Alicia had insisted that she was old enough to wait alone, no matter what her mother said. Her mother’s voice pitched loud as if she was speaking to a deaf person, and she, Alicia, shouted monosyllabic objections like firecrackers exploding every second. She had won her point, having promised to take the bus home immediately after her appointment. The mother left, but not before admonishing her to be pleasant. It won’t hurt to smile. Sitting next to the table of outdated magazines, Alicia fingered her smartphone. Yes, she was apprehensive, imagining the dental drill buzzing in her jaw, but she told her mother she wasn’t a baby anymore.

She texted a message to Marc, more than one, and he answered as fast as she sent. Yeah, baby, he wrote and she liked that, we had fun. Don’t worry. It’s all good. Will u b long? Well, she thought it was good two days ago, despite the bit of bleeding, which worried him because of the bedsheet, but then he ignored it, and she embraced him in his bed afterwards so he wouldn’t know she was hurting. They had to hurry because his parents would be getting home from work, and he didn’t think it was a good idea for them to see her, yet. She led Marc to believe he could do it again soon, whenever he wanted. He made a loud grunt at the last moment and stiffened his body. She liked the feel of it, the smooth hardness of him. If she didn’t, she’d lose him. Girls waited in line for Marc. She was lucky. He said he’d been watching her in math class. She helped him with algebra. She made a sound like a stifled cough, which she repeated. Maybe she’d see him after the dentist. She noticed the old man sitting on the other side of the table and tried to smile.

The old man stirred and turned his head away, hoping he wasn’t in the range of a cold or flu virus. The girl’s smile reminded him of a curving scratch etched into his wife’s head stone. Vandals. People usually paid little attention to him, of course, and teenagers paid even less attention to old people, no more interesting to them than lampposts or dead leaves. Especially since she had plugged her ears and focused on the tiny screen of her phone. He returned the smile, revealing teeth yellowed with age. He had flipped his magazine open to a page advertising a cruise boat on the Rhine. He’d like to take a cruise, but it cost several thousand dollars. The forthcoming root canal work would set him back at least a thousand. He had cancelled his dental insurance when he retired because he couldn’t afford the premiums, and his teeth were in excellent condition then. His teacher’s pension covered his living expenses, not much more.

A pretty enough girl, he thought; she couldn’t be more than 15 or 16. From the loud discussion between the mother and child, he surmised the girl wasn’t quite as old or responsible as she apparently liked to think. But what could happen in the waiting room? The other two people weren’t paying attention to her, certainly not the middle-aged woman who flipped through the pages of Coup de Pouce, not stopping long enough to read more than a caption. Pleasing to the eye, admiring her thick black hair, he wondered if perhaps she had Indian blood, Indian from India he meant. He also wondered about the earrings and gold chains, too much jewelry for a dental appointment.

The man sitting spread-legged across from him, his eyes also focused on a smart phone, such a look of sadness darkening his face that the old man thought he was grieving. Had he lost a beloved recently, or was he worried about the forthcoming dental work? He himself had lost his wife years ago, but life went on as the hairs on his head turned white. No anxieties about the operation, just the cost, enough to cause physical pain, so he concentrated on the woman.

Claire sensed that the old man with the ruddy face and sagging eye bags was examining her, his mouth cracking into a thin smile, but she didn’t mind. She liked to keep herself fit and looking good, and spent a lot of money on the effort. She’d meet her 50th birthday next week, and wasn’t going to let age beat her into submission and wretchedness. Looking up at the window, she scowled at the rain coating the glass. It had been raining all day, but she had covered her hair with a plastic kerchief, and had scurried from her car in the parking lot to the door to avoid a drenching. Her shawl, dampened, had prevented the rain from wetting her dress and also kept the drops away from her Michael Kors shoulder bag, a lovely gift from her husband. Still, her heels had splashed in a puddle and wet her feet. She could take off her shoes now, and for a moment remembered how Louis had played with her feet the other night. Her husband on his way home from a business trip in Toronto, she had nonetheless found the time to spend two hours with her lover in his condo, a converted factory by the Lachine canal.

The man studying his cell phone looked on the scruffy side, his work boots caked with mud. His jeans had a large hole in one knee. He didn’t seem to care what he looked like, but Claire admitted that in his black T-shirt and with noticeable biceps, he exuded a certain kind of masculine aura, and wasn’t afraid of women or what anyone thought. Not more than 40, she’d say, and if it weren’t for Louis, she might have tried to catch his interest. She knew the type: file drawers and computer folders at the employment agency where she worked as a headhunter were filled with the likes of him. She catered to a high-class clientele, men capable of wearing tailored pink shirts to advantage, or women who preferred dresses to slacks, and understood hair. She didn’t see a wedding ring. Even if she had, would it have mattered? His dirty boots bothered her. She gripped her handbag.

The last thing Eric had in mind was the middle-aged woman fussing with a shawl and clutching her purse, although he caught her staring at his boots. He drew his legs under the chair. Maybe he should have changed, although he had washed his hands, but his appointment was for eleven, and he had worked at the new building site until it was time to leave. He didn’t want to leave earlier than necessary, because the boss hadn’t been too keen on his taking time off. He was lucky to have found this job, temporary, no more than five or six weeks at best, but it’d carry him until he was fired or laid off. Hard to find regular work for a real man, but he’d be able to meet his rent this month. The dental bill was something else. He had an abscessed tooth and pain cracked through the side of his head like a pneumatic drill, almost bringing him to tears. A grown man didn’t cry. He’d leave that to bitches like the woman staring at him. He didn’t return her smile; the last thing he felt like doing was smiling. The pain shot behind his eyes and he almost yelled out, not giving a shit about who heard him in the waiting room.

B long? At first Alicia read it as belong, and she wanted to belong to Marc, only to him, and she wanted him to belong to her and not see any other girls. Then she realized he was asking a question and she tapped out her answer. Don’t know. Still Waiting. And he replied quickly, C U. Call later. Did he mean he’d call or she should call him? It was important not to make a mistake with boys like Marc because he could pick anyone, just like low-hanging peaches off a tree. He didn’t have to work at it, just stand, and the sweet fruit would fall into his hands. So, she had to let him do what he wanted or she would have lost him, and it didn’t hurt so bad and she’d get used to it. He wore protection, although he said he didn’t want to, but for her sake so she wouldn’t get into trouble, he slipped it on, it was all good. C U. Fantastic, he would see her later. Then she had to respond to her mother’s flurry of two or three word messages: yes, I m fine, yes, still waiting; yes she’d call; no, not worried. I M OK, MOM!!!

Claire stood because it was bad for her circulation to sit too long. She went to the gym regularly and ran on the treadmill and lifted weights. Viewing the arms of the man in the black T-shirt, she wondered if he lifted weights given his obvious muscles and big chest, but her stare didn’t linger because, really, she wasn’t interested in him, he wasn’t her type. She preferred a man like Louis who wore tailored suits and had his hair cut by a St. Denis Street stylist, nothing like the ragged brown mop on this guy’s hair, although with a makeover, he’d certainly attract attention. The clinic here also specialized in cosmetic dentistry. She wanted crowns on her teeth so they’d all look even like the perfect teeth of the actors in Grey’s Anatomy, her favourite show, not only because of the teeth. Such beautiful surgeons humping in the supply closet as often as they cut open bodies in the operating room. A pricey procedure, caps, but what was money anyway, if you couldn’t use it to make life more appealing, to make herself as attractive as she possibly could? She found jobs for beautiful people. The crack of thunder startled her, and she was aware that she had in fact been standing almost in front of the construction worker and staring out the window over his head.

He smelled her perfume. Jesus, lady, would you get your snatch out of my face? He didn’t say that aloud but shifted as if to draw her attention to the fact that she was standing so close to his mouth he could have bitten through her silky blue, form-fitting dress with yellow daisies clustered on the skirt. If it weren’t for the pain in his mouth, he’d show her what he could do with it. Eric pushed her out of his mind as she stepped away, thunder and lightning making everyone look up at the window. Fuck, it hurt, and he didn’t have cash. He’d have to put the bill on his credit card, which he couldn’t pay off at the end of the month, more interest accumulating on his debts; pay more and more and earn less and less. He noticed the woman’s purse on the seat she had vacated and wondered how much cash it contained. Rich bitch, no doubt about it. Past 40, if she was a day, and maybe she’d pay him to do her. Women like that liked fancied a bit of rough.

Sometimes he wondered how he’d reached this point in his life: bad teeth, abandoned by his girl, dead-end jobs, and precious little money. Could anyone blame him for boning a cougar? For cash? Things weren’t supposed to turn out this way, and the black clouds roiling outside cut by lightning unsettled his nerves. How long would the storm last? Wonder how much cash she carried in the bag of hers. What if there was a power outage in the midst of his dental work? Did they have generators here? The woman returned to her seat, leaving a whiff of her perfume in his nostrils. His groin stirred. Fuck, yeah, under different circumstances he’d nail her. His tongue probed his bad tooth, arousing whiplashes of pain, killing all sexual fancies on the spot.

The receptionist, wearing a star-glittering, purple hijab, called M. Perreault’s name. The old man stood, the travel magazine slipping off his lap. The dental technician, a pleasant young man with glinting teeth and hair the colour of that guy’s T-shirt in the waiting room, greeted and led him to the beige, plastic-covered chair where he sat in a half-recumbent position, conscious of breathing faster than normal. He wasn’t afraid, although he’d heard of sudden death in dental chairs, but lightning streaked across the window and he thought it could have cut right through the glass like a scimitar swiftly slicing off a neck. All those decapitations in Saudi Arabia. The technician said the doctor would be there in a few minutes. Was he comfortable? Yes, he was, and try as he might he couldn’t hold back a memory of his first visit to a dentist, no more than eight, maybe ten. He had spat blood out in a porcelain bowl next to the dental chair.

Times had changed. No porcelain bowls. No blood, none that he’d ever see. If he were in fact decapitated, he wouldn’t see it spurting out of his severed veins either. Now that he was here, he forgot about how much the procedure was going to cost. He’d manage. One didn’t live to be 75 without having learned how to manage. In many ways he had had, and still enjoyed, a good life. If he should die in the midst of a thunderstorm on the eighth floor of a supersonic, contemporary dental clinic, catering to most needs, he couldn’t complain.

The endodontist entered the room, shook his hand, and asked him how he was. Not dead yet, he replied. Amazingly young to have earned those half-dozen degrees framed on the wall, the endodontist chuckled and suggested that he lay back and not worry about a thing. Just a little pinprick of a needle in the gums, the freezing. He didn’t shiver, but his palms were sweaty. As the needle slid into his soft gum, he remembered a scene from a favourite movie. Those people in the waiting room wouldn’t have seen it, he was sure, at least not in a real movie house. Certainly, the sweet girl wouldn’t have. Sir Laurence Olivier played the chilling Nazi dentist approaching a terrified Dustin Hoffman with a drill. Thunder struck. He heard it. He didn’t remember a storm in the movie. His lower jaw quivered, dropped, and went numb. From his position, he could no longer see the sky, only a soothing kindle of white kittens, a David Hockney blue pool, and a ballet dancer in gauzy pink with her delicate hand extended as if to touch, all painted on the ceiling like the Sistine Chapel. Then fingers invaded his mouth.

Marc texted about a movie he was going to see tomorrow night. He didn’t ask if she wanted to come. Alicia stiffened: apprehension, jealousy, regret: a surge of emotions roiling through her like black storm clouds. Was he seeing someone else? Why didn’t he ask her to go with him? She didn’t have any plans tomorrow night, it was Friday, and she had been expecting Marc to want her again. She wanted him to want her again and again and again, and lightning bolted fiercely outside the window. How long had it been since she used to climb into her parents’ bed during a thunderstorm in the night? But she was older now, no longer afraid of a mere bolt of lightning and noisy thunder. It wasn’t like she was standing under a tree or paddling in a swimming pool. Her mom and dad had always snuggled around her and said not to worry, she was safe and cozy indoors, and they told her stories. Why didn’t he ask her out? She had done what he wanted and would do it again. For him. How cozy was that? She texted Marc: r u going alone? God, if only she didn’t have wait so long for the dentist, she’d be with him this very minute.

Having forgotten to recharge it last night after work, Eric’s phone died in the waiting room. He wondered if he could manage without a monthly plan. Just to talk to people cost a fucking fortune these days. That girl couldn’t keep her eyes and fingers off her cell, and he didn’t believe for a moment that she paid the monthly bill. From the looks of her, he’d say mommy and daddy lived in a five fucking bedroom house with granite counter tops and a swimming pool, and at least two giant flat screen TVs. His two and a-half cost him enough as it was. Yeah, sure, he owned a TV; who didn’t for fuck sakes? If he downsized any more to save money, he’d have to move into one room with a hot plate and shared toilet in fucking Ville St. Pierre. If it weren’t for the pain, he’d leave the waiting room this very instant, but what was bad would only get worse, he knew that, he wasn’t a fool, even if he had been a jackass at times.

His last girlfriend, who had a great job and shared expenses, had called him that before she stormed out. Stupid jackass, you never learn. Those were her exact words. Thunder rattled the window; flashes of lightning brightened the black clouds momentarily, and he was surprised the power hadn’t cut out. Outages usually hit during these kinds of storms. He needed a real job, one that paid him a living wage with benefits: like a dental plan. He wasn’t too old yet to find one. He could do heavy lifting and balance on girders, operate bulldozers and shovel shit with the best of them. A downturn in the economy, he had read, building projects delayed or cancelled. Yeah, well, welcome to his life: delayed, even fucking cancelled. He stared at the woman, not looking at her, but focussing on his own thoughts and his eyes just fixed on that bulging purse with the gold snap.

Which she opened to take out a compact, checked her lips in its tiny mirror, and lightly brushed her cheekbones with a miniscule brush. Snapping the glinting silver compact shut, she caught him staring at her bag and she clutched it to her breast. God, how much longer? She didn’t have all the time in the world. Her husband was returning home, and she wanted to make veal parmigiana for him, his favourite dish. Louis never ate pasta. Not even reading about the poor calves chained to a stall, fattened and massaged to produce tender meat, changed her husband’s preference. He couldn’t care less about animal rights, being the ravenous meat eater that he was. She, well, she liked a skinless chicken breast and fish, although she wasn’t sure if chicken qualified as a meat. That guy in the dirty boots probably ate hamburgers by the ton, and poutine of course, a dish that made her gag. Thunder boomed so loudly that for a moment she thought the window had been hit and cracked. She stood so suddenly that the purse slipped off her lap and fell open, some of its contents, including the compact, spilling on to the floor.

The girl also stood and gathered her things, the phone stuck in her hand like a growth, and she rushed out as if responding to a dire emergency. What the fuck, Eric wondered, didn’t she have an appointment? Eric then studied the older woman now pacing in front of the window, the clouds the colour of the pitch he sometimes smoothed over driveways when he had been hired to do it. She spent a lot of money to keep herself looking good, he could tell, a lot of money. Money to spare. Money he didn’t have. She looked as if she was about to leave when the old man appeared, smiling and saying something to the technician who held the door open for him. She snatched up her purse, huffed between the old man and technician, and entered the inner sanctum of tooth repair. Not that he would have pilfered the purse; he wasn’t that kind of guy. He imagined, though, that he could have shown her a good time, which she would have been glad to pay for. His face beaming, the old man reminded Eric of Coca Cola’s Santa Claus, only thinner.

The lights flickered but didn’t fail. The old man said something about the rain not letting up any time soon, and Eric mumbled a response, just garbled syllables and showed no further interest in Santa Clause. That woman was rude, barging in like that, but money gave her power. He could still catch a whiff of her perfume. What would happen if they got stuck in the elevator together, stopped between floors by a power outage. He was next. She wasn’t going to wait for him. He could walk out now like the girl, and save a few hundred bucks, which he didn’t have in the first place. And suffer the consequences. He was now the only person in the waiting room. His phone was dead in his pocket. Flash lightning blitzed the sky and thunder reverberated in his head as if he were standing alone outside in the storm with no shelter in sight.