The Selected Short Fiction of Lisa Moore (13 page)

The bacteria think they died and went to heaven, he says. He has become reverent.

Robert, I need to know you'll stop if I ask you to. He clips the X-ray to a light board. My teeth look blue and ghostly. The white jawbone. I think of my husband buried in the cemetery near Quidi Vidi Lake. Robert goes into the reception area, I hear him pour a coffee. He opens a filing cabinet drawer.

He shouts, Are you good and frozen?

The toothache had been mild for weeks. I think I'm awake but the bed is facing in the wrong direction. Or I'm in the wrong bed. A toilet bowl filling continuously. Wet leaves and earth, is there a window? Stenographers on squeaky keyboards wait for a breath of wind and resume. A car unzips a skim of water. Hard fingernails clicking glass, the leaves, the skylight, keying data. Data dripping from leaf tip to leaf tip. A religious cult in the sewer can be overheard whispering in the toilet bowl. A conspiracy and the stenographers ache to crack it. Wind sloshes through the trees and the typing subsides. The trees are just trees. I am my tooth, a monolithic grief. A man beside me. Please be Des; please. It is Des.

The beach to ourselves, the park closed, early September.
What heat, so late in the season. Each wave leaves a ribbon of glare in the sand as it withdraws. The sun is low and red, scissored by the long grass. Des strips to his underwear, trots toward the water. Stands at the edge of the ocean. High up, a white gull.

Des charges, arms raised over his head, yelling. The gull is silent. So high up it's barely there. Wide circles. It dips closer. The wave's crest tinged pink, fumbling forward. He dives through the falling crest. The soles of his feet. He passes through, bobs on the other side. Flicks water from his hair. His fist flies up, wing of water under his arm. The gull screeches. Metallic squawk, claws outstretched, reaching for the sand. The sun through the grass on the hill laserbeams the gull's eye, a red holograph. The gull's pupil is a long midnight corridor to some prehistoric crimson flash deep in the skull.

He calls, Water's great. My shirt, jeans, one sock stretches long. I have to hop. The sock gives up. I run hard. The wave is building beneath the bed. Except how cold. My body seizes.

Look at the one coming, Des says. The wave comes with operatic silence. Such surety, self-knowledge, so cold and meaningless and full of blase might. I reach out my hand. Here it comes. A wave full of light, nearly transparent, lacy webbing on the underside. The ocean sucking hard on my spine. The sandy bottom drops away.

It smashes us. The bed plummets and thumps the floor. The room makes itself felt. Dresser, a housecoat on a hook. Des died four years ago of heart failure. Peanut butter jar on the floor, fridge open. Holding the knife. Smoking toast in the stuck
toaster. The red light of the ambulance on the walls of the hallway. Now I'm awake.

Tequila I drank, scotch. Elasticky top and sarong. Beer. Robert warned me, when he throws a party. Dancing. Slamming doors, laughter, the Stones. I have dated, since Des died, no one: an air traffic controller, a very young painter, no one, the reporter guy, absolutely no one, the carpenter. The tooth became unbearable two days ago. I didn't tell Robert. Pleased to meet you, hope you guess my name. You can't leave. How can you leave? Bodies pressed close, smoky ceiling. Blow the speakers. We took a cab. Hope you guess my. Get a taxi. If we dance. In the fridge door. Mine are the cold ones. Pleased to meet you. Have one of mine. The cold ones. I got laid. Tell me. I'll tell you after this. We need a toast. Our coats are where? Forget the coats. Don't leave, it's a party. Because the toilet. What happened to the tequila? Your own stupid fault. My wife took the traditional route. Does it have a worm in it? I'll put one in if you like. There have been women, yes. There have been women, I'll admit. We'll call ourselves the Fleshettes. The people impressed me most. I'm not responsible. Hope you guess my. We haven't talked. We're talking now. This is talking? Name. I love you. Don't say that. I love you, what do you think? I think more beer.

The sky is the deepest blue it gets before it begins to look black. The stars are blue. The trees roar with wind and become quiet. I lie flat on my husband's grave and look at the stars. Freshly mowed grass, a faint marshy smell, the ducks at the edge of the lake. This morning, resting my head against the hand dryer in the bathroom of Robert's office. Tears start this way: the bridge of my nose, my eyelids, the whole face tingling, the clutch of a muscle in the throat. The smell of burnt coffee — homey, unloved office coffee — makes me cry. Some songs: Patsy Cline. Bad blue icing on the birthday cake the girls bought for the boss. I cry at least four times a day. The tears catch in the plastic rims of my glasses. My eyelids like slugs. While waiting for the elevator I hear laughter inside, ascending, inclusive, sexual. I cry with jealousy. Marcy Andrews coming into the bathroom after me. Unclicking her purse, getting the cotton swab out of a pill bottle, tapping two pills into my hand. Marcy smoothing her thumbs over my wet cheeks. She turns me to the mirror and she looks hard at me.

She says, Lipstick will give you a whole new lease.

I can't be alone, I say.

The leaves in the graveyard smell leathery, pumpkinish. The branches creak when the wind rubs them together. Des's hands folded over a rose, his wedding ring. When do the teeth fall away from the skull? Does that happen? It's beginning to get cold. Snow on his headstone makes me panicky.

A flashlight waves erratically through the shrubs, catching the bright green moss on a carved angel's cheek, her cracked wing. Another flashlight, soft oval bouncing in the leaves overhead,
scuffle of feet. I'm surrounded by a circle of teenagers with baseball bats and fence pickets. They step, one by one, out of the trees and bushes. Or else they have always been standing there. All the headstones, tipping, lichen-crusted. I stand up, my legs watery. We stand like that, not speaking or moving.

You seen a guy run through here?

I whisper, No. I haven't seen anybody. Three policemen arrive and the teenagers flee. A policeman steps forward and puts an arm around my shoulder and I cry into his armpit.

Robert lowers a tool into my mouth and I say, Stop.

I say, That was a test.

He says, That was a scalpel. I would just trust me if I were you.

I feel him cut the gum and fold the flesh back. His eyes full of veins blue and violet; my blood sprays dots on his glasses. He takes up another instrument and tugs at the tooth, twisting it, and I feel it tearing away. The hoarse, sputtering noise of the suction hose removing blood and saliva. Robert worked for nothing in Nicaragua after he graduated, teaching the revolutionaries to be dentists, the distant spitting of gunfire in the fields beyond his classroom. During the dot-com boom he invested — in and out — unspeakably rich.

My tooth hits a chrome bowl with a bright ping. He begins to sew the stitches. I feel the thread move through the gum and the sensation, though painless, nauseates me. Three tight
stitches, the side of my mouth puckered. He gives me a wad of cotton and tells me to bite down. He peels the latex gloves. I worry the loose ends of the stitches with my wooden tongue. They feel like cat whiskers.

I've wanted to ask for some weeks, Robert says.

Maybe this is not the best time, I say.

I want to marry you, he says.

The sound of the sliding metal rings when I rip open the shower curtain unnerves me. Waiting for the toaster to pop, a butter knife in my hand, I am aware of a presence. The washer shimmies across the laundry room floor until it works the plug from the wall and the motor goes quiet. The water stops slushing. An engrossing, animated silence. Every object — the vacuum cleaner, a vase of dried thistles — has become sensitive. The fridge knows. The unmade bed is not ordinary. I put a glass down and check. It's exactly where I set it down. Loving a dead person takes immense energy and it is making me cry.

Robert works the champagne cork with his thumbs. The cork bounces off the ceiling and hits a mirror, causing a web of cracks. He hands me my glass and I can feel the fizz on my face.

He says, This is the happiest day of my life.

We twine arms and drink and the awkward intimacy of this, the complete lack of irony — I know instantly I've made a mistake.