“I have a client.”
“Of course you do. But he’s a witless scumbag who abused his family, cheated on his wife, abandoned his child, dived deep into debauchery, and now is playing games with your partner’s emotional life. What do you owe a creature like that?”
“The best I have. Let me out.”
“Oh, I can’t do that. Consider all my endeavors, all those souls I’m in the process of helping.”
“There are a lot of people in prison you can help, too.”
“I’m not a criminal.”
“Then what are you?”
“I’m someone who won’t sit back and let people’s lives fall apart without doing what I can. I am an optimistic man of action. A fighter of dental disease and the malaise of life. Looking for a love connection? I’ll make it. Your boyfriend stalking you? I’ll keep him away. Is a young girl missing? I’ll find her.” He paused for a moment, looked at the tape player in his hand. “Is your father abusing you? I’ll make sure he doesn’t have the opportunity anymore.”
“You’re referring to François Dubé. That was why you sent Seamus in to deliver the tape.”
“He was so eager. It was such an easy mission. Put the tape in the VCR, set the timer to start when Leesa woke up. And there it would be, proof of his debauchery and her avenue to win custody playing right there on her television screen.”
“But she ended up dead.”
“An accident of blind happenstance. It was nobody’s fault. Things happen.”
“The death might have been an accident, but not the frame-up.”
“He would have gotten custody. He would have had complete dominion over his daughter. What happened in the apartment was a tragic accident, yes. But I couldn’t allow that man to get his clutches on that poor girl. You, more than anyone, know the harm that a parent can inflict on a child.”
“You’re beautiful.”
“Thank you.”
“Why don’t you join the army and save the world?”
“I do the same work, I just do it my own way.”
“Unfettered by the law, by any oversight, by a system of checks and balances.”
“I can be trusted.”
“And you decided François’s fate based on what? The bitter ravings of a separated wife spewed out while you drilled her teeth?”
“The family dentist always knows.”
“You might be wrong.”
“Believe me when I tell you this, Victor: I’m not.”
“You’re still the little boy in the closet, aren’t you? Held back by his siblings as he helplessly watches his father beat his mother.”
“I was that boy. Powerless and afraid. I’m not him anymore.”
“But the results are the same, aren’t they? You stayed in the closet, and your mother ended up bloodied and dead on the floor. You tried to help, and Leesa Dubé ended up bloodied and dead on the floor. It’s the law of unintended consequences: No matter our good intentions, the unintended consequences of our acts will predominate.”
“So what are we to do, Victor? Nothing?”
“Maybe just our jobs. You fix teeth, I’ll represent clients, and in the end we’ll see how it all shakes out.”
“A world where everyone disclaims responsibility because caring is not in the job description.”
“A world where everyone minds his own damn business.”
“But you don’t want that anymore, do you? Really?”
I pressed my tongue into the gap in my mouth, thought of Daniel Rose’s scarred arm. I said, “Let’s ask Leesa Dubé what she thinks.”
“Yours is not a world in which I choose to live.”
“Maybe you should adjust your medication.”
“So what are we to do with you, Victor?”
“Give me a ride home and a parting gift of the home version of your game?”
“I hardly think so,” said Dr. Bob, before turning out the light and rising from his seat. As he walked off, his shoes sounded harshly on the basement floor.
I don’t know how long I lay there, taped to the chair in the darkness. It seemed like hours, longer. But once I ended up at the Ice Capades and that seemed like weeks, so my conception of time is quite elastic. I screamed for a bit, but that just ripped up my throat without doing any good. I struggled again to get free of the duct tape, and I did manage to free my head, but when I looked down, my whole body was covered with silver. There was no getting out of that. Still, I tried. I even imagined myself the Incredible Hulk as I fought to break free, but if I turned green, it was from nausea alone, and I stayed just as trapped.
I fought to calm myself. At first I tried meditating, wiping my mind of all thoughts, and I was pretty successful, clearing my brain of all thoughts save one. But the one that stuck was that I was at the mercy of a certifiably insane dentist whose stock and trade was blood and pain. Or was it pain and blood? One or the other. Neither of much comfort, and together a terribly ineffective mantra. So much for meditating.
Then I tried to figure out why I hadn’t just gone along with the bastard. I was in trouble, I should have agreed with whatever he said and then run like hell.
But then what? To betray him would have given him an excuse to destroy me. Which was a strange thing to think, because why would he need an excuse? What excuse had he needed to drug me into a stupor and drag me to the basement and bind me with duct tape and pry off my crowns?
But there was something in the thought, wasn’t there? And when I finally realized what it was, it calmed me considerably. I remembered the way he looked at Tilda after he noticed the gash on my cheek, as if he hadn’t been the one to send her. I remembered the way he criticized her for being more Thor, the Norse god of thunder, and less Loki, the trickster god of mischief. And I remembered the way he shook his head when he mentioned that Nurse MacDhubshith had been a bit too enthusiastic in the amount of drug she administered. It was as if there were lines he wouldn’t allow himself to cross. And I knew why, too.
Nothing is more delusional than the benign beatings of the human heart.
I must have fallen asleep again in the chair, because I dreamed the footsteps before I actually heard them. I tried to keep my eyes closed as I fell out of sleep. I wanted as long as possible to gather the loose beads of my consciousness. So with my eyes closed, I listened. One pair, three pairs – no, four pairs of footsteps. The whole shooting match had come to say good-bye.
“Wake up, bucko,” said Tilda as the lids over my eyes turned red with light. “The time has come to take care of you for good, ja.”
The chair jerked upward, my eyes jerked open. Dr. Bob and his hygienist stood before me. Behind them stood the strange pair of Whitney Robinson III and the pale Nurse MacDhubshith.
“Any new thoughts?” said Dr. Bob. “Have you reconsidered my offers? One call and you’d be atop the hiring list at Talbott, Kittredge and Chase.”
“Once that was all I ever wanted.”
“Then take it, my boy,” said Whit. “You’d do wonderfully there. Shake all the bluebloods up.”
“I can’t.”
“That is a shame,” said Dr. Bob.
“Except, you want to know something?” I said. “I’m trussed like a turkey, I’ve been shot full of dope, my caps are gone, and I’m totally at your mercy. But the strange thing is, I’m not afraid of you.”
“The brave hero, is that it?”
“No, Whit will tell you. I’m an abject coward. But in the end I know you won’t hurt me.”
“How are you so sure?”
“Because you see yourself as a caped crusader, as a moral exemplar in a compromised world. You won’t hurt me, Doctor, because you believe, in the deepest part of your sadly confused soul, that you are good.”