morning, sweet husband, and I’ve been hiding them in a linen closet.”
“Well, you can rest assured I’ll check every linen closet the moment I arrive home today,” the governor thundered, and he would have checked now, but his submarine was in distress and headed straight for a mine. “And if I find them there—or even one—that’s it. I mean it.”
“You won’t,” she said, dabbing her eyes and calculating where she could hide the trivets after she snatched them out of the linen closet the instant he left. “I promise on my life. You can check the linen closets all you like forever, my dearest, and they’ll have nothing in them but linens. All of our pretty linens, neatly pressed, folded, and stacked.”
The governor broke out in a heavy cold sweat as the first explosion reverberated through his hollow organs in an awesome, foul wave and rolled with gathering momentum toward his orifice. Bedford Crimm IV’s submarine armed its torpe-does and slammed shut its sphincter muscle hatch as he fled with great commotion to the nearest powder room.
Six
Once a week, Dr. Faux took the ferry to Tangier Island, where he donated his time and skills to people who had no local physicians, dentists, or veterinarians. It was his mission in life, he often said, to help the less privileged watermen and their families, who were unaware of his unusual billing practices and creative coding that routinely defrauded Virginia’s Medicaid program.
Dentists, Dr. Faux thought, had no choice but to supplement their incomes at the expense of the government, and he sincerely believed that subjecting the Islanders to unnecessary or shoddy or fake procedures was only fair in light of his great sacrifice. Who else would come to this forsaken island, after all? Well, nobody, he reminded everyone he worked on or pretended to work on. He adjusted a lamp and moved a mirror around Fonny Boy’s back molars.
“Seems to be a lot of commotion out there,” Dr. Faux commented, deciding that the tooth he had just filled would require another root canal. “Now, Fonny Boy, I strongly remind you to cut back on the soda pops. How many a day are you drinking? Be honest.”
Fonny Boy held up five fingers as Dr. Faux looked out the window at all the women and children washing a mysterious painted stripe on the street.
“Entirely too many,” he admonished Fonny Boy, who was fourteen, tall and lanky, with windblown sun-bleached hair and a nickname he had earned because of his funny habit of shirttailing and progging—or wading about with a stick or net, not in search of crabs but treasure. “You’re clearly more susceptible to cavities than most folks,” Dr. Faux pointed out the same thing he did to all of his island patients. “So I think you should at least switch to diet drinks, but preferably water.”
Fonny Boy had spent most of his life on and in the water, and for him to drink it would be like a farmer eating dirt.
“Nah, I can’t drink it,” he said, and his numb lips and tongue felt ten times their normal size. “I’m so swolled up, I’m likete choke!”
“What about bottled water? They have some really good ones these days with fruit flavors and lots of fizz.” Dr. Faux continued to stare out the window. “Why does that spotter plane keep circling overhead? And who is that soaking wet trooper with a paint bucket and a bottle of Evian and why is everybody chasing him down the street? Well, while I’ve got you doped up, I may as well adjust your braces.”
Dr. Faux paused to jot down several codes and notes on Fonny Boy’s thick dental chart.
“Nah!” Fonny Boy protested. “That gives my mouth the soreness. The braces, they are good enough save for the little rubber bands always flying out for neither good cause.”
Fonny Boy had never wanted braces in the first place. Nor had he been happy when the dentist had insisted on pulling four perfectly good teeth earlier in the year. Fonny Boy hated going to the dentist