this chair and I’d be the one married to her now.

  “You’re looking a bit scraggly,” she said. She touched the stubble on my cheek, sending a rush of white hot mercury flowing through my veins. I closed my eyes for a moment, then snapped them open again. I didn’t want her to see the effect she was having on me.

  She leaned over me to adjust the light and whatever grip I had on rational thought was immediately defeated, swamped by the rush of my desire for her. Had it been lying inside of me, dormant all these years? Is that why I had moved away from Edgemont, to bury it? Had I come back hoping to see it resurrected?

  Had I bitten down on that stone on purpose?

  Of course not.

  Still…

  Her teeth were dazzlingly white, like fresh fallen snow, and her eyes held such warmth that they could’ve melted arctic ice. I wondered distractedly who did her teeth for her—obviously not herself—and that thought reminded me of the old riddle about the town with the two barbers, one with the crappy haircut and the messy shop, and the other barber with the nice cut with the sparkling clean shop, and who would you pick to go to if you needed a cut? Obviously, you’d pick the one with the messy shop.

  And there I was wondering if Kerry Anne was a crappy dentist because she had such perfect teeth—somewhere inside my head, there came a bray of laughter at the preposterousness of such a conclusion—when she said, “You were always the most handsome boy in school. You’re still handsome, underneath all that.”

  Was she toying with me? Or was it just her typical bedside manner? Bedside? I wanted her in bed, not beside it. I wanted her luscious lips, the reddest I’d seen in a long time, on my mouth. I wanted to touch her perfect skin. I wanted to peel away that spotless white blouse.

  Once more I became aware of my own sad state, my poor, dirty clothes, my rankness. I sighed dejectedly. “You’re not so bad looking yourself,” I said, laughing perhaps a bit too loudly.

  “Behave, Kurt.”

  But she was laughing, too. And suddenly I felt myself relax.

  I’d long ago come to terms with the fact that I’d made mistakes in high school. I’d paid my dues, maybe even more than my dues. But the world gives you a pass on some things even as it makes it up on others. Maybe she’d realized over the years that she’d made some mistakes herself. Maybe she was trying to make up for them now. We’d both been foolish children back then, naïve, meddling in affairs we had no business in.

  And here I was, letting myself get ever closer to that dangerous precipice once again.

  Was I a fool? Maybe. And yet I couldn’t help myself.

  She busied herself to one side with a tray of instruments, arranging the mirrors and probes nervously, laughing perhaps a bit too gaily. “Do you remember Mr. Dregs?” she asked. “That day he asked you to go up to the board?”

  The old school memories had been trickling back into my head ever since I’d seen Dean a couple weeks earlier, like he’d popped the cork off a wine bottle to let it breathe. But now the bottle had been knocked over; the wine was gushing out.

  “Yeah, I remember,” I said. Funny, that she’d pick that memory to talk about. “You came to my rescue.” I wanted to ask her why she’d done what she had. What had I done to attract her attention? Her mercy. And then, later, what had I done to warrant her acrimony?

  She’d been scared. She was so innocent, such an angel…

  I wanted to change the subject. “You can’t imagine how surprised I was when I heard you were still with Dean.”

  I thought I caught a smug look in her eyes before she pulled her mask back up. She settled onto her stool and drew herself close to me.

  “He’s changed, you know. He was… He had some unattractive traits.”

  I was a little surprised that she’d so readily admit this. Especially to me, since she had to know by now that I had never been as bad as he had.

  I told myself to drop it. No sense to dredging it all up again.

  “Did he tell you why he changed, Kurt?”

  I frowned and shook my head. Why seemed like the wrong question, so I answered with the how: “I gathered you had something to do with it.”

  The corners of her eyes crinkled. “Well, of course.”

  I laughed uncomfortably at that.

  “Nobody’s totally bad,” she concluded. “Just like nobody’s totally good, either, right?”

  “What do you mean?” Was she finally admitting to what she’d done to me all those years ago? Was she acknowledging that the virtuous little girl everyone thought she’d been hadn’t been quite so good after all?

  “Never mind. I’m just rambling.” She leaned down, her face close to mine, and for a second I thought she was going to kiss me. In that moment I could remember exactly the way she’d tasted, all those years ago, the feel of her lips on mine, the softness of her tongue. “Open wide, Kurt. Let’s have a look.”

  The old feelings came again—desire, anger, confusion—but soon one feeling overrode them all, something more primitive, more alive. And there it was: fifteen years of pent up desire; fifteen years of suppressing it. But, of course, there was nothing to be done about it. I was helpless. There would be no release from it.

  I concentrated on her face, the mask and her eyes that looked with apparent concern at what she thought she might find inside my mouth. I knew my breath was rancid, and the insides of my cheeks were tattered by my habit of chewing on them. She showed no disgust, no embarrassment, nothing. And for that, at least, I was grateful.

  But now, I almost wish she had shown some offense. It would’ve made it so much easier to ignore the way she hovered over me. Maybe it would’ve stopped what happened next, I don’t know. But she was so close that I could smell her animal scent, the raw musk of her skin underneath the stronger smell of the soap and the perfume she was wearing. I closed my eyes. I told myself unless I pushed those feelings away, it would only lead to more pain.

  “Keep your mouth open,” she said, distractedly. Her fingers probed inside of me, nudging, pulling, widening. It wasn’t exactly the most comfortable thing, not in the least, but it wasn’t painful either. Not yet.

  “Wider.”

  I forced my mouth to open even wider, but kept my eyes closed. I wouldn’t stare and get caught staring. But not looking didn’t stop me from seeing. It didn’t stop me from getting more and more worked up.

  I tried to force other thoughts into my head, of the home I’d lost, of my parents, of the NFL career I’d never had a chance to experience. Instead, what fell into the well of my mind was the day I’d asked her to go out with me: fall, senior year, history class.

  She was sitting across the aisle, one seat up. I’d pretty much given up all hope of ever getting her to go out with me, and yet I couldn’t keep my eyes off her.

  Stop it, my thirty-two-year-old self begged. But my mind was once more the mind of a seventeen-year-old.

  I’d been imagining the way her thighs must feel, imagining running my hands on them. Her skin, so soft and white.

  Please!

  I was a hot-blooded teenaged boy, for chrissake! It was natural to have such thoughts. Show me a seventeen-year-old boy who doesn’t have those kinds of fantasies and I’ll show you a seventeen-year-old boy who’s a goddamn liar.

  I don’t know how long I’d
been sitting there fantasizing about her like that before I realized the whole class was looking at me and Mr. Dregs was calling me to come up to the front to write something down on the board. I was, simply put, in no state to oblige. If I had tried to stand up, I would’ve done some serious damage to myself. Might even have poked someone’s eye out.

  “What are you laughing about?” Kerry Anne asked, pushing a dental probe into the space between my teeth and gums.

  “Hah-hee,” I apologized. Well, at least I could joke about it.

  She went back to her examination. I went back to that memory.

  Mr. Dregs refused to cut me any slack; he called on me again. And once again, I didn’t move.

  “Something the matter, Kurt?” I swear, he had an evil, knowing smirk on his face. He knew what was happening! At least, that’s how I was remembering it then.

  I remembered entering a panicked state, but, goddammit if my erection only got harder. I was dimly aware that my present physical state mirrored that one so long ago, but this time I was almost beyond caring.

  Somehow, the young Kerry Anne had sensed I was in desperate need of being rescued. She spoke up then, telling Mr. Dregs that I had hurt my knee in football scrimpage practice. That’s how she’d put it: football scrimpage practice. Mr. Dregs, who’d always seemed to revel in other people’s discomfort, took a moment to consider her remark. Then he moved on, much to the class’s surprise. Much to my relief.

  I remember thinking often about that little episode since then, how she’d managed to get me off the hook. But, it’s like I said earlier, Kerry Anne was an angel. Nobody could ever conceive of her lying. Everyone took her word for gospel. That should’ve been a clue, I suppose, to what she really was like. Instead, I saw her deceit as something else: mercy.

  Her stool cricked as she shifted, and the quality of the light bleeding through my closed eyelids changed from bright red to dark brown. I opened them without thinking. Kerry Anne was reaching over me for the suction, or the water, or whatever the hell was over there that I couldn’t see because of the blur of her blouse just inches from my nose and then the pink of her skin where the button had come undone—or had she undone it?—and I could see the dark cleft between her breasts, could almost feel their heft as they pushed against the delicate fabric of her bra—ain’t gravity a lovely thing?—and the soft hollow of flesh just at the base of her neck. My nose filled with everything about her: her soap, her shampoo, the underarm deodorant she used. Even a hint of that dark, mysterious place between her legs.

  Dear god.

  I wanted to die in that chair. I wanted to die so badly it was killing me. But I wanted her all the more for it.

  She had to have noticed the state I was in. How could she not? I couldn’t hide it. And there was a blush on her cheeks, even with the mask nearly covering them.

  “Spit,” she instructed.

  I leaned over, avoiding her eyes, and spit into the basin.

  “We’re almost done,” she told me. “This might hurt a little. Maybe a lot.”

  I leaned back, shut my eyes again and invited the memories back in. Kill me now, I joked silently. At least I’d die with a hard on.

  Once more she began to probe, her thumb against my top teeth, her fingers wrenching open my jaw on the bottom. And all too quickly things did grow painful. I didn’t know what she was doing, but it hurt, badly. I started getting a muscle cramp in my jaw, and my head felt like my heart had taken up residence inside of it. I clung desperately to images of her in my mind, hoping the pain would soon end. Incredibly, I found myself even more aroused. Minutes earlier, I wouldn’t have thought it possible.

  She ignored my grunts of discomfort.

  She pushed harder, jabbing the cold metal cruelly into places I never knew I had nerve endings in. She located a tender spot on my gum near my fractured tooth and pushed hard against it. My head nearly exploded with pain.

  “Aaanch,” I said, wanting her to stop. I’d almost instinctively bit down and would have taken off her fingers, but I managed to stop myself. She only pushed harder.

  She abruptly stopped, then stood up.

  Now what?

  “The good news, Kurt, is that you were lucky you came in.” She was all business. “No, don’t get up. We’re not done.”

  I laughed awkwardly. “If that’s the good news, what’s the bad?”

  “You’ve got twelve cavities, Kurt. An even dozen.”

  “Twelve?” I exclaimed. “But how could that be? I never had cavities before.”

  She inhaled deeply, as if considering how to tell me the news. Then she sat back down on her stool and pulled herself over to me.

  “Poor nutrition, lack of brushing,” she scolded. She reached over my chest to clip on a bib. Her breast brushed my arm. “Your gums are in horrible shape, too. You haven’t been fucking them enough, have you?”

  My eyes snapped to her face. “What?”

  “I said you haven’t been flossing them enough. You’ve got so much plaque buildup, it’s a wonder your teeth haven’t turned black.”

  “Oh. So…what’s next?”

  “That cracked molar will need to come out.”

  My hands fluttered at my sides, wanting so much to touch her that she could’ve told me she was going to amputate my ear and I would’ve been fine with it. I willed my hands to stay put.

  She leaned down, peering deeply into my eyes. “You need to take better care of yourself, Kurt.”

  I don’t know what came over me—well, I do, but it wasn’t planned. I leaned up and kissed her. On the mouth.

  She backed away, a look of utter surprise in her eyes.

  “I’m sorry, Kerry Anne. I just—”

  “I thought you’d changed, Kurt. Now I see you haven’t.”

  My heart sank.

  Stupid! What a goddamn fucking idiot I am!

  “Let’s just get on with then, shall we?”

  The wall was back up.

  She stood for a moment, as if considering whether or not it was wise to continue. But then she twisted around for a moment before returning with a tray of instruments that she set on my chest. I could feel it seesawing there and I didn’t dare to breathe too heavily, afraid it’d send the whole thing onto the floor. Yet with each shallow breath I took, I could feel it slowly slipping off of me.

  “Lie still.” She held up a nasty-looking wire device. “Open up.”

  And then, all at once, I knew I’d really crossed the line this time.

  “No.”

  “Kurt—”

  “No.”

  “It’s for your own good.”

  “I changed my mind.”

  She smiled gently. “Kurt, please. I know what I’m doing.”

  Her fingers skittered over my neck, sending goose bumps down to my toes.

  But they were goose bumps of terror. And what was worse, I knew it’d be ten times worse if I didn’t oblige her. I opened my mouth.

  She clamped the frame over my teeth. My tongue waggled about inside, looking for a place to settle itself.

  “Don’t try to talk, Kurt.” She took a wooden cotton swab and dabbed something on my gums.

  I needed desperately to swallow, but my throat refused to work with my jaw wired open like that. Saliva was building up in my mouth and I couldn’t swallow it and I was feeling like I was drowning.

  “Unghhhh,” I said.

  “You know what happens when you have a cavity that doesn’t get sealed off properly the first time? It festers. It forms a hole inside the tooth, underneath the enamel. The infection grows, moves down into the root. Pretty soon it starts to eat away at the bone in your jaw. The rotting inside of you, Kurt, isn’t that deep, yet. But it will get there unless we do something about it.”

  “Whu?” I asked.

  She drew a syringe of something clear from a vial, flicked it and squirted out the air bubbles. Pain killer. Well, at least I wouldn’t have to suffer too badly.

  She noticed me looking at it and nodde
d. Then she stuck the needle in the side of my neck.

  “Owrrghh!” I said, jerking away. When she withdrew it, the syringe was empty.

  “Not pain killer. Not for you, Kurt.” Her eyes were dancing some kind of strange evil dance. “Paralytic.”

  The numbness spread like fire and ice down my back, down my arms and into my fingertips, down my legs. I couldn’t lift my head, and I couldn’t move my legs.

  “Quickest way to get rid of the disease, Kurt, is to remove the offending organ.”

  Organ?

  She picked up her drill and held it in front of my face, running it until my teeth actually did start hurting. “I’ll let you keep the top ones.”

  Why? I wanted to scream at her.

  The last thing I heard as I blacked out from the pain was Kerry Anne telling me Dean hadn’t been so lucky. “But then again, his infection was a lot deeper. To the bone, even.”

  I wondered then, almost delirious with pain, what she’d done to him.

  And then it finally clicked: the look in his face, that day I’d seen him at the soup kitchen, after he’d joined me at the table with his own bowl of strained broth. The way his mouth seemed to collapse into itself. The lisp when he spoke. The odd way his teeth had clicked. It hadn’t registered then, but he’d had no teeth in his mouth.

  None whatsoever.

  “Wah?” I asked, but I blacked out before she could answer.

  But I knew. I didn’t need her to tell me why. It was because she so pure, so chaste. She was a perfect little angel.

  And we weren’t.

  That’s not a judgment, just a statement of fact.

  ‡ ‡ ‡

  Author’s note

  Ah, I love it when good people turn out to be wicked, and wicked people turn out to be…well, still wicked. Here was this guy, had everything going for him—good looking, athletic, articulate—and he goes and makes a stupid mistake and gets what he deserved. Or did he? Sorta feel sorry for him, doncha?

  Do you think Kurt deserved what he got in the end? Should he have warned his former pal, Dean? How different do you think things would have been if he had?