Under the Dome

then bent closer. There were maybe half a dozen small splinters of broken spectacle-lens peppered in her brows and around her eyes, but the one he was worried about was a tiny dagger just below the corner of her left eye. Barbie was sure Rusty would have taken it out himself if he’d seen it, but he had been concentrating on her nose.

Do it quick, he thought. He who hesitates is usually fucked.

He tweezed the shard out and dropped it into a plastic basin on the counter. A tiny seed-pearl of blood welled up where it had been. He let out his breath. “Okay. Nothing to the rest of these. Smooth sailing.”

“From your lips to God’s ear,” Ginny said.

He had just removed the last of the splinters when Rusty opened the door of the exam room and told Barbie he could use a little help. The PA was holding a tin Sucrets box in one hand.

“Help with what?”

“A hemorrhoid that walks like a man,” Rusty said. “This anal sore wants to leave with his ill-gotten gains. Under normal circumstances I’d be delighted to see his miserable backside going out the door, but right now I might be able to use him.”

“Ginny?” Barbie asked. “You okay?”

She made a waving gesture at the door. He had reached it, following after Rusty, when she called, “Hey, handsome.” He turned back and she blew him a kiss.

Barbie caught it.

8

There was only one dentist in Chester’s Mill. His name was Joe Boxer. His office was at the end of Strout Lane, where his dental suite offered a scenic view of Prestile Stream and the Peace Bridge. Which was nice if you were sitting up. Most visitors to said suite were in the reclining position, with nothing to look at but several dozen pictures of Joe Boxer’s Chihuahua pasted on the ceiling.

“In one of them, the goddam dog looks like he’s unloading,” Dougie Twitchell told Rusty after one visit. “Maybe it’s just the way that kind of dog sits down, but I don’t think so. I think I spent half an hour looking at a dishrag with eyes take a shit while The Box dug two wisdom teeth out of my jaw. With a screwdriver, it felt like.”

The shingle hung outside Dr. Boxer’s office looked like a pair of basketball shorts large enough to fit a fairy- tale giant. They were painted a gaudy green and gold—the colors of the Mills Wildcats. The sign read JOSEPH BOXER, DDS. And, below that: BOXER IS BRIEF! And he was fairly speedy, everyone agreed, but he recognized no medical plans and accepted only cash. If a pulpcutter walked in with his gums suppurating and his cheeks puffed out like those of a squirrel with a mouthful of nuts and started talking about his dental insurance, Boxer would tell him to get the money from Anthem or Blue Cross or whoever and then come back to see him.

A little competition in town might have forced him to soften these Draconian policies, but the half a dozen who’d tried to make a go of it in The Mill since the early nineties had given up. There was speculation that Joe Boxer’s good friend Jim Rennie might have had something to do with the paucity of competition, but no proof. Meantime, Boxer might be seen on any given day cruising around in his Porsche, with its bumper sticker reading MY OTHER CAR IS ALSO A PORSCHE!

As Rusty came down the hall with Barbie trailing after, Boxer was heading for the main doors. Or trying to; Twitch had him by the arm. Hung from Dr. Boxer’s other arm was a basket filled with Eggo waffles. Nothing else; just packages and packages of Eggos. Barbie wondered—not for the first time—if maybe he was lying in the ditch that ran behind Dipper’s parking lot, beaten to a pulp and having a terrible brain-damaged dream.

“I’m not staying!” Boxer yapped. “I have to get these home to the freezer! What you’re proposing has almost no chance of working, anyway, so take your hands off me.”

Barbie observed the butterfly bandage bisecting one of Boxer’s eyebrows and the larger bandage on his right forearm. The dentist had fought the good fight for his frozen waffles, it seemed.

“Tell this goon to take his hands off me,” he said when he saw Rusty. “I’ve been treated, and now I’m going home.”

“Not just yet,” Rusty said. “You were treated gratis, and I expect you to pay that forward.”

Boxer was a little guy, no more than five-four, but he drew himself up to his full height and puffed out his chest. “Expect and be damned. I hardly see oral surgery—which the State of Maine hasn’t certified me to do, by the way—as a quid pro quo for a couple of bandages. I work for a living, Everett, and I expect to be paid for my work.”

“You’ll be paid back in heaven,” Barbie said. “Isn’t that what your friend Rennie would say?”

“He has nothing to do with th—”

Barbie took a step closer and peered into Boxer’s green plastic shopping basket. The words PROPERTY OF FOOD CITY were printed on the handle. Boxer tried, with no great success, to shield the basket from him.

“Speaking of payment, did you pay for those waffles?”

“Don’t be ridiculous. Everybody was taking everything. All I took were these.” He looked at Barbie defiantly. “I have a very large freezer, and I happen to enjoy waffles.”

“ ‘Everyone was taking everything’ won’t be much of a defense if you’re charged with looting,” Barbie said mildly.

It was impossible for Boxer to draw himself up any further, and yet somehow he did. His face was so red it was almost purple. “Then take me to court! What court? Case closed! Ha!”

He started to turn away again. Barbie reached out and grabbed him, not by the arm but by the basket. “I’ll just confiscate this, then, shall I?”

“You can’t do that!”

“No? Take me to court, then.” Barbie smiled. “Oh, I forgot—what court?”

Dr. Boxer glared at him, lips drawn back to show the tips of tiny perfect teeth.

“We’ll just toast those old waffles up in the caff,” Rusty said. “Yum! Tasty!”

“Yeah, while we’ve still got some electricity to toast em with,” Twitch muttered. “After that we can poke em on forks and cook em over the incinerator out back.”

“You can’t do this!”

Barbie said, “Let me be perfectly clear: unless you do whatever it is Rusty wants you to do, I have no intention of letting go your Eggos.”

Chaz Bender, who had a Band-Aid on the bridge of his nose and another on the side of his neck, laughed. Not very kindly. “Pay up, Doc!” he called. “Isn’t that what you always say?”

Boxer turned his glare first on Bender, then on Rusty. “What you want has almost no chance of working. You must know that.”

Rusty opened the Sucrets box and held it out. Inside were six teeth. “Torie McDonald picked these up outside the supermarket. She got down on her knees and grubbed through puddles of Georgia Roux’s blood to find them. And if you want to have Eggos for breakfast in the near future, Doc, you’re going to put them back in Georgia’s head.”

“And if I just walk away?”

Chaz Bender, the history teacher, took a step forward. His fists were clenched. “In that case, my mercenary friend, I’ll beat the shit out of you in the parking lot.”

“I’ll help,” Twitch said.

“I won’t help,” Barbie said, “but I’ll watch.”

There was laughter and some applause. Barbie felt simultaneously amused and sick to his stomach.

Boxer’s shoulders slumped. All at once he was just a little man caught in a situation too big for him. He took the Sucrets box, then looked at Rusty. “An oral surgeon working under optimum conditions might be able to reimplant these teeth, and they might actually root, although he would be careful to give the patient no guarantees.