Matchpoint (2 page)

I stumbled out of my car and closed the rusty door with a creak. I gripped my face, willing the pain in my tooth to subside.

“You’re breaking the chakras of the path.”

The head backpacker tugged at my sleeve. He was tall
and good-looking, about fifty years old, and smelled of old money. His T-shirt was tucked into perfectly tailored slacks cuffed over Prada loafers. He wagged his finger at me, his wrist wrapped in a gold Rolex watch.

“Excuse me?” I asked. The pain in my mouth cooled to a throb. The backpackers gathered in a group around us, the better to hear what their leader was saying.

“The chakras of the path. You’re in the way. You’re blocking the chakras and putting the Arrival in jeopardy,” he said.

“The Arrival,” echoed several of the backpackers.

“I’m sorry?” I said. “Did I hit you with my car?” I looked over at my Cutlass. The front bumper hung at a weird angle. That didn’t mean anything. My car was built during Clinton’s first term. It was a miracle it still had a bumper. I would have sworn I hadn’t hit anything. Besides, nobody was bleeding, as far as I could tell.

“The energies of tomorrow,” shouted one of the backpackers.

“The Arrival,” the others said.

“The arrival?” I asked.

The hair on the back of my neck tingled, and my palms got sweaty. I took stock of the situation. I was surrounded. Strangers speaking in unison had me cornered between the fire hydrant and Andy Gilmore’s closed hardware store. Cannes was a very small town. The only strangers were tourists who came up the mountain to hunt for antiques, sit in tea shops, and eat apple pie in the fall. We didn’t get a lot of strangers wearing pyramid hats, shouting about chakras of the path and the energies of tomorrow.

“Did you hear?” the leader demanded. “You’re blocking the chakras. Chakras. It’s simple.”

“The Arrival!” the others announced a little more forcefully.

“Terribly sorry about your chakras,” I said, sweeping
the ground with the bottom of my shoe to clear away any bad chakras. “I’ll just be on my way.”

I enunciated each word slowly. I took two steps backward and smiled.
No sudden movements
, I thought, easing into the car. I waved goodbye, bounced off the sidewalk, and made my way toward Bliss Dental. In the rearview mirror, the backpackers were studying the spot where the Cutlass ran off the road. From their expressions, I must have flattened the path’s chakras, and tomorrow’s energies would come at least a few hours late.

THE BLISS Dental waiting room smelled like Lysol, dental putty impressions, and fear. Two women sat on plaid upholstered chairs, busily texting on their phones. My new client manned the front desk, separated from the waiting room by a sliding window.

Belinda was busy reading through patient files. I caught her eye and gave her a wave. She scowled and stuck her index finger up in the air, the international symbol to wait, and then pointed toward one of the plaid chairs.

I checked the time. Ten o’clock. Right on time. I had two hours before I was supposed to bring Grandma back a bucket from Chik’n Lik’n for lunch. Grandma usually wanted fried chicken after her Tuesday morning Second Chancers singles meeting, which I was missing to meet with Belinda.

I picked up an old copy of
People
magazine. I was behind on reality shows. Matchmakers-in-training don’t have a lot of downtime, and my grandma didn’t have cable. I was reading about a real housewife’s new breasts when one of the women in the waiting room screeched.

“What a jerk. I mean, what a total jerk.”

She flashed her phone at the other woman, who grabbed
it to study it longer. Whatever was on the screen made the woman’s eyes bug out.

“What a jerk,” echoed the second woman.

“I have never seen anything like it. Not even at the zoo.”

I craned my head, but I couldn’t get a good look at the phone.

“Turns out he was screwing most of the town,” the first woman said.

“And telling them all he was in love with them, no doubt.”

“Well, obviously. Otherwise they wouldn’t go around talking about him like they were getting married.”

“Men are dogs,” the second woman said. “He made eyes at me, too, you know.”

The first woman looked doubtful. “Me too,” she said after a moment. “But I saw through his charm and good looks right down to his little mercenary heart.”

I craned my head a little more, but I was still getting nothing. I was about to move seats when Belinda opened the sliding window. “Do you have an appointment?” she asked in my direction.

“Yes, ten o’clock,” I said.

“With who? Dr. Dulur or Holly?”

I broke out in a sweat. I stumbled over to the sliding window. “No, Belinda. I don’t want to see the dentist. My teeth are fine. No dental work needed,” I said, flashing her my toothy smile.

“That’s what they all say. It’s called denial. I see it all the time. Whatever. It’s your mouth. But there’s a fifty-dollar fee for cancellations on such short notice.”

I didn’t have fifty dollars. All I had in my purse was three dollars, a maxed-out Visa card, a Hershey bar, two lipsticks, and a mascara wand. Besides, I didn’t have a dentist appointment. What was Belinda talking about?

“Belinda, what are you talking about?” I asked. “I
don’t have a dentist appointment. Don’t you remember?
We
have an appointment. You and me. You called me.”

Belinda squinted and leaned forward. “Gladie? Is that you?”

“Of course it’s me. Who did you think it was?”

“I didn’t recognize you. You don’t look like yourself.” She pointed at me. “It’s your head. Your head is different. How did you give yourself a different head?”

“I had my hair straightened. Do I look that different?”

“You look like you got a new head. Not a Gladie head at all.”

I pictured someone taking my Gladie head off my shoulders and replacing it with a non-Gladie head. Maybe having a non-Gladie head would be an improvement. I flicked my soft hair back. It swished against my shoulder, falling in a cascade, before returning elegantly to its original position. Oh, nice. It was like a commercial for bouncing and behaving hair. My Gladie head would never have done that. It would have poofed out at some weird angle with renewed frizz, making me look like the Bride of Frankenstein.

“Come on back, Gladie. We’ll chat.” Belinda pushed a button, and the door to the back buzzed open. She sat behind an L-shaped desk that stretched along one wall. The other walls were lined from floor to ceiling with patient files.

It smelled wonderful, not like dentistry and torture at all, but like a botanical paradise. At least twenty flowerpots covered Belinda’s desk.

“Beautiful,” I said. “Someone must really like you.”

“Oh, these weren’t gifts. I grew them. I’m a flower enthusiast.”

I was honestly impressed. “My grandmother is proud of her roses, but she’s never grown anything this varied and exotic.”

At the mention of my grandmother, Belinda flinched and took a step back. “I’m glad you took my case, Gladie,” she said. “I saw what you did for Ruth’s niece, and it gave me hope for, you know, me.”

I had fixed up Ruth’s danger-prone grandniece, Julie, with my client, a danger-prone police sergeant. It was my one real case and a resounding success, if the cooing I heard from them in the back of the dollar movie theater last Friday was any proof.

I took a long hard look at Belinda. She and Julie had nothing in common. Julie looked like a prepubescent boy in slouchy clothes with her hair perennially in her eyes. Belinda’s hair was curly but tamed in a tight bun. Her clothes were ironed and starched. Her no-nonsense, size-eighteen tan slacks met her glittery gold-and-black sweater, which was emblazoned with a lavender appliqué flower that took up most of her ample abdomen and flat chest, at about mid-thigh. Two little gold flower earrings adorned her ears, and her face was painted with thick layers of foundation and blush, her eyes draped in lavender—to match her sweater, I guessed.

“Maybe you have a police sergeant for me, too,” she said.

“At least a sergeant,” I said, trying to sound positive.

“Do you have pictures to show me so, you know, I can choose?”

We took a seat at her desk. “I thought I would first get to know you better, see what you’re interested in,” I said, taking out a notepad and a pen.

“Well, I’m looking for a man. Someone who appreciates me. And I’m losing weight! I have been drinking Chinese diet tea, and I’ve lost four pounds. These pants were tight on me last week. Usually I have a metabolism like sludge.”

I nodded. Maybe there was something to Bird’s diet tea. I promised myself to brew a cup when I got home. I had
gotten soft since I moved in with my grandma. A woman could refuse only so many chili cheese fries before she caved.

“Where the hell are the brownies? Did you eat all the brownies?”

Belinda’s office was invaded by a woman in a tight miniskirt and camisole. There was something off about her face, as if I was seeing her through an altered Hollywood camera lens.

“I am on a diet, Holly. Of course I didn’t eat the brownies,” Belinda said, clearly upset by the woman.

“Yeah, right,” she sneered. Her lips were curved up unnaturally like the Joker’s, pulling at her taut skin. Everything about her was tight. Her body defied gravity like it was made of wax. I caught myself staring and looked away quickly, pretending to go over my notes about Belinda’s desires in a mate.

“Here they are,” Holly announced, pulling a Tupperware container filled with brownies from a drawer. She took a big bite of one and tossed the container on the desk, unconcerned about resealing it and unconcerned about apologizing to Belinda. I disliked her instantly.

“That was Holly the hygienist,” Belinda told me the moment Holly left the room. “She had fat from her ass put into her boobs, and she had Phil the plumber stick her with industrial Botox so her face never changes expression.”

I realized my mouth was open, and I snapped it closed. “Her face has been that way for four years,” Belinda continued. “When she won Sunday night bingo, her face stayed the same. Ditto the day a patient had a heart attack and died in her chair when she was flossing him. She’s a class A whore, too. I don’t want to tell tales, but she likes them young.”

She said “young” in a conspiratorial whisper that made me lean forward to hear more. But Belinda strayed from
the topic. “She doesn’t need Chinese tea, that’s for sure. She’s got a metabolism like a hummingbird. She must eat ten times her weight. Of course, that’s only about ten pounds.” She found this uproariously funny and burst into hysterics. I had to slap her on the back for her to catch her breath.

When she came around, she described what she was looking for in a man, which sounded eerily similar to George Clooney. “How long do you think it will take?” she asked.

“Well, we can’t rush these things. Love, I mean.” It was the wrong thing to say. Belinda looked at me like I had told her Santa Claus didn’t exist. “Give me a week to look through my files,” I amended. “I’m sure Mr. Right is in there.”

What was I saying? I didn’t have files. Grandma had stacks of index cards I could pilfer and look through, but otherwise, I had no clue who to fix Belinda up with.

“Now, who do we have here? Hey, pretty lady, here for a checkup?”

I jumped three feet in the air. Dr. Simon Dulur stood in the doorway, a shiny dental instrument in his hand, pointing at me with it. The instrument was metal and long with a sharp hooked end. My eyes swirled in their sockets, and I saw stars.

“Whoa, we got a fainter! We got a fainter! Code Six!” Dr. Dulur waved his hands around and moved his head from side to side as he shouted, like a quarterback at a football game, calling the plays before the snap. He was moving the dental instrument around pretty good now, and it caught a glint of sun and shined in my eyes.

I wonder what Codes One through Five are
, I thought just before I lost consciousness.

“THERE SHE is. She’s coming around now.”

“Where am I?” I asked, but I knew exactly where I was. My body hung almost upside down in a Bliss Dental chair, and a spit cloth was draped on my chest. Dr. Dulur hung over me, his polyester shirt unbuttoned halfway to reveal a tuft of curly gray chest hair and three gold chains that seemed to float in midair as he leaned perilously close to my head. A long white scar traced a path down his right cheek. His hands were in my mouth, the scary dental instrument between his fingers, busily inspecting my teeth and gums. “Where am I?” came out muffled because my mouth was open and full of Dr. Dulur.

“Uh-oh. This is what I feared,” he said.

“What are you doing?” I tried to say.

“Dr. Dulur likes to take advantage of a fainter.” The voice came from somewhere to my left. “That didn’t come out right,” the voice said, his head appearing behind Dr. Dulur. He was young, no more than twenty. I noticed he was prematurely balding and had perfectly straight white teeth. “What I meant to say is that he likes to do as much work on you as possible while you’re unconscious so you’re not scared,” he explained.

“But I’m not here to see the dentist,” I tried to say. Sweat had popped out on my forehead. I wanted to swat Dr. Dulur’s hands from my mouth, but I was paralyzed with fear.