Dr. Roth held one side of Elena's mouth open between two gloved fingers, wiggled her cheek, then pushed the needle into her gums. She felt a quick, sharp ache and then just the bitter residue of Novocain.

His walls were an orderly maze of framed certificates (University of Pennsylvania School of Dental Medicine, General Dental Residency at Mount Sinai Hospital, State of New York Dentistry License) and photographs of him beside his wife. In the photos, Dr. Roth and his wife were radiant and breathless in running gear or poised between their two Newfoundlands. The dogs were beautiful creatures, Elena thought, but they salivated excessively, some even required bibs so they didn't drool on the furniture. Elena wondered if Dr. Roth, spending all day inside the drooling mouths of strangers, was impervious to slobber.

"Wow," Dr. Roth said, once Elena's mouth was good and numb, "That was impressive. Most of my patients tense up, lock their jaws."

Elena tried to speak, but only vowels came out. Then there were tools scraping around the inside her mouth and Kim, the hygienist, was vacuuming the blood that pooled inside her lip.

"You made it wondrously easy," he said. "Did you see that Kim?" Kim's hair was buzzed and a path of studs arced along her ear.

"I didn't," she said. Kim looked stoned with boredom as she handed the dentist his tools and drained Elena's saliva.

As a child, Elena had hated going to the dentist. Often her father had to physically remove her from their station-wagon and deposit her into the waiting room, which was painted like the inside of a fish tank. Elena was always getting cavities filled, but more than the drilling—the metal digging into the enamel of her teeth—what she feared and dreaded was the inevitable reprimanding; to have a cavity was plain evidence of her failure to comply with very simple instructions. The accumulation of plaque, the tiny depressions in her teeth; there was no way to argue against it. Shame churned in her stomach as the dentist lectured her on the way to properly brush, which angles to avoid, how gently to massage the gums.

But now, some twenty years later, dental hygiene seemed an easy thing to master, like a quiz that required only memorization and no critical thinking. Relaxing into the discomfort, the hum of work around her mouth, she felt the experience to be almost erotic. The way she lay back in the vinyl chair, her lips ajar, surrendering herself to Dr. Roth. When else was she so passive to another's touch?

At home that evening, Elena and her husband made dinner from a prepackaged set of ingredients they received in a refrigerated container; spicy shrimp and fettuccini, sweet peppers and chili paste. Her husband talked about the union workers protesting outside his office, the inflated rat that appeared to be smirking at him all morning. Elena waited for him to ask about how the dentist had been. This was the fourth dinner in a row that he hadn't asked her a single question.

He did not seem to notice when, her mouth still slightly numb, Elena misjudged the distance between her lip and the glass of Merlot, and red stains bloomed on her shirt. In bed, he read the news on his tablet and she googled Dr. Roth. She learned that his wife was also a dentist—another Dr. Roth!—and that they met in dental school. Their hobbies, according to a spread in a dental industry newsletter, were running for charity (most recently ALS and pancreatic cancer) and snuggling with their oversized puppies, Diego and Rivera. They were probably people who woke early and exercised together before work, who drank homemade smoothies on the subway platform, who kissed even when they weren't having sex, and moisturized before bed.

Elena felt a twinge of envy looking at pictures of their bright, milky smiles and colorful sneakers. She had felt inexplicably understood by Dr. Roth that morning, and she wanted to tell him how much she wished she were the kind of person who clenched her jaw while getting a shot of Novocaine, who howled in pain when she was hurt, who didn't constantly try to manage her discomfort for others.

When Elena's husband removed his glasses and pressed his penis against her lower back, she imagined the dentists together; naked in their reclining chairs, one Dr. Roth gingerly examining the other. They'd inspect tissues and membranes with a blissful, erotic pleasure and eventually trade places, swapping latex gloves and white coats, gargling mouthwash from dainty paper cups.

Kate Axelrod is the author of THE LAW OF LOVING OTHERS, a novel. She lives in Brooklyn.

Detail of photo on main page by Judit Klein.





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