“They say I taste of ashes.”
I blinked at him, thinking of Pretty Girl Street.
“Not cigarette smoke,” the girls had all told me. “Ashes.”
“I can see no decay or internal reason for any odour,” I told Dan.
After work that day I found him waiting for me in his car outside the surgery.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “This is ridiculous. But I wondered if you’d like to eat with me.” He gestured, lifting food to his mouth. The movement shocked me. It reminded me of what Jane had said, the Ash Mouth Man gesturing a drink to her. It was nonsense and I knew it. Fairytales, any sort of fiction, annoy me. It’s all so very convenient, loose ends tucked in and no mystery left unsolved. Life isn’t like that. People die unable to lift an arm to wave and there is no reason for it.
I was too tired to say yes. I said, “Could we meet for dinner tomorrow?”
He nodded. “You like food?”
It was a strange question. Who didn’t like food? Then the answer came to me. Someone for whom every mouthful tasted of ash.
“Yes, I like food,” I said.
“Then I’ll cook for you,” he said.
~~~
He cooked an almost perfect meal, without fuss or mess. He arrived at the table smooth and brown. I wanted to sweep the food off the table and make love to him right there. “You actually like cooking,” I said. “It’s nothing but a chore for me. I had to feed myself from early on and I hate it.”
“You don’t want the responsibility,” he said. “Don’t worry. I’ll look after you.”
The vegetables were overcooked, I thought. The softness of them felt like rot.
He took a bite and rolled the food around in his mouth.
“You have a very dexterous tongue,” I said. He smiled, cheeks full of food, then closed his eyes and went on chewing.
When he swallowed, over a minute later, he took a sip of water then said, “Taste has many layers. You need to work your way through each to get to the base line. Sensational.”
I tried keeping food in my mouth but it turned to sludge and slipped down my throat. It was fascinating to watch him eat. Mesmerising. We talked at the table for two hours, then I started to shake.
“I’m tired,” I said. “I tend to shake when I’m tired.”
“Then you should go home to sleep.” He packed a container of food for me to take. His domesticity surprised me; on entering his home, I laughed at the sheer seductiveness of it. Self-help books on the shelf, their spines unbent. Vases full of plastic flowers with a fake perfume.
He walked me to my car and shook my hand, his mouth pinched shut to clearly indicate there would be no kiss.
Weeks passed. We saw each other twice more, chaste, public events that always ended abruptly. Then one Wednesday, I opened the door to my next client and there was Dan.
“It’s only me,” he said.
My assistant giggled. “I’ll go and check the books, shall I?” she said. I nodded. Dan locked the door after her.
“I can’t stop thinking about you,” he said. “It’s all I think about. I can’t get any work done.”
He stepped towards me and grabbed my shoulders. I tilted my head back to be kissed. He bent to my neck and snuffled. I pulled away.
“What are you doing?” I said. He put his finger on my mouth to shush me. I tried to kiss him but he turned away. I tried again and he twisted his body from me.
“I’m scared of what you’ll taste,” he said.
“Nothing. I’ll taste nothing.”
“I don’t want to kiss you,” he said softly.
Then he pushed me gently onto my dentist’s chair. And he stripped me naked and touched every piece of skin, caressed, squeezed, stroked until I called out.
He climbed onto the chair astride me, and keeping his mouth well away, he unzipped his pants. He felt very good. We made too much noise. I hoped my assistant wasn’t listening.
Afterwards, he said, “It’ll be like that every time. I just know it.”
And it was. Even massaging my shoulders, he could make me turn to jelly.
I had never cared so much about kissing outside of my job before but now I needed it. It would prove Dan loved me, that I loved him. It would prove he was not the Ash Mouth Man because his mouth would taste of plums or toothpaste, or of my perfume if he had been kissing my neck.
“You know we get pleasure from kissing because our bodies think we are eating,” I said, kissing his fingers.
“Trickery. It’s all about trickery,” he said.
“Maybe if I smoke a cigarette first. Then my breath will be ashy anyway and I won’t be able to taste you.”
“Just leave it.” He went out, came back the next morning with his lips all bruised and swollen. I did not ask him where he’d been. I watched him outside on the balcony, his mouth open like a dog tasting the air, and I didn’t want to know. I had a busy day ahead, clients all through and no time to think. My schizophrenic client tasted yeasty; they always did if they were medicated.
Then I kissed a murderer; he tasted like vegetable waste. Like the crisper in my fridge smells when I’ve been too busy to empty it. They used to say people who suffered from tuberculosis smelled like wet leaves; his breath was like that but rotten. He had a tooth he wanted me to fix; he’d cracked it on a walnut shell.
“My wife never shelled things properly. Lazy. She didn’t care what she ate. Egg shells, olive pits, seafood when she knew I’m allergic. She’d eat anything.”
He smiled at me. His teeth were white. Perfect. “And I mean anything.” He paused, wanting a reaction from me. I wasn’t interested in his sexual activities. I would never discuss what Dan and I did. It was private, and while it remained that way I could be wanton, abandoned.
“She used to get up at night and raid the fridge,” the murderer said after he rinsed. I filled his mouth with instruments again. He didn’t close his eyes. Most people do. They like to take themselves elsewhere, away from me. No matter how gentle a dentist is, the experience is not pleasant.
My assistant and I glanced at each other.
“Rinse,” I said. He did, three times, then sat back. A line of saliva stretched from the bowl to his mouth.
“She was fat. Really fat. But she was always on a diet. I accused her of secretly bingeing and then I caught her at it.”
I turned to place the instruments in my autoclave.
“Sleepwalking. She did it in her sleep. She’d eat anything. Raw bacon. Raw mince. Whole slabs of cheese.”
People come to me because I remove the nasty taste from their mouths. I’m good at identifying the source. I can tell by the taste of them and what I see in their eyes.
He glanced at my assistant, wanting to talk but under privilege. I said to her, “Could you check our next appointment, please?” and she nodded, understanding.
I picked up a scalpel and held it close to his eye. “You see how sharp it is? So sharp you won’t feel it as the blade gently separates the molecules. Sometimes a small slit in the gums releases toxins or tension. You didn’t like your wife getting fat?”
“She was disgusting. You should have seen some of the crap she ate.”
I looked at him, squinting a little.
“You watched her. You didn’t stop her.”
“I could’ve taken a football team in to watch her and she wouldn’t have woken up.”
I felt I needed a witness to his words and, knowing Dan was in the office above, I pushed the speaker phone extension to connect me to him.
“She ate cat shit. I swear. She picked it off the plate and ate it,” the murderer said. I bent over to check the back of his tongue. The smell of vegetable waste turned my stomach.
“What was cat shit doing on a plate?” I asked.
He reddened a little. When I took my fingers out of his mouth he said, “I just wanted to see if she’d eat it. And she did.”
“Is she seeking help?” I asked. I wondered what the breath of someone
with a sleep disorder would smell like.
“She’s being helped by Jesus now,” he said. He lowered his eyes. “She ate a bowlful of dishwashing powder with milk. She was still holding the spoon when I found her in the morning.”
There was a noise behind me as Dan came into the room. I turned to see he was wearing a white coat. His hands were thrust into the pockets.
“You didn’t think to put poisons out of reach?” Dan said. The murderer looked up.
“Sometimes the taste of the mouth, the smell of it, comes from deep within,” I said to the murderer. I flicked his solar plexus with my forefinger and he flinched. His smile faltered. I felt courageous.
As he left, I kissed him. I kiss all of my clients, to learn their nature from the taste of their mouths. Virgins are salty, alcoholics sweet. Addicts taste like fake orange juice, the stuff you spoon into a glass then add water.
Dan would not let me kiss him to find out if he tasted of ash.
“Now me,” Dan said. He stretched over and kissed the man on the mouth, holding him by the shoulders so he couldn’t get away.
The murderer recoiled. I smiled. He wiped his mouth. Scraped his teeth over his tongue.
“See you in six month’s time,” I said.
~~~
I had appointments with the Pretty Girls, and Dan wanted to come with me. He stopped at the ward doorway, staring in. He seemed to fill the space, a door himself.
“It’s okay,” I said. “You wait there.”
Inside, I thought at first Jane was smiling. Her cheeks lifted and her eyes squinted closed. But there was no smile; she scraped her tongue with her teeth. It was an action I knew quite well. Clients trying to scrape the bad taste out of their mouths. They didn’t spit or rinse, though, so the action made me feel queasy. I imagined all that buildup behind their teeth. All the scrapings off their tongue.
The girls were in a frenzy. Jane said, “We saw the Ash Mouth Man.” But they see so few men in the ward I thought, “Any man could be the Ash Mouth Man to these girls.” I tended their mouths, tried to clear away the bad taste. They didn’t want me to go. They were jealous of me, thinking I was going to kiss the Ash Mouth Man. Jane kept talking to make me stay longer, though it took her strength away. “My grandmother was kissed by him. She always said to watch out for handsome men, cos their kiss could be a danger. Then she kissed him and wasted away in about five days.”
The girls murmured to each other. Five days! That’s a record! No one ever goes down in five days.
In the next ward there are Pretty Boys, but not so many of them. They are much quieter than the girls. They sit in their beds and close their eyes most of the day. The ward is thick, hushed. They don’t get many visitors and they don’t want me as their dentist. They didn’t like me to attend them. They bite at me as if I was trying to thrust my fingers down their throats to choke them.
Outside, Dan waited, staring in.
“Do you find those girls attractive?” I said.
“Of course not. They’re too skinny. They’re sick. I like healthy women. Strong women. That’s why I like you so much. You have the self-esteem to let me care for you. Not many women have that.”
“Is that true?”
“No. I really like helpless women,” he said. But he smiled.
He smelt good to me, clean, with a light flowery aftershave which could seem feminine on another man. He was tall and broad; strong. I watched him lift a car to retrieve a paper I’d rolled onto while parking.
“I could have moved the car,” I said, laughing at him.
“No fun in that,” he said. He picked me up and carried me indoors.
I quite enjoyed the sense of subjugation. I’d been strong all my life, sorting myself to school when my parents were too busy to care. I could not remember being carried by anyone, and the sensation was a comfort.
~~~
Dan introduced me to life outside. Before I met him, I rarely saw daylight; too busy for a frivolous thing like the sun. Home, transport, work, transport, home, all before dawn and after dusk. Dan forced me to go out into the open. He said, “Your skin glows outdoors. Your hair moves in the breeze. You couldn’t be more beautiful.” So we walked. I really didn’t like being out. It seemed like time wasting.
He picked me up from the surgery one sunny Friday and took my hand. “Come for a picnic,” he said. “It’s a beautiful day.”
In my doorway, a stick man was slumped.
“It’s the man who killed his wife,” I whispered.
The man raised his arm weakly. “Dentist,” he rattled. “Dentist, wait!”
“What happened to you? Are you sleepwalking now?” I asked.
“I can’t eat. Everything I bite into tastes of ash. I can’t eat. I’m starving.” He lisped, and I could see that many of his white teeth had fallen out.
“What did you do to me?” he whispered. He fell to his knees. Dan and I stepped around him and walked on. Dan took my hand, carrying a basket full of food between us. It banged against my legs, bruising my shins. We walked to a park and everywhere we went girls jumped at him. He kissed back, shrugging at me as if to say, “Who cares?” I watched them.
“Why do it? Just tell them to go away,” I said. They annoyed me, those silly little girls.
“I can’t help it. I try not to kiss them but the temptation is too strong. They’re always coming after me.”
I had seen this.
“Why? I know you’re a beautiful looking man, but why do they forget any manners or pride to kiss you?”
I knew this was one of his secrets. One of the things he’d rather I didn’t know.
“I don’t know, my love. The way I smell? They like my smell.”
I looked at him sidelong. “Why did you kiss him? That murderer. Why?”
Dan said nothing. I thought about how well he understood me. The meals he cooked, the massages he gave. The way he didn’t flinch from the job I did.
So I didn’t confront him. I let his silence sit. But I knew his face at the Pretty Girls ward. I could still feel him fucking me in the car, pulling over into a car park and taking me, after we left the Pretty Girls.
“God, I want to kiss you,” he said.
I could smell him, the ash fire warmth of him and I could feel my stomach shrinking. I thought of my favourite cake, its colour leached out and its flavour making my eyes water.
“Kissing isn’t everything. We can live without kissing,” I said.
“Maybe you can,” he said, and he leant forward, his eyes wide, the white parts smudgy, grey. He grabbed my shoulders. I usually loved his strength, the size of him, but I pulled away.
“I don’t want to kiss you,” I said. I tucked my head under his arm and buried my face into his side. The warm fluffy wool of his jumper tickled my nose and I smothered a sneeze.
“Bless you,” he said. He held my chin and lifted my face up. He leant towards me.
He was insistent.
It was a shock, even though I’d expected it. His tongue was fat and seemed to fill my cheeks, the roof of my mouth. My stomach roiled and I tried to pull away but his strong hands held my shoulders till he was done with his kiss.
Then he let me go.
I fell backward, one step, my heels wobbling but keeping me standing. I wiped my mouth. He winked at me and leant forward. His breath smelt sweet, like pineapple juice. His eyes were blue, clear and honest. You’d trust him if you didn’t know.
The taste of ash filled my mouth.
Nothing else happened, though. I took a sip of water and it tasted fresh, clean. A look of disappointment flickered on his face before he concealed it. I thought, You like it. You like turning women that way.
I said, “Have you heard of the myth the Pretty Girls have? About the Ash Mouth Man?”
I could see him visibly lifting, growing. Feeling legendary. His cheeks reddened. His face was so expressive I knew what he meant without hearing a word. I couldn’t bear to lose him but I could not allow him to make any
more Pretty Girls.
I waited till he was fast asleep that night, lying back, mouth open. I sat him forward so he wouldn’t choke, took up my scalpel, and with one perfect move I lifted his tongue and cut it out of his mouth.
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The History Thief
Three days Alvin lay on the floor of his dusty lounge room before he realized he was no longer anchored to his body. He rose, enjoying the sense of lightness but also feeling deeply sad at the sight of his small, lonely corpse.
He felt as if he had been asleep for a week, dreaming of an unwelcoming place of darkness. He remembered little of his moment of death, but from the look of his body he had choked on a piece of meat. The meal was at his feet. Lamb chops and mashed potato, it was. Some peas on the side.
He tried to sweep the mess up but had no substance. He sat by his body as the sun rose and set. Rose and set. He knew why he was still there, anchored to earth. The same thing had happened to his father; find my body, you little fucker, his father’s ghost had told him. Find my bones and bury them well, or I’ll haunt you till your eyes bleed and your dick falls off.
His father had not spoken this way alive.
Hurry up, you lazy fucker. Get my bones in the dirt. No last words from his father apart from that. No loving messages. Once the dirt covered him, he was simply gone.
~~~
The answering machine didn’t flash at Alvin, but no one ever called. No notes under the door saying, “Popped in but you weren’t here.” There was mail; Alvin could see it through his front window. No junk mail. The little girl at Number One had taken it upon herself to put stickers on all their letterboxes, so the junk mailers didn’t even come down their dead end street anymore.
Alvin hoped someone would find him soon. He felt disembodied; this didn’t make him laugh.
Alvin’s home sat right at the end, with an abandoned house on one side and a vacant lot on the other. The old woman next door died eighteen months earlier, and her children would be fighting over her will for years, Alvin had heard. He didn’t expect to have neighbours soon.
The Gate Theory Page 4