Wives and Lovers

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In hot weather Hazel liked to sit in the dental chair. Its leather arms and back were cool and there was a fan in the ceiling above it. She loosened the belt of her uniform and leaned back, listening to the hum of the fan and thinking what a fine place it was to sit and realize that except for one bicuspid she didn’t have a filling in her head.

From the adjoining room she could hear sharp metallic sounds and the gurgling of water in a basin. Presently the gurgling stopped and Gordon Foster called, “Hazel?”

“Coming.”

She climbed out of the chair and, tightening her belt, followed Gordon’s voice into the lab. It was a shoebox of a room, with the ceiling pressed down on it like a lid, and Gordon and herself, two mis-mated shoes, tossed together into the box by a careless clerk.

“Did you want something?”

“No.”

“You called.”

“I thought you might have gone home.”

“It’s too hot to move. This is the hottest August I’ve ever experienced.” She said this each August, and many times each August, but it always seemed true. “Besides, I brought my lunch.”

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