“Urg.”

“All this panic about X-rays. Well, if you’re pregnant I suppose it’s a different story, but you’re not pregnant, are you, Bernie?” He laughed at this. I’ve no idea why. When you’re a dentist you have to laugh at your own jokes, which might be a hardship but I suspect it’s more than balanced by the fact that you remain blissfully unaware of it when your precious wit goes over like a brass blimp. Since the patient can’t laugh anyway, his silence needn’t be interpreted as a reprimand.

“Well, we’ll just take care of it right away before I turn you over to Jillian for a cleaning. First molar, lower right jaw, that’s a cinch, we can block the pain with Novocaine without numbing half your head in the process. Of course some practitioners of the gentle art would wind up depriving you of sensation in half your tongue for six or eight hours, but you’re in luck, Bern. You’re in the hands of the World’s Greatest Dentist and you have nothing to worry about.” Chuckle. “Except paying the bill, that is.” Full-fledged laugh.

“Urg.”

“Open a little wider? Perfect. Beautiful.” His fingers, tasting as though they’d been boiled, deftly packed my mouth with cylinders of cotton. Then he took a curved piece of plastic tubing attached to a long rubber tube and propped it at the root of my tongue, where it commenced to make slurping noises.

“This is Mr. Thirsty,” he explained. “That’s what I tell the kids. Mr. Thirsty, come to suck up all your spit so it doesn’t gum up the works. Of course I don’t put it quite so crudely for the little tykes.”

“Urg.”

“Anyway, I tell the kids this here is Mr. Thirsty, and when I whack ’em out with nitrous oxide I tell ’em they’re going for a ride in Dr. Sheldrake’s Rocket Ship. That’s ’cause it gets ’em so spacy.”

“Urg.”

“Now we’ll just dry off that gum there,” he said, peeling back my lower lip and blotting the gum with a wad of cotton. “And now we’ll give you a dab of benzocaine, that’s a local that’ll keep you from feeling the needle when we jab a quart of Novocaine into your unsuspecting tissue.” Chortle. “Just kiddin’, Bernie. No, you don’t have to give a patient a liter of the stuff if you have the skill to slip the old needle into the right spot. Oh, thank your lucky stars you’ve got the World’s Greatest Dentist on your team.”