The creak in the caller’s voice had gotten a lot stronger – it sounded like she was about ready to split right open.
Carmel felt physically crushed down into the ground, felt more humble than she ever had – Carmel was absolutely powerless and deeply ashamed. Here was this woman in undoubtedly the darkest hour of her life, and the best she could muster up was Carmel, some faceless bimbo on the other end of a phone connection that was siphoning a dollar a minute off her phone bill.
“Can I ask your name, ma’am?” Carmel asked gently.
“Irene.”
“Irene, what about the rest of your family? You’re not alone through this are you?”
“Well, my son’s here, sleeping on my couch. But he’s being less than helpful.”
“How’s that?”
“Well – he says I was a bad mother. He says it’s my fault Sarah’s dead.”
Afterwards Carmel never remembered exactly what they talked about after that. But she knew she stayed on the line a long time, speaking softly to Irene like you would to a severely wounded animal encountered at the side of the road, or to someone standing on the ledge of a very tall building. The call amounted to a decent addition to Carmel’s next paycheck, but Carmel would’ve parked her nails in the face of anyone crass enough to have mentioned that fact.
When Carmel finished with Irene’s call she needed a break bad. But first Carmel selfishly shuffled the deck for herself, whispered the silly question she’d once asked the cards daily when she was a little girl and her aunt was first teaching her how to read them: “Is my prince out there somewhere?”
The ‘little girl’ portion of her heart felt a million miles away these days, and it had been years since she’d asked that cootie-catcher of a question. But after Irene, Carmel somehow felt the need as harshly as any of her customers.
She looked at the card she’d pulled from the deck, the same one that had often made a habit of showing up in answer to that question: the King of Swords, a grim crowned man holding a sword, sitting on his throne in a windswept world of chaos. She felt a pang run through her belly that she couldn’t interpret as she caressed that old familiar piece of pasteboard.
The phone rang.
Carmel looked at it with a mixture of loathing and longing: part of her wanting to run as far as she could from the loud horrid little piece of technology, another voyeuristic part wanting to pick it up and listen to one more tale of desperation.
Had she really thought she could run away from all the bad memories of home just by coming down here to the Bay Area? Had she actually thought she could escape Humboldt?
“No matter where you go, there you are,” she told the empty room. She reached for a smoke but her pack was just as empty.
The phone was still ringing the entire time it took her to grab her black leather jacket and walk out the front door to buy another pack.
# # #
Interested in getting to know Carmel better? She’s one of the stars of the novel STREET RAISED, which is currently available for the Kindle at Amazon (http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0050JL0IM) and for other ereader formats at Smashwords (http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/59272).
Far, Far Away
Certainly I was nervous on that first visit with Doctor Dietrich – most people are when they go to a new dentist; that was no shame for a 12-year-old boy.
Climbing the marble steps to Dr. D’s office for the first time, birds sang and a plane buzzed overhead. There wasn't a cloud in the sky as I crossed the threshold into that cool dim interior.
In the gloom of the waiting room, the receptionist posed behind her desk like a work of art on display in a museum: a cold, aristocratic blond I later found out was Doctor D’s much younger wife. As a horny young boy I saw that she was beautiful, but her eyes repelled me. She told me that Dr. Dietrich was ready and ushered me into the back where I met Dr. D for the very first time.
Dr. Dietrich stood next to his operating chair as stiffly as if his starched white coat were some sort of scaffolding forcing him to stand erect, an elderly man somewhere way past sixty (or even seventy plus?), with a helmet of silver hair slicked straight back above a round red glistening face.
He looked me up and down with piercing blue eyes and grinned, displaying more teeth than any human being had a right to possess. The overall effect was not reassuring.
"So," he boomed in a voice I felt even then was too jovial for the circumstances, "So, I understand you like the candy too much." I could only nod, steeling up to whatever was going to happen next. "Well, sit down in my chair and we will make everything good."
Dr. D carefully shut the room’s door and locked it as I climbed aboard the over-sized chair. I watched while Doctor D wandered around the room gathering various pieces of equipment, the nameless steel implements clinking together in his hand. He cheerfully hummed a tune I couldn't identify, a light-hearted tune full of sunlit summer and cheer.
Finally all was in order, and he came to stand next to me. His belly rubbed against my arm beneath his starched white coat as he grasped a control device hanging on a black cord.
"First, the lights.” With a click, the overhead light dimmed almost to blackness as the round eye of the working light came on behind him, instantly transforming Doctor D’s red face into a harsh montage of light and darkness.
“Now, we make ourselves comfortable." With a penetrating hum the chair slowly leaned back, adjusting itself so that I was lying back like a helpless infant, head slightly lower than feet as I looked directly up at Doctor D’s round, beaming, deeply shadowed face.
Doctor D’s hovering features seemed almost unreal, as if he were more or less than human. He stared down at me for several seconds without saying a word and then seemed to come to a decision.
"You know, dental work is quite expensive," he observed.
I nodded. My step-dad had made me well aware of how much my poor dental hygiene was costing him.
"You see, the most expensive part is the anesthetic – the Novocain. If you would be willing to let me work without the Novocain, it would save your parents quite a bit of money." Doctor D studied my face closely, leaning over. "You do want to save your parents’ money, don't you?"
Actually, my step-dad had used his fists to express his disapproval of my need for dental work. I was no stranger to those fists – they were the man’s chief means of communicating with me when he didn’t want to put any real imagination into the message. If I could save him some money, I decided it would be a good thing, a good line to take.
"All right," I said.
Doctor D’s ever-present smile grew even wider as he picked up his drill. He triggered it experimentally – it spun with an alarming whir. "This will hurt a bit. If the pain should prove too great, you will raise your right arm and I will stop. Yes?"
"All right," I repeated stupidly, staring at the drill in dawning realization.
"Good. Now, open wide." He hunched over me, blocking out the light as I stretched my mouth open as far as I could.
I could hear the scream of the drill for a moment before it was in my mouth. The instant the drill touched the target tooth, I could feel the charred bits of powdered crown flying away, could smell and taste the rot of the cavity. In that same instant the drill dug right through into the defenseless pulp – it was as if a white-hot needle had pierced my soul to the very core.
My entire mouth tried to cringe away from the invader to no avail, and my body jolted into stiffness like a soldier at attention. My right arm shot straight toward the ceiling in a trembling ram rod salute.
Doctor D stopped and withdrew the drill. He looked down at me with a disappointed look on his face; the smile had left his face. "That couldn't have hurt so soon. Are you a sissy boy? Are you weak?"
I glared up at him for an instant before answering, angry with myself that my eyes were swimming. "No," I whispered.
Doctor D’s smile returned.
We’d resumed the work, and Doctor D continued explorin
g my cavity. My nerves twanged like a guitar string with every change in pressure or angle of Doctor D’s probing drill. Doctor D hummed and muttered under his breath as the pain brought a sheen of sweat to my face.
I opened my eyes at one point during the ordeal and looked up at this tormentor: Dr. D’s face was sweating as well, and his eyes shone with an avid light. Almost I understood – but I was too young, too young.
My hands clutched at the unyielding armrests and my shoulders rose toward my ears – it was all I could do to keep from squirming out of the seat and onto the floor.
But as the drilling progressed, I noticed something interesting – the pain seemed to move, to withdraw from me to another place. I tried willing it further away, and those efforts actually worked: by the time the drilling was almost done, there was no longer any pain to be felt.
I wasn’t numb; I was as hypersensitive as ever. Rather, the pain was still there, but it was separate from me – away, somehow.
The filling material squeaked against the enamel as Doctor D packed it into my wounded tooth. He raised the chair and turned away from me to wash up.
When he turned back to face me, he brought his large hairless hands together in a meaty, business-like clap. "So. This will be our little secret, ah? Your parents pay less, each time we do it this way – so long as you say nothing."
For the third time that morning, all I could mutter was "All right."
My clothes were drenched in sweat, and my legs trembled as I swung off the chair to sit up. I stood, swaying – a limp noodle, drained and exhausted.
As I marched out the door, my face in the mirror was sheet white. Doctor D was still smiling benignly as he watched me leave.
I had to stop once on that lonely walk home along Hesperian Boulevard to vomit explosively into the gutter. The sun still shone, the birds still sang, but not for me. I didn’t tell his parents – there are consequences beyond consequences after all.
My next appointment with Doctor D was a week later. There had been dread, but curiosity as well. I wanted to see if I could control the pain as I’d started to the last time, see if the agony could be pushed away from myself one more time.
Lying there in the over-stuffed mechanical chair looking up at Doctor D's back-lit smiling face as that insectile drill descended to bite, I closed my eyes. Pain blossomed inside the tooth Doctor D picked for that day. It was, if anything, worse than before.
I writhed back in the chair, the whine of the drill stabbing into my ears, and reached deep into self for the place this pain called home. I found the crimson root of it, and studied it as clinically as if it belonged to someone else, as if it didn’t really matter.
The tortured nerves inside the tooth expanded to become my whole world as I visualized grasping them with the mind like a handful of jangling piano wires and – sent them away somehow. The pain was suddenly no more than a balloon bobbing on a string, somewhere distant and separate from me.
I had controlled it.
My eyes opened: I was looking directly up at Doctor D. Dr. D’s breath was coming in hoarse gasps, and his eyes were focused on my mouth until he became aware of my smug gaze. He’d pulled the drill away with a frown. "So. The puppy believes he is stronger now."
He stuck the drill in my mouth and dug it deep into the root of the drilled tooth's nerve, pressing hard. The pain came instantly back to stab me in the face like a bolt of storm lightning, and my whole body convulsed with the thunder of it.
Doctor D withdrew his tool with a smile. "That is all the drilling for today." He filled the tooth and I left.
There was no vomiting on the walk home this time, but I was enraged with myself nonetheless. This had become a test, a trial of wills – and I had failed. Doctor D had gotten the better of it once more, and I vowed not to let that happen again.
The next visit, I spent the entire session staring into Dr. D’s eyes as he dug and probed and twisted with the drill, trying to get some kind of reaction from me. But I’d put the pain inside a well-lit little room this time, with myself outside looking in. The pain could be seen through the window, it throbbed and pulsed with light in the middle of that imaginary room like some obscene Christmas tree; but it couldn’t touch me where I stood alone outside in the dark.
It was nothing at all.
Doctor D finally gave up and put away the drill, rather irritably I thought. He filled my tooth without saying a word, with a brusque minimum of motions.
Standing to leave, I hazarded a smile at the dentist – was this man’s approval being sought, his acknowledgment? Dr. D did not smile back.
The day came for my next appointment with Doctor D. Walking confidently up the steps to Dr. D’s office, I was met at the door by the receptionist, who was just locking up.
There would be no more appointments, this cold blond goddess said flatly. Doctor D had died the night before.
Even at the time, I’d wondered about the age difference between elderly Dr. D and his trophy wife of a receptionist, but other facts quickly bubbled up to prevent any dwelling upon it. Soon enough had come the whispers of suicide, of how Doctor D was found in his study with a gun in his mouth and his brains painted on the wallpaper behind his shattered head. Then came the news that he’d taken the coward’s way out one step ahead of the Israelis, who were closing in on him to have a serious discussion about certain of Dr. D’s activities in the Death Camps, back during WW2.
I would almost find Dr. D’s fifteen minutes of fame amusing: dead Doctor D’s photo was on the front pages of all the newspapers, and on all the TV news shows. There were reports of how Doctor D had been a Nazi, of how bad a boy he’d been in the Camps, and of the sham life Doctor D had built for himself in Amerika before the walls had finally toppled in on him. Whenever I saw a photo of Doctor D’s face, my tongue would probe one or another of the teeth Dr. D had worked on, remembering their battle of wills – remembering the victory over him.
And years later, watching ‘Marathon Man’ on late night TV, I would wonder what the excitement was all about when Laurence Olivier had his little fun with Dustin Hoffman – Hoffman’s character was a man after all, and I’d beaten my Dentist as a boy.
At the time of that last canceled appointment, of course, I had known none of this. All that I knew was that Doctor D had lost the game, that I’d outlasted him. I laughed openly in the receptionist's porcelain doll face, to which she offered no reaction at all (though she had evidenced an interest in him even then that I had refused to acknowledge).
Then I’d run down the steps and along the sidewalk, skipping and capering like a much younger boy. People in passing cars yelled rude comments at the victory dance but I ignored the taunts, allowed feelings full vent, uncaring for once at the risk this exposure of self entailed. Doctor D had fallen: I was triumphant!
My heart had become a fortress now, seamless and unassailable. Nothing could hurt anymore, nor anyone touch. And in the years to come, I would always have the old butcher's unintentional gift to rely on: pain and fear would forever be something that happened far, far away to someone else.
The Greedy Depths
This happened over thirty years ago, when I was a young grunt awaiting discharge from the Marines in Hawaii. Living on Oahu had been the closest thing to paradise I'd ever found, and it was with mixed feelings that I awaited going home to Oakland, California.
I knew there were many things I would miss: the warm gentle weather and the beautiful local girls. Looming over all, the weathered volcanic backbones of the islands themselves, like petrified dinosaurs mired in the fertile soil and smothered in greenery. And surrounding that minuscule jot of land, the twin blue clamshell lids of sea and heaven, enclosing the world between them.
I was billeted in a transit barracks, awaiting my discharge at Kaneohe Marine Corps Air Station. My barracks mates were all transients like myself, separated from their parent units. As lonely young warriors have from time immemorial, we spent a lot of time in each other's company. And at n
ight, sometimes, we cut loose a little bit.
Hawaii after dark can be a goblin place: the sleeping dragons of the volcanic highlands no longer look as benevolent as they bulk blackly against the stars. There are hordes of venomous toads the size of dinner plates, and mongooses both vicious and unafraid of man.
It is at night that almost all the murders take place in Hawaii, usually in drunken beach party brawls among the locals. But off into the darkness my barracks mates and I would roam, toting a cooler of brews and a tape deck, looking for privacy to drink in peace and talk about our homes.
The base military police were our sworn enemies, we had bumped chests many times. To get to our party place we had to creep past their head quarters, leopard-crawling through the surrounding brush, sometimes stopping long enough to sabotage one of their vehicles or deface their barracks if we were in the mood for vandalism.
From there we’d continue through the entrance to the base golf course, where we would sprint across the flat open plain of the fairways, ready to drop flat and motionless to the manicured grass if a cop's searchlight touched us (the golf course was off-limits after dark). Then carefully creeping up the dunes past the mongoose haunted thickets, until we finally reached our goal: the green of the twelfth hole.
The twelfth hole was raised up on the dunes right next to the beach, so we had an excellent view of the ocean, with its swells and waves surging in from the night to die against the sand below. It was a perfect place to kick back and party.
That night there were four of us at the twelfth hole: Spale, Opie, Burnt Out Baker and myself. Rush's '2112' was playing on Spate's tape deck, and the moon was full and bright.
Gun Sex Page 3