Money_ A Suicide Note - Martin Amis [38]
'You know what I wish?' said Roger Frift. 'I wish you'd take it easy the nights before you see me.'
'What's the matter now?'
I'd better add that Roger is a dinky, twenty-six-year-old, and a hyperactive homosexual.
'Your tongue, it's all... I mean, it's a question of common good manners. It makes the whole thing so much more unpleasant for me.'
'It's not meant to be pleasant for you. Just do it. Christ, you charge enough.'
'Lie back then. And relax . .. God!'
You wouldn't be too relaxed if you were reclining on Roger's electric chair. Roger is my hygienist, my gum-coach. Four times a year with his beaked pincers, skewers and arrow-headed bodkins he goes squeaking and splitting through the roots of my head. We call this deep scaling, or plaque control. What the fuck is this plaque crap anyway? Why can't plaque go and pick on somebody else? It doesn't bother my father. Plaque didn't bother my mother either, so far as I know. My mother died when I was very young. She died when she was very young too, now I come to think about it, which I don't much. .. That tooth on my upper west side, the one that brought me so much pain — it calmed down a few days ago, bringing me happiness instead, oh such happiness. But yesterday it started bringing me pain again. It never really calmed down: I could feel it humming, purring, braiding beneath the skin, planning its comeback. Now Roger, I hope, will fix it, will relieve that pain and bring me happiness again. Selina has this knack also. She brings me pain. She relieves it. Am I happy? I'm not sure. I'm certainly relieved, now she's back. At least, when she's with me, she's not with anyone else. Apparently I denounced and banished her that night, the night before I left for New York. I can't remember. Apparently I called her a whore, cursed her for a gold-digging fuckbag, and kicked her out. She shuffled off into the blackness without a farthing. Convincing, yes? Or not? I can't remember. We don't talk about it much. We talk about money. She wants a joint bank account. What do you reckon?
'Ooh,' said Roger, whose own breath isn't too hot either, if you want to know the truth.
By this time I already had a trio of gurgling gimmicks in my mouth. 'Ow,' I said as best I could. 'Easy.'
'Have you had any discomfort there?'
Tain, you mean? Pain? Yeah, lots. That's why I'm here.'
'Yes, well you would. Hello, seems to be some mobility there.'
He made mobility sound as if it were a pretty encouraging thing to have, like social mobility, upward mobility. 'Loose, you mean?' I gargled.
'I might just check the vitality of that one.' Roger reached for the robot tendon of the drill fixture. 'Can you feel anything?'
'What sort of thing?'
'Pressure?'
'On the tooth? No.'
'Discomfort? ... Minimal vitality,' he murmured.
At this I coughed out the braces and sprays and jerked myself upright. 'What are you talking about? Talk right, okay? It's loose and it's dead and it's coming out. Yes? No?'
'I don't do extractions,' he said primly. 'You'll have to see Mrs McGilchrist about that.'
'Then just clean them,' I said.
Roger replaced the nozzles and clips. He hummed while he cleaned. His instruments did their beaky work, their painful fine-tuning. The steel lingered on the trouble spot, the wasted block on my upper west side.
'Mm,' he said when the polishing was done. Daintily he plucked the gadgetry from my mouth. 'The gum's been traumatized by the shape of the root,' he mused. 'Rinse.'
'Traumatized?' I sipped the fizzy liquid and expelled its tactful pink. 'Now you're talking.'
'Well the shape of the root is very unusual.'
'And the gum can't cope with this? The gum has a trauma about it?'
'The tooth is still viable,' he said.
I picked up my coat in the hot floral waiting room — two people there, indistinct and self-sufficient, like all ghosts in waiting rooms. I paid the chick who lurks with knitting in her windowless stall: fifteen pounds, cash, and a video cassette. No receipt. Black economy. I run Selina on the black economy. We don't keep any books: there is nothing, no letter, no notes.