Abby closed her eyes.
Brass.
Abby opened her eyes.
The third smell — the smell on his dirty hands: brass. What is made of brass? Keys are made of brass. Locksmiths smell of brass.
It was clear to Abby now: the man in the chair was the same man who had assaulted her in the corner of the sandy parking lot. He had never asked what she did for a living. He would not have known that she was a dental hygienist. He had said that she was pretty, yet he had never gotten a good look at her face. He had come upon her from behind. He had done his dirty business in the dark. If he had fully seen her, something of this recognition would have registered on his face in the waiting room, wouldn’t it? Or there would have been a slow process of recollection there in the chair. Yet there was not.
In this respect, Abby had him at a disadvantage.
Abby rolled over to her ultra-sonic and took the water-blaster into her right hand. With her left hand she took up the suction — her “Mr. Thirsty.” She hooked it to one corner of Romey’s open mouth. With the foot pedal she turned on the ultra-sonic and began to clean her new patient’s teeth as her thoughts ran wild. Every moment of the assault came back to her. Every smell, every sound, the painful grip of her assailant’s muscular paws. It all came blasting back into her brain as the ultra-sonic — the sound of its shrill whirring — assailed the silence of the room.
Abby would have to find a way to detain him so that someone could call the police. It shouldn’t be that hard to do. He’d have to wait as she went back to retrieve the X-rays. Yes, this was when she would grab Loretta and have her make the call. The police would come quickly. Then it would all be over. He would be put behind bars for what he had done to her.
But I want him dead.
It could not happen that way. He had not killed her. He would be put away. Justice would be served.
But I want him dead.
Abby tried to shake the thought from her head. Her head shook with more violence than she expected. This drew Romey’s attention. He pushed her arm away — the arm with the hand that was blasting away at his fetid mouth.
“What is it? What’s wrong?” he asked.
She removed her foot from the pedal. The room grew quiet again.
“I’m not feeling well,” she said, the words shaped by fear.
“Maybe I should go.”
Don’t go. You can’t go.
“No, it’s okay,” she said, almost pleading. “Just give me a moment.”
Now he was looking at her. Now he was staring at her, studying her. He had not seen her face on the night of the attack. Or had he seen her face? In the club. Where Abby had gone for drinks with her friends. Had he been watching her from across the room? Did he follow her out to the parking lot? Is this why he was there, why he was almost on top of her before she had even reached her car? The club had been dark and smoky. Perhaps this is why it took him some time to remember her.
But now he is remembering me. Now he knows it’s me.
“You’re going to keep your mouth shut. I’m going to walk out of this place and you’re going to keep your mouth shut.”
“Okay.” This is what she had said that night. When he had said that he wasn’t going to hurt her, even as he had fumbled with the belt to her jeans. Now she was saying it again. The same way.
This is how he knows.
He sat up quickly. He hit his head against the lamp.
“I haven’t finished the cleaning,” said Abby with forced placidity. “I haven’t polished. We have to look at your X-rays.”
“Shut up,” he said, rubbing his head. He grabbed her by the wrist to command her complete attention. The tight vise on her wrist was painfully familiar. “Get this bib off of me,” he said.
He released her wrist. She put her hand upon the bib. She moved her hand to the bib chain. She turned the bib around so that the chain was touching the front of his neck.
I’m going to strangle him with this chain. That is what I am going to do. I am going to choke him until he dies.
And yet her hands, her own grip would not be strong enough. Abby had “hygienist hands”—often aching, nearly arthritic from the meticulous work they did — the professional downside to being a dental hygienist.
I can’t do it.
Yet there was something that she could do. Behind her was the drawer with the syringes. Not the innocuous air/water syringes of her trade. The kind that gave injections. Injections of Lidocaine. She threw open the drawer and grabbed the syringe. As Romey was tearing at the bib and flailing at the lamp that was still blocking his escape, she plunged the hypodermic into his chest and injected the air that was inside the syringe. Right where she knew his heart to be. He seized up and fell back into the chair. She grabbed a second syringe, just to be sure, and stabbed him again.
You can’t have too many embolisms.
The man was dead within seconds. Abby knew that poor dental hygiene can sometimes lead to heart disease and coronary-related death. But who knew that dental hygienists were capable of achieving that same end all on their own?
Loretta came. And Dr. Jensen. Ms. Purdy phoned the police. Abby was on the floor now. She sat on the floor looking up at the dentist and his assistant. At the man she had just killed, his body slumped in the chair, his limbs flopped out like those of a rag doll. Abby felt weak. But she no longer felt powerless.
To Dr. Jensen she said, in a soft, almost cheerful voice, “The patient is a good candidate for some reparative periodontal work. But at this point, I’d say he probably shouldn’t bother.”
The dentist gave no reply.
1999 CONSTRUCTIVE IN BOTSWANA
The locals called them the “White Campers,” though they didn’t do any actual camping until week three of their visit. They were in Botswana under the auspices of Habitat for Humanity’s Global Village initiative. The “R and R” component of the trip came only after two weeks of building cement-block houses for residents of the village of Serowe. The fourteen crew members, largely from the Northeastern U.S., finished four houses under the supervision of crew leader Jack Darrigan, a New York City building contractor, and started work on three others.
Each day they hauled blocks (called “bricks” by local builders), mixed mortar, raised wood and tin roofs, sang, prayed (Habitat for Humanity being a Christian organization), and then piled into their chartered mini-bus (called a “combi” by the natives), and headed back to the lodge, where they feasted on samp and beans, mabele, goat seswaa, and braised oxtail, and where they drank too much beer (Habitat for Humanity being a fairly liberal Christian organization).
The first two weeks of the trip had been physically grueling but invigorating. The White Campers had definitely earned their R and R: a visit to Moremi Game Reserve in the Okavango Delta in northwest Botswana. There they would take part in a four-day/three-night budget photo-safari with campfire grub and army-issue tents. Offsetting the bare-bones amenities were twice-daily trips through the savanna and wetlands; within the two-thousand-mile reserve, the Habitat crew members had the opportunity to view some of the most diverse and abundant natural habitat wildlife to be found anywhere on the continent. Zebras and greater kudus, cape buffalo, crocodiles, elephants, vervet monkeys, wildebeest, ostriches, giraffes…Ericka Prager tried to keep a list, but she eventually had to stop. The profusion of animal residents of the Okavango defied itemization.