We Are Pirates: A Novel (11 page)

Gwen had been dropped off by her mother for her dental appointment, rather than her mother waiting for her. She wasn’t grounded anymore, and Gwen’s mother was trusting her to walk herself to her punishment when the dentist was over. Gwen’s mother had hardly needed to remind Gwen that she should not screw this up. Gwen was determined to screw it up, but had not yet seen how.

“There is
nothing
worth reading here. This is
atrocious.
Verily.
” She slapped down the magazines so hard that the lamp rattled. The woman sighed and leaned through the window, her hand pressed flat against the textured glass.

“Is there a problem?”

“
Yes.
”

“
Amber.
”

“Don’t
Amber
me. This waiting room is stupid.
And
I have a nine-thirty appointment and it’s nine forty, almost nine forty-five.”

“That clock’s off,” said the woman.

“Well, then that should be fixed too.”

“
Amber.
Is there a problem?”

“I just
told
you.”

The woman slid the window shut. “
I know you can hear me
!
” Amber called, and slapped a magazine down on the table before giving Gwen a sudden grin.

“The magazines do suck,” Gwen offered.

“
Verily
,” Amber said again.

“
Verily.
What’s
verily
?”

“Like, for real.”

“Oh.”

Amber snorted and drummed her dirty nails. “I hate coming here. All those fingers in my mouth.
And
my teeth are
fine
, you know?”

“Me too,” Gwen said, although she’d never thought to be bothered by the dentist.

“Verily,” Amber said with a fiendish grin. Her teeth
were
fine. Dr. Donner walked in and gave them each a sigh.

“Gwen, hello, thanks for waiting. I have you in One, and Amber, you’re in Two.”

“Aren’t you going to thank
me
for waiting?”

“Thank you for waiting, Amber.”

The window shuffled open. “I think they were fiddling with the magazines,” the woman sang out to Dr. Donner. Amber said nothing, so Gwen looked at the woman, who had never been kind, not since Gwen at seven or eight had thrown up at her first fluoride treatment.

“I fail to see your controversy,” Gwen said, something she’d read to Errol just the other day, although Dr. Donner tilted his head a bit, doglike, so maybe she’d said it wrong. Amber smiled behind his back, and Gwen returned the smile and went into Room One and lay down on the daisy yellow chair, squishy and tilted so she had to look at fake duck butts and duck feet they’d attached to the ceiling to create the disquieting illusion that patients were having their teeth cleaned at the bottom of a pond. She was separated from Room Two by half a wall and a large bubbly aquarium filled with very small fish. The aquarium never covered the sound of the drill or even the patients, and Gwen could hear Amber’s sour replies to Dr. Donner’s muttered questions: “I’m not.” “I’m
not
.” “I
said
I’m
not
.” “No,
you
are.” “I don’t care.” “I don’t care.” “I don’t care.” Gwen smiled at it. Amber, her name was, but she didn’t know anything else. Now they’d never see each other again.

Dr. Donner came in, wiping his hands of Amber. “And how are
you
?” he said.

“Fine,” said Gwen.

“I trust you don’t have any quibbles about what we’ll do today.”

“What?”

“I said, I trust you don’t have any quibbles—”

“No,” said Gwen. Dr. Donner had considerably less hair than last time.

“I’ll have my associate clean and polish your teeth,” he said, “and then I’ll come in to give you a complete checkup and make sure your smile is the kind that all the boys look at.” He raised his eyebrows and gave her the smile of the world:
Please let us have a laugh at your expense.
“Is there anything you’d like me to look at?”

“Just that thing,” Gwen said.

“What thing?”

“That thing that’s on my chart; you never remember it.”

Dr. Donner frowned and opened a folder. From the other side of the tank Gwen was pretty sure she heard Amber snort. “Oh yes, that irregularity,” he said.

“I always forget what it’s called.”

“It’s an irregularity,” he said again, mortifyingly. “After my associate does the polish, I’ll come in with the Aquapressure system. You know the drill.”

Gwen knew the drill, ruthless, relentless, useless. Dr. Donner’s associates were all motherly women who didn’t like kids, so Gwen faced the ceiling and closed her eyes. She imagined that she really was underwater, drifting in a thick layer of duck shit and toddler-tossed bread, while the associate put on gloves and began to tramp around Gwen’s teeth.
All those fingers in my mouth
, Amber had said, and now it bothered her.

“Don’t!” It was loud, on the other side of the tank.

Dr. Donner muttered something.

“I said
don’t
!”

The associate sighed. Gwen kept her eyes closed and tried to join up with Amber’s fiery anger. “I said
don’t
! I don’t
care.
I don’t
care
who hears me. I don’t like it and I’m not going to put up with it.”

Gwen grinned, closing her lips around the associate’s fingers.

“Hey.”

“Sorry,” Gwen said.

“I
won’t.
”

Dr. Donner muttered something again, and there was the clink of his poky tools.

“I
won’t.
”

Mutter-mutter.

“
You
shut up.”

Amber, mutter-mutter-mutter.

“
You.
”

A great, clinky sigh.

“Then
fuck
you.
Fuck you
!
”

The music was turned up, and the rest was lost underwater. The exam took longer than usual—Gwen kept smiling—and Two was empty when Gwen left One, the chair tilted and clean but the paper where Amber had rested her head crumpled like an angry brow. The woman behind the window gave Gwen a little card with the details of her next appointment on it. She agreed to keep an eye on her gums and walked out to find Amber leaning against the far wall of the parking lot, mouthing the words to her music. From the other end of the lot she seemed to be in a steady, angry shiver, as if wearing cold clothes. But when Gwen crossed to her, she could see that Amber had one shoe off and was rubbing it vigorously sideways against the concrete. “Hi,” she said to Gwen, too loud.

“Hi,” Gwen said, but kept walking so she wouldn’t look eager.

Amber scowled and took her music off her ears. Gwen thought she might recognize the tinny, tiny beat. “Fine, don’t say hi.”

“I said hi.”

Amber smiled then. “Maybe,” she said, and kept rubbing her shoe.

“What are you doing?”

“My new shoes. Toxes, but I don’t want them looking so new.”

“Toxes?” Gwen’s mother wouldn’t buy her Tox.

“Yeah, I know, they look stupid, right? So new like this. You wear Tox?”

“My mom won’t buy them.”

“Well,” Amber said, “your mother’s a bitch.”

Amber laughed then, loud and hoarse, and Gwen joined in. The laughter could have meant anything on that day, that the
bitch
was a joke or was absolutely true. “Verily,” Gwen said, and they laughed again.

“Here, do the other one.”

Gwen knelt down beside her and took the shoe off Amber’s foot, bruised with broken black polish. “You gotta redo your nails.”

“You think it looks stupid?”

“It looks like you did it a long time ago.”

“Well, I did,” Amber said, squinting at Gwen like she was reconsidering. Gwen smiled, quickly, and started wearing down the shoe. “Relax,” Amber said. “What’s your name—Gwen? Are people usually mean to you? You act like people are mean to you.”

“I guess,” Gwen said, rubbing rubbing rubbing. “I don’t know.” It was a few seconds before it became enormous, the thing Amber had said, a firework that sparked in the dark for a bit before flowering out across her whole body. It was true. Gwen had not thought of it like that.

“At school?” Amber asked.

“Everyplace,” Gwen said shakily.

Amber smiled. “How was it in there?”

“Dr. Donner? Okay.” Gwen took a breath. “Better than yours.”

“Yeah.”

“I guess it’s not your day,” Gwen said, something her father said sometimes.

“It’s not my life,” Amber said, dropping her music on the ground for drama. “
And
I want to do something else, you know? Different?”

“Yeah,” Gwen said, gripping the shoe harder. “I know, I know, exactly.”

“Exactly
verily
,” Amber said, and put on her shoe. She stood up, and Gwen looked right between her feet, one bare and one shod. “Give me that, it’s good enough,” Amber said. “You want to go to the bakery? It’s stupid, but I need a snack.”

“Okay.”

“I like to eat sugar right after going in there,” she said with a sharky grin at Dr. Donner’s door. Gwen nodded. They walked toward a short, depressed neighborhood with a few stores and shops, all crowded in by wires for the streetcar, which at the time this story takes place overhung the streets like a sketch for a claustrophobic dome. Gwen took one last look at the direction she had promised her mother she would walk, and at Dr. Donner’s cross office.

“Are you in trouble for that?”

“In there?” Amber sighed. “Probably. Thanks for nothing,
Dr. Donner.
I’ll hear about it at home.”

“I just got done being grounded.”

“For what?”

“I took things at a store,” Gwen said.

“Like, stealing?”

“They could have pressed charges.”

“Did they tell you that stupid thing? They don’t charge girls our age.”

“Well, there’s punishment. I have to volunteer at this place for old people.”

“Today? Can I go with you?”

“What? There?”

“Is that stupid?”

“No, I don’t know. It’s old people.”

“Do you like it?”

Gwen stared out at traffic for a second. “Yes,” she said. “One guy, anyway.”

“So I’ll go with you. Better than no place. What do you do, swim?”

“How did you know?”

Amber pointed at a badge Gwen had forgotten she’d pinned to her bag. It said MARIONETTES and had the silhouette of a slender, graceful woman. “Are you good at it? I can’t swim at all.”

“I don’t know.”

“I bet you are.” Amber ran her nails through her hair, fingers crossed like she was actually betting on something. None of the cars stopped, each of them with someplace to go, but Gwen couldn’t walk, only look right at her. “I bet you’re good,” Amber said.

Gwen could not believe how easy this was.

Le Bakery, French for “the Bakery,” was a place Gwen had never been, and for a moment on arrival she stared with Amber at the window display of cracked, old wedding cakes and cookies misting up under the yellow lights. Then they heard it, faint laughter, and realized two boys had been looking at them from inside the bakery, making faces while they blanked out at the pastries. Gwen didn’t recognize them until she clattered open the broken door and entered the place.

What
do
all girls have in common? Nathan and Cody Glasserman were on their way out with a big pink box. Nathan had on a large, billowy shirt, maybe his dad’s, unbuttoned enough for a glimpse of his chest, and big ratty shoes with untied laces; Cody blinked underneath a baseball cap and was carrying the box by the string. The boys and girls paused for a moment in virtual voraciousness—the great fierce swath heterosexuality has scorched across the planet—and then the boys smiled.

“Those cakes were hypnotizing you,” Nathan said. “Remember: one moment on the lips, forever on the hips.”

“Brave words for a guy with a whole cake,” Amber said.

“I swim,” Nathan said with a shrug. “Eat what I want.”

Amber turned to Gwen. “You guys know each other?”

“We all do,” Cody said, and Nathan gave him a small shove. A comic book fell out of his pocket—a heroine in flames getting revenge with big boobs. He picked it up with a blush as Amber walked by. Nathan and Gwen were left looking at each other, Gwen remembering the part of the magazine date guide on how to turn a no into a yes. 1. Control your emotions. 2. Decide if you got a mixed message. 3. Understand the other person’s motivation. 4. Offer a revised date.