The Corolla's heater had two settings: off and burning, and Tyler had driven the whole hour with it off because the burning smelled like coolant and he didn't want to think about what that meant for the car or for him. His hands were cold on the wheel. The tooth didn't hurt anymore — that was the strange part. The root canal had done what it promised. It was the rest of him that hadn't stopped.
He'd spent the day telling himself he wasn't going back. He'd spent the day at the warehouse stacking pallets with his jaw clenched and his thumb going against his thigh, and he'd spent the last hour of it in the parking lot with his phone dead in his hand and his rent due in five days and two hundred and forty dollars that weren't in his pocket anymore because a woman with a porcelain smile had folded them into her coat.
He could call his mother. He'd thought about it the whole drive. He'd thought about it the way you think about a tooth you're not going to pull — turning it over, putting it down, picking it up again. She'd ask what happened. She'd ask why he needed twenty-four hundred dollars. He didn't have an answer that didn't end with him saying the words out loud, and the words were still sitting somewhere behind his sternum like something he'd swallowed wrong.
The strip mall came up on the right the way it had the first time, the sign flickering its last letter. CUT-RATE DENTAL. The parking lot was empty except for a black van at the far end, backed in against the wall, the way you'd park if you didn't want anyone to see your plates.
He sat in the car with the engine off for a minute and a half. He knew it was a minute and a half because the clock on the dash said 5:56 and then it said 5:57 and he watched it change.
Then he got out.
The bell over the door chimed at 5:58. It was a small brass bell on a coiled spring, the kind they put on the door of a shop where they want to know when you come in, and it kept ringing for a second after the door shut behind him, the spring still swinging.
The waiting room was empty. The chairs along the wall, the fish tank humming in the corner, the stack of magazines that were all from two years ago. The lights were on but dimmed, the way they'd been the first time, and the whole room had that closed smell — carpet cleaner and something under it, sweet and chemical, like the taste that had been under his tongue for a day now, no matter how many times he brushed.
Dr. Mack was sitting behind the counter.
Not standing. Sitting, on a stool, with her hands folded on the counter in front of her, and she was looking at the door when he came through it, the way you look at a door you've been watching. Her coat was off. She wore the white lab coat over a blouse the color of old blood, and her hair was up in the bun, and her face didn't move when she saw him.
Beside her, on the counter, laid out on a folded blue cloth, was the extraction set.
Tyler had seen it the first time and hadn't known what he was looking at. He knew now. The instruments were arranged in order, left to right, smallest to largest, the way you'd lay out anything you meant to use in sequence. The handles were steel. The tips were curved and hooked and one of them had a dark smear near where it met the handle, and Tyler looked at that smear and then looked away from it and then looked back, because looking away didn't make it not be there.
"You're early," Dr. Mack said.
"I—" Tyler's voice came out wrong. He cleared his throat. "The drive. There wasn't any traffic."
"There never is."
She didn't ask why he'd come back. She didn't ask about the money, or the tooth, or the receipt with the time written on it in blue ballpoint. She just held out her hand, palm up, over the counter, and waited.
Tyler looked at her hand. The nails were manicured, short, clean. He thought about the parking lot, and the black van backed against the wall, and the dead phone in his pocket, and his mother's number that he hadn't called. He thought about the two hundred and forty dollars and the twenty-four hundred and the fact that he had said okay in that chair and meant it, or meant something, and there wasn't a version of this where he turned around and drove home and the number went away.
He took his keys out of his pocket and dropped them into her palm.
Her fingers closed over them. She didn't look at them. She put them down on the counter beside the blue cloth, next to the instruments, and slid them to the left, out of the way, the way you move a thing you've finished with.
"Good," she said.
Behind him, down the hallway, a door opened. Tyler turned his head.
Renata came down the hall with her ponytail swinging, pastel scrubs, the silver necklace catching the dim light, and she was smiling the way she'd smiled the first time, the warm one, the girl-next-door one, and she walked past him close enough that he caught the mint and the something sweeter under it, and she went to the front door and turned the deadbolt.
The click was small. It was the smallest sound in the room. The fish tank hummed. The bell on the door hung still on its spring.
"Hi, Tyler," Renata said, on her way back. She touched his shoulder as she passed, light, familiar, the way you'd touch a friend. "Good to see you again."
"Hi," he said.
Dr. Mack stood up off the stool. She came around the end of the counter, and she was shorter than him, she had to look up, but she didn't look up the way a shorter person looks up. She stepped close enough that he could smell her — clean, cold, like alcohol swabs — and she reached up and put her thumb against his jaw, just under the bone, and ran it along the line of it, slow, from the hinge to the point of his chin, tilting his face down toward hers.
Her thumb was warm. That was the thing he noticed. Everything else about her was cold and her thumb was warm, and it pressed into the soft place under his jaw where the pulse was, and she held it there a second, feeling it, the way you'd feel for a vein.
"You came back," she said.
"Yeah."
"You didn't have to."
Tyler didn't say anything. His thumb was going against his thigh, tap, tap, tap, and he made it stop, and then it started again.
"That's what I like about you," she said. "You don't make me say it twice."
Her thumb moved off his jaw. She let her hand fall. She looked at him the way she'd looked at him over the chair, one eye and then the other, and whatever she was checking for, she found it, because the corners of her mouth moved — not a smile, the place a smile would go.
"Good boy," she said. "Now take off your shirt."
The waiting room was quiet. Renata had stopped a few feet away, near the hallway, arms crossed, watching, and she wasn't smiling anymore but she wasn't not smiling either; it was the face of someone waiting for a movie to get to the part they'd already seen.
Tyler's hands went to the hem of his shirt.
He didn't decide to. That was the part he'd think about later, in the car, if he got to the car — that his hands had moved before the rest of him caught up, the way your hand goes to a hot stove before you've thought about the stove. The band t-shirt was faded, gray where it had been black, the logo mostly gone. He pulled it up over his stomach and his chest and it caught on his shoulders for a second and he worked it free and pulled it over his head, and the air in the waiting room was cool on his skin and he felt it on his back and his arms and the back of his neck, and he stood there holding the shirt in one hand with nowhere to put it.
Renata took it from him. She folded it once, in half, and laid it on the seat of the chair behind him, and smoothed it flat with her palm, and stepped back.
Dr. Mack looked at him. She looked at his chest and his stomach and the thin line of hair below his navel and the waistband of his jeans, and she didn't hurry about it, and Tyler stood there with his arms at his sides because he didn't know where else to put them, and the fish tank hummed, and the door was locked behind him, and his keys were on the counter next to the instruments.
"There," she said. "That wasn't hard."
She turned and walked toward the hallway, and Renata stepped aside to let her pass, and Dr. Mack didn't look back, because she didn't need to. Her footsteps went down the hall and stopped, and a light came on somewhere past the corner, and the light was the color of the exam room.
Renata looked at Tyler. She tipped her head toward the hallway, the way you'd tip your head toward a door for someone you were being nice to.
"Come on," she said. "She doesn't like to wait."
Tyler's thumb tapped against his thigh. He looked at the front door, and the deadbolt, and the dark parking lot through the glass, and the black van backed against the wall. Then he looked down the hallway, where the light was on, and he walked toward it, and the floor was cold under his bare feet, and he didn't know when he'd taken his shoes off, and he couldn't remember whether he had.
The exam room was the same room. The chair in the middle, tipped back a little, the tray beside it with the lamp bent over on its arm, the little sink in the corner. The window with the blinds shut. The clock on the wall said 6:04.
Dr. Mack was standing at the tray with her back to him. She'd taken off the lab coat. It was folded over the back of the chair in the corner, and she stood in the blood-colored blouse with her sleeves rolled to the elbow, and she was doing something with her hands at the tray that he couldn't see.
"Sit," she said, without turning around.
Tyler sat in the chair. The vinyl was cold through his jeans. Renata came in behind him and went to the far side, and he heard the drawer open and close, and then she was at his shoulder, and her hand came down on it, light, the way it had been on his shoulder in the dark at the end of the first night.
"Lean back," she said, close to his ear. "There you go."
The chair went back under him, and the ceiling came into view, the drop tiles and the fluorescent panel with one tube flickering, and Dr. Mack turned around with something in her hand, and Tyler's body did the thing it had done the first time — the thing where it went heavy and warm and far away, like a door closing somewhere in him — before he'd even seen what she was holding.
It was a small brown bottle. She unscrewed the cap, and the smell came across the room, sharp and sweet and familiar, the smell that had been under his tongue for a day.
"Open," she said.
His mouth opened.
She tipped two drops onto his tongue. They were warm, and they tasted like the smell, and they went down his throat and spread out through him in a slow wave, and the ceiling tiles got further away and the flickering tube got quieter, and his hands on the armrests got heavy, so heavy, and the fear that had been sitting behind his sternum since the parking lot loosened its grip and let go.
"There," she said. "Isn't that better."
It was. That was the terrible part. It was better. The room was soft at the edges and his body was warm all the way through and he didn't need to know what was going to happen next, and he lay in the chair and looked up at the two of them and waited, and the waiting didn't hurt.
Renata's hands went to his belt.
She did it the way she did everything, quick and practiced and friendly, the buckle and then the button and then the zipper, and she pulled the jeans down off his hips and worked them down his legs and off his feet, and she folded them, too, and set them on the chair in the corner next to the lab coat. His boxers went the same way. Then he was lying in the chair in nothing but his skin, and the vinyl was cold on his back and his ass and the backs of his thighs, and Renata's hand came back down on his shoulder and stayed there.
Dr. Mack stood at the side of the chair and looked down at him. She reached out and put her hand flat on his chest, over his heart, and held it there, and her palm was warm and dry and she could feel it going, he knew she could feel it going, and she didn't say anything about it.
"You're going to do exactly what I tell you," she said.
"Yes ma'am."
"You're not going to move unless I tell you to move."
"No ma'am."
"Good." Her hand slid down his chest, over his stomach, and stopped just above his hip, and stayed there, not moving, while she looked at his face. "You're hard already. Did you know that."
He hadn't. He looked down his own body and there it was, standing up off his stomach, and he didn't remember it happening, and the heat came up into his face and he couldn't do anything about that either, and Renata's hand on his shoulder pressed down a little, the way you'd press down on someone's shoulder to keep them in a chair.
"That's the drops," Dr. Mack said. "They do that. Don't be embarrassed." She said it the way she'd said the thing about the build-up and the temporary crown, flat and clinical, a fact about a procedure. "It's just a body doing what a body does."
She unbuttoned the blouse.
She did it slowly, from the top, and she watched him watch her do it, and when the blouse was open she took it off and laid it over the back of the chair with the coat, and she stood there in a black bra and black underwear and nothing else, and her body was lean and pale and there was a small dark mole on her ribs, and Tyler looked at the mole because it was the only thing in the room that looked like it belonged to a person.
She took off the bra. Her breasts were small and pale and the nipples were dark, and she let him look, and then she hooked her thumbs in the underwear and took that off too, and stepped out of it, and stood there.
"Renata," she said.
Renata's hand moved from his shoulder to his chest, flat, palm down, and pressed. Not hard. Just enough that he understood the shape of the thing — that if he tried to sit up, her arm would be there, and her weight would be there, and he would not sit up.
Dr. Mack climbed onto the chair.
She put one knee on either side of his hips and settled her weight down onto him, and her thighs were cool against his hips and her cunt was hot against the base of his cock, and she sat there for a second without moving, looking down at his face, her hands braced on his chest.
"Stay still," she said.
He stayed still.
She reached down between them and took him in her hand and guided him, and he felt the head of his cock press against her and then slide, and she was wet, she was already wet, and she took him in an inch at a time, slow, watching his face while she did it, and Tyler's hands closed on the armrests and his back came up off the vinyl and Renata's palm pressed him back down.
"Ah—"
"Shh." Dr. Mack settled all the way down onto him, and her ass met his thighs, and she sat there full of him, and her breath came out through her nose, once, and that was the only sound she made. "There. You feel that."
He felt it. He felt all of it — the heat of her, the grip of her, the slow clench that went through her and pulled at him, and the drops had taken the edge off everything except this, and this was sharp and close and the only real thing in the room.
She started to move.
Slow. She rode him slow, up and almost off and back down, her hands on his chest, her nails finding the muscle over his ribs and digging in a little with each stroke, and Tyler's hips tried to come up to meet her and Renata's hand on his chest held him down and Dr. Mack said, "No," without heat, the way you'd correct a dog, and he stopped, and she kept going.
"You don't get to fuck me," she said. "I fuck you. Do you understand the difference."
"Yes ma'am."
"Say it."
"You—" His voice broke and he started again. "You fuck me."
"That's right."
Her nails dragged down his chest, four lines, and he felt them go, and the sting of them was good, it was the sharpest thing in the warm fog and he leaned into it, and she saw him lean into it and something moved across her face that was almost interest.
"You like that," she said.
"Yes ma'am."
"Of course you do." She rode him harder, and the chair creaked under them, and her tits moved with the motion, and she wasn't looking at his face anymore, she was looking at her own hands on his chest, at the red lines she was leaving, at the way his skin went white under her fingers and pink when she let go. "All of you do. That's the thing nobody tells you about boys like you. You come in here with your tooth and your two hundred dollars and you think you want to be fixed."
She leaned down over him, close, her hair coming loose from the bun and hanging by her face, and her voice was still flat and soft and it was right against his ear.
"You don't want to be fixed," she said. "You want to be kept."
Tyler's eyes were wet. He didn't know when that had happened. The ceiling tiles blurred and ran and he blinked and it didn't help, and Renata's thumb moved on his chest, small circles, the way you'd soothe a kid, and Dr. Mack kept riding him, slow again now, deep, all the way down and grinding when she got there, and the wet sound of it filled the little room and mixed with the hum of the fish tank from down the hall.
"You're close," she said. Not a question.
"Yes ma'am."
"Not yet."
She stopped. All the way down, full of him, and stopped, and held still, and Tyler made a sound he hadn't planned on making, and his hands on the armrests went white at the knuckles.
"Please—"
"Please what."
He didn't have the word. He lay there with his mouth open and his eyes running and his whole body pulled tight around the place where they were joined, and he didn't have the word, and Dr. Mack watched him not have it, and waited.
"Please," he said again.
"That's not a sentence."
"Please—" His voice cracked. "Please don't stop."
"There." She started to move again, and it was faster now, and her breath was coming harder, and her nails were in his chest again and this time they stayed, and the chair creaked and the tray rattled and Renata's hand was flat and heavy on his sternum and Dr. Mack's face above him had gone still and focused the way it had been over the drill, the way it was when she was working. "Good boy. You can come when I do. Not before."
Tyler held on. He didn't know how. The drops had taken everything else but they'd left this, and he held on with his heels dug into the vinyl and his hands crushing the armrests and his eyes on the flickering tube in the ceiling, and Dr. Mack rode him, and rode him, and her breath went short and her rhythm went ragged and her nails dug in and twisted, and then her back arched and her chin came up and she made a sound low in her throat, almost nothing, almost a hum, and her cunt clenched down around him in a long rolling grip that went on and on.
"Now," she said.
Tyler came.
It went through him from the base of his spine out to his fingers and his toes and up into his jaw, and he heard himself make a sound, a long broken one, and his hips came up off the chair and Renata let them, and he spilled into Dr. Mack in pulses that kept coming, one after another, while she sat down on him and held him there and took it, her hands braced on his chest, her eyes closed for the first time all night.
Then it was over, and the room came back — the flickering tube, the clock at 6:11, the fish tank humming down the hall, Renata's hand lifting off his chest and going to the drawer for something.
Dr. Mack stayed where she was for a moment. Then she lifted off him, slow, and he felt himself slide out of her, and the cold air came in where she'd been, and she swung her leg over and stood beside the chair and looked down at him, and there was a shine on the inside of her thighs.
"Renata," she said.
Renata came back with a warm wet cloth and cleaned him off, quick and practiced, his stomach and his softening cock and the insides of his thighs, and then she cleaned the chair, and then she folded the cloth and put it in a bag, and she took his jeans off the chair in the corner and brought them over and started working them back up his legs.
"You did well," Dr. Mack said. She was pulling her underwear back on. "Better than the last one."
Tyler lay in the chair and looked at the ceiling. The drops were still in him, holding him soft and far away, and the words went past him and he didn't reach for them.
"You'll sleep here tonight," she said. "Renata will bring you something in the morning. Your keys stay with me." She buttoned the blouse. "The tooth's done. That part of it's paid for. The rest of it—" She looked at him, and her eyes were pale and flat and she smiled, and this time it did reach her eyes, and it was worse. "The rest of it we'll talk about when you can stand up."
She picked up the lab coat and put it on and went to the door, and Renata finished with his jeans and zipped them and buttoned them and left his belt off, and then Renata pulled the little lamp down over the chair and clicked it off, and the room went dim.
"Night, Tyler," she said, from the doorway.
The door closed. The light under it went out a second later. Tyler lay in the dark with the chair tipped back and his jeans on and his shirt somewhere in the other room, and he listened to the two of them walk down the hall, and the front door unlock and lock again, and a car start somewhere out in the parking lot, and then the fish tank, humming, all by itself, in the empty office, all night.