“Although I bet it’s at least ninety-eight point six out here right now, don’t you think? I don’t know about at night, but I think the Desert could maybe support Lenore during the day. But maybe I’m just grasping at straws. Do you think I’m just grasping?”
“But see, part of the theoretical dentist’s despair stems from the fact that he really doesn’t and can’t blame his achingly lovely wife for what is happening. He knows all about his wife’s being troubled. He knows that she needs something which he is now, through no fault of his own, unable to give her. So he doesn’t and cannot blame her. But imagine his despair, Lenore. In his numb helpless black isolation he needs the emotional center of his life, the object of his complete adoration, his fiancée, more than ever; and yet he knows that it is precisely his state of helpless, inefficacious isolation — a state he is in through exactly zero fault of his own — that is of necessity driving the lovely woman he adores farther and farther away. So he forgives, Lenore. He forgives. But he bums every minute in a cold flame of unimaginable torment.”
“What’s going on, Rick?”
“He forgives her, Lenore. From the icy depths of his helpless isolation and fierce and complete love, he extends a theoretical hand of forgiveness, like so…”
“Ow!”
“Dear me, excuse us, please.”
“Watch where you’re waving your hands, buddy!”
“Terribly sorry.”
“Freaking crowds. Let’s get, Rick. We’re just playing games. Lenore isn’t around here.”
“So on it goes. Finally the theoretical dentist’s brother, who is an estate attorney in Philadelphia, is able to break away from his incredibly successful practice and personal life to come see the withered husk of the theoretical dentist. Since the brother had gone through the Scouts right alongside the dentist, for him Morse code communication to the dentist is no problem, though communications from the dentist are still cumbersome as hell. Nevertheless we’re subjected to long and difficult coded conversations between the two in the hospital room, while the lovely wife, consumed with understandable self-loathing, and afraid that she would not be able to help making a pass at the devastatingly handsome estate-attorney brother, stays shacked up in the malevolent blond psychologist’s apartment, rutting, and also watching gymnastics on television, the symbolism of which doesn’t escape the reader, rest assured.”
“OK Rick, that’s it. Cut the story charade. We’re having a talk.”
“You bet your lovely bottom we are.”
“So why can’t we just have a talk without you pretending it’s something else, Rick? I find this pretty disturbing.”
“But see finally the wife can no longer stay away, she realizes that whatever physical connection she may crave because of her disastrously weak self-network, she and the dentist are connected in a much deeper and more profound and yes in some sense even more fulfilling and three-dimensional way, namely an emotional way, and so she rushes to the hospital, brushes aside nurses and orderlies, and bursts into the theoretical dentist’s room, only to see to her horror the dentist’s brother, leaning over the prone dentist, beginning to remove the dentist’s upper lip with a Boy Scout knife.”
“Oh, really, come on.”
“As the dentist, it turns out, had requested. Which, given the context, the sensitive reader of course regards as food for thought. But and so the wife screams, and the previously brushed-aside nurses and orderlies rush in, and they restrain the estate-attorney brother, and he is carried off, and the achingly lovely woman positively falls on the dentist’s mangled upper lip, trying to stop the bleeding and save the lip, lashing out at doctors who come near, tapping over and over into the gore that she loves the dentist, that she is sorry, please to forgive her. And through his pain the helpless dentist feels her tap, and his heart almost breaks, and though he knows it will do no good, because her pathetic neurosis will, he knows, soon drive the wife into outside connections again, he does forgive her, he does, and he moves his lip in his pathetically tiny way, to let her know he forgives her, but the heart-tweakingly tiny familiar movement of the lip is here of course obscured by the flow of blood from the attempted lip-removal, and so the wife just cannot see the movement, no matter how frantically the helpless dentist tries to move his lip, and so the wife, getting no visible results, finally reels from the dentist’s room in despair and horror and guilt, and immediately goes shopping.”
“Shopping?”
“….”
“Shopping?”
“Lenore, look out there. What is that flash, out on the water? Is that a sunlight-off-binoculars flash?”
“….”
“Good Lord it is. Lenore, what’s going on?”
“ ”
“It is. It’s Lang, in a boat. They’re rowing this way. They’ve been watching. Lenore, what is Lang shouting? Is that Lang, shouting?”
“Rick, I can explain…”
“No problem at all. Let me just… I have to hurry.”
“What are those?”
“These are our connection, Lenore. I forgive you.”
“Handcuffs? You’re going to forgive me with handcuffs that say ‘Bambi’s Den of Discipline’ on them?”
“The… achingly lovely woman returns that night to the dentist’s hospital room with her copy of McTeague. She comes in the night to the numb dentist and taps to him. She taps the conclusion of McTeague. The book’s climax. Have you ever experienced the climax of McTeague?”
“Rick, you just take it easy.”
“The climax consists of McTeague, the dentist, handcuffed to the corpse of his malevolent foe, Marcus Schouler, in the middle of a desert.”
“Desert? Handcuffs? Corpses? Oh shit. Andy! Andy!”
“Andy? No, Schouler.”
“Rick…”
“And as she taps it, ever so gently, taking care not to hurt him any more than she has already, she looks at the dentist’s motionless face and sees a single tear emerge from one partly sedated eye and course down his cheek until it is silently absorbed by a cotton bandage. She, too, weeps, with no sound…. And she produces a pair of handcuffs, which she had gone to enormous expense and embarrassment to buy… and… joins herself… to the wrist of the theoretical dentist, his inefficacious wrist…”
“What are you doing? Let me go!”
“… with the deep oiled… click of the handcuffs.”
“Jesus, Rick. This is it. You get these off right now. You get me out. I’ve told you I hate this torture and pain stuff, and you just don’t care! You’re a sick man!”
“Torture and pain? Lenore, I forgive you.”
“Forgive what, for Christ’s sake? Help! Andy! Neil!”
“Lenore!”
“God damn it, Rick, this is it. No talking, even. I wanted to talk, I said let’s talk Rick, but no, so now forget it, I’m sorry but that’s it.”
“We are now joined, my center and reference! In negation and discipline! Our bodies are husks!”
“You just better have the key. God, Andy, see if he’s got the key. ”
“What the fuck’s going on here?”
“Can’t you see? He’s locked us together!”