"Couldn't you have mailed it?" he broke in. But secretly he was relieved. Sammy's teeth wouldn't fall out before next month; there was no urgency about taking him. "How long will you be there? Does that mean I don't get a ride home?"

"I just don't know," Margo said. "Listen, dear; there's a whole flock of ladies in the living room -- we're figuring out last-minute items we want to bring up when we present the petition. If I can't drive you home I'll phone you at five or so. Okay?"

After he had hung up he wandered over to the check-out stand. No customers were in need of being checked, and Liz had lit a cigarette for a few moments. She smiled at him sympathetically, a lantern-like effect. "How's your little boy?" she asked.

"Okay," he said. "Probably relieved he's not going."

"I have the sweetest little old dentist I go to," Liz chirruped. "Must be nearly a hundred years old. He don't hurt me a bit; he just scrapes away and it's done." Holding aside her lip with her red-enameled thumbnail, she showed him a gold inlay in one of her upper molars. A breath of cigarette smoke and cinnamon whisked around him as he leaned to see. "See?" she said. "Big as all get out, and it didn't hurt! No, it never did!" I wonder what Margo would say, he wondered. If she walked in here through the magic-eye glass door that swings open when you approach it and saw me gazing into Liz's mouth. Caught in some fashionable new eroticism not yet recorded in the Kinsey reports.

The store had during the afternoon become almost deserted. Usually a flow of customers passed through the check-out stands, but not today. The recession, Vic decided. Five million unemployed as of February of this year. It's getting at our business. Going to the front doors he stood watching the sidewalk traffic. No doubt about it. Fewer people than usual. All home counting their savings.