The Last Don - Mario Puzo [165]
Ernest laughed. “It’s a good thing you’re not a novelist,” he said. “But OK.”
They became friends. Vail would call him for dinner whenever he came to Hollywood and sometimes he made a special trip to L.A. just to be treated with sweet air. Kenneth spoke intelligently about Ernest’s books, he knew literature almost as well as he knew dentistry.
Ernest loved sweet air. He never felt pain and he had some of his best ideas while he was in the semiconscious state it induced. In the next few years he and Kenneth built a friendship so strong it resulted in Ernest having a new set of teeth with roots of steel, which would accompany him to the grave.
But Ernest’s main interest in Kenneth was as a character for a novel. Ernest had always believed that in every human being there was one startling perversity. Kenneth had revealed his, and it was sexual but not in the usual pornographic style.
They always chatted a bit before a treatment, before Ernest was given sweet air. Kenneth mentioned that his primary girlfriend, his “significant other,” was also having sex with her dog, a huge German shepherd.
Ernest, just beginning to succumb to the sweet air, took the rubber mask off his face and said without thinking, “You’re screwing a woman who screws her dog? Don’t you worry about that?” He meant the medical and psychological complications.
Kenneth did not grasp what was implied. “Why should I worry?” he said. “A dog is no competition.”
At first Ernest thought he was joking. Then he realized Kenneth was serious. Ernest put his mask back on and submerged himself in the dreaminess of the nitrous oxide and oxygen, and his mind, stimulated as usual, made a complete analysis of his dentist.
Kenneth was a man who had no conception of love as a spiritual exercise. Pleasure was paramount, similar to his skills in killing pain. Flesh was to be controlled while indulged.
They had dinner together that night, and Kenneth more or less confirmed Ernest’s analysis. “Sex is better than nitrous,” Kenneth said. “But like nitrous, you must have at least thirty percent oxygen mixed in.” He gave Ernest a sly look. “Ernest, you really like sweet air, I can tell. I give you the maximum—seventy percent—and you tolerate it well.”
Ernest asked, “Is it dangerous?”
“Not really,” Kenneth said. “Unless you keep the mask on for a couple of days and maybe not even then. Of course, pure nitrous oxide will kill you in fifteen to thirty minutes. In fact about once a month I have a little midnight party in my office, carefully selected ‘beautiful people.’ All my patients, so I have their blood work. All healthy. The nitrous turns them on. Haven’t you felt sexual under the gas?”
Ernest laughed. “When one of your technicians goes by I want to grab her ass.”
Kenneth said with wry humor, “I’m sure she’d forgive you. Why don’t you come by the office tomorrow at midnight? It’s really a lot of fun.” He saw Ernest looking scandalized and said, “Nitrous is not cocaine. Cocaine makes women sort of helpless. Nitrous just loosens them up. Just come as you would go to a cocktail party. You’re not committed to any action.”
Ernest thought maliciously, Are dogs allowed? Then he said he would drop in. He excused himself by thinking it would only be research for a novel.
He did not have any fun at the party and did not really participate. The truth was, the nitrous oxide made him feel more spiritual than sexy, as if it were some sacred drug only to be used to worship a merciful God. The copulation of the guests was so animal-like that for the first time he understood Kenneth’s casualness about his significant other and the German shepherd. It was so devoid of human content that it was boring. Kenneth himself did not participate, he was too busy operating the controls on the nitrous.
But now, years later, Ernest knew he had a way of killing himself. It would be like painless dentistry. He would not suffer, he would not be disfigured, he would not be afraid. He would float from this world to the other in a cloud