Sketches III
He came back in two hours. The numbness of the Novocaine had come and gone. When he finally returned, he started asking me about myself:
“So you are college student? In Berkeley or San Francisco?”
“No, no. I finished school. Two years or so ago.
“I see. What you study?”
“Political science.”
“Ah! So now, law school!”
“I don’t think so,” I said. “I’m not smart enough for that.”
“Bah! Is not how smart, is how hard you are willing to work. So now you work? What for newspaper or political organization?”
“No, I’m a waiter in Berkeley.”
He barked at this, “What? Is no good job for you. I hope is only temporary. Is a temporary job?”
“Well if you call three years temporary…”
“Bah! My son, he is very smart. He is in school studying history or some such thing. But now he gets job in… how you say, park where you can look at animals. Safari! Yes, that is it. But he also play sports for school and volunteer. The people at his job they cannot understand why he does such things. I tell him he does not need to work such a job, that I can take care of him so he can focus on studies. Ah but he is stubborn, very stubborn. Who is paying for surgery today? Your father?” He took the tool he was using out of my mouth. I guessed he wanted an answer.
“No, I am.” The nurse shook her finger at me.
“Ah, this is good. It will build character to pay for root canal.”
Eventually the doctor must have decided that I was boring, not being able to talk and all, and instead engaged the nurse. As it turned out, she was Russian and he was from the former Yugoslavia. I think he said Macedonia. So they had something in common: they’d both lived behind the Iron Curtain.
Eventually, the doctor became quite heated when talking about the Pope. “Ah, he is American spy,” he said. “There are many American spies, you see. Bush would not go to someone’s funeral unless they were spy.”
“Doctor!” The nurse scolded. “What are you saying? Surely there are other reasons.”
“No,” he said and turned to me, “why else would Bush go to funerals? He only goes for spies.” He took the tools he was using out of my mouth. I glanced suspiciously at the nurse before answering: “well sometimes its just politics.”
“You see?” the doctor said. “This one is political science major. He knows many things.” The nurse was clearly exasperated with the doctor. “You know story about Stalin’s son?” He looked at me, then the nurse. We both quietly shook our heads. “Stalin’s son was soldier in Russian army, and was captured by Germans. The Germans, they told Stalin they would release his son in return for captured German general. But Stalin thought that all captured men were traitors – that they betray secrets to the Germans. He said a soldier for a general is not a fair trade. His son died in camp, two years later.”
The nurse and I were both quiet.
“That is mark of good leader,” the doctor told us. “ You devote yourself to country. Country is more important than family for leader.”
There wasn’t too much more chit-chat as the doctor finished up the procedure. I was X-Rayed a couple more times, the nurse fiddled with crowns a bit. I was pretty drained from the pain, and confused about exactly how many more steps there were before I would walk out the door.
Finally, the doctor sat down next to me.
“So just a few things to go over before you leave. Crown you have now is temporary crown, you will have to make appointment for real one in two weeks. It is not as strong as real crown, so you cannot chew gum. And no foods that are, how you say… sticky. Like these Chinese foods… all with sticky sauces. No sticky.”
“Doctor,” the nurse interjected, “can’t we give him something for his pain?”
“Bah, always with the pain. I have many prescriptions I could write, but you probably prefer vicodin.”
“Yeah, vicodin.” I said.
“All you Americans and your vicodin,” he exclaimed. He must have heard the request frequently.
“Well, what I’m really after is some whiskey, doc.”
He laughed. “Scott it has been absolute pleasure working with you today. You see, now you have root canal that last you fifty or sixty years. But you won’t remember me next year.”
He left and I got up to leave. The nurse saw me and scolded me again. I had to sit down again but I don’t remember what for.
I walked out of the dentist office and the rain had shortened to a slight drizzle. It was chilly, but I had my green sweater on for St. Patrick’s Day. I walked 12 blocks to Jack London Square, next to the Bay in Oakland and picked out which restaurant was going to rip me off. I settled on a place that said they served the best ribs in town.
I had two shots of Jameson and a chicken sandwich. Something about the taste of the chicken sandwich reminded me of one of the chemicals the doctor used during the root canal. So the sandwich was terrible, but the fries were good.
A root canal on St. Patrick’s Day. I couldn’t think of a better reason to drink whisky.
That night my roommate Ben and I headed up to Berkeley to check out the St. Patrick’s Day parties. We quickly discovered that the local Irish pub was filled to way over capacity, with people spilling into the streets jammed just as tight as they were in the bar.
Ben worked with someone that was apparently throwing a frat party that night, so we headed there. We walked down what Ben told me is called “frat row,” a street in Berkeley with frat house after frat house. That street was alive that night, from the drunken stumblers to the sick girlfriends to the flashing lights. Police would shut down one party and the drunks would stumble next door to the next party.
When we did find the frat house we were looking for, we couldn’t find an entrance. It looked dark outside, and the front door was entirely dark and uninviting. It looked like there were several doors around the front and back of the house, but they were all equally foreboding. There was a small crowd of drunks standing in the driveway, so we walked over to investigate. There was an open door and a party behind it, but a young girl had her head out the door like that annoying little guy that talked through the gates of Oz. She was demanding to know who the people in the crowd knew at the party. They said a name so we got behind them.
We had to actually climb over a table that was blocking the door to get in. The room we entered was enormous and circular, and a luxuriously wide staircase wound up the side. Drunks were all over the steps, sitting leaning, sleeping. Ben and I shuffled over to the keg.
We parked ourselves there for most of the night, guarding the cheap beer as if we owned it. When we decided it was time to leave, we headed back toward the door we came in. The table was still in front of it, as well as a taped sign that read: “Please DO NOT Use This Door.” Wanting to be respectful of our hosts, we tried to find another. There was an enclosed porch set off the main room, full of windows and with a door at either corner. But those doors were dead-bolted with a key and had no doorknob.
We checked a few other rooms adjacent to the main one, and could find no other doors leading to the outside.
At this point Ben and I panicked a bit. Why didn’t they want us using the only door that exited that area of the house? Would someone be angry with us if we went to leave, just as the girl was when we entered? Eventually, of course, we took our chances and headed out the door. Nothing happened.
The pavement outside was wet with fresh rain, and a thin mist covered the streets. We walked back toward downtown Berkeley to catch a cab. I stuck my hand in my pocket for my flask and ran my tongue over my my temporary crown. It was wider than my other teeth and awkward. The whiskey ran over my teeth and numbed my sore gums.
The next day I went back to work. The restaurant I worked at was a large fish house near the Bay in Berkeley. It was a family owned establishment for nearly a hundred years, but when the proprietor died his wife retired from the restaurant business at 92.
They turned over the reigns to a corporation that ran seafood restaurants throughout the country, and they proceeded to remake the business in their image. The steady decline of revenue that was common knowledge among the staff suggested that the image wasn’t nearly as popular.
When I arrived that night I headed to the hosting stand to get my section for the night. The manager was there and he looked at me and said: “where’s your haircut? And the buttons on your collar?” My hair had gotten a little shaggy recently, and all waiters were required to wear windsor shirts, that is with buttons on the corners of the collars, but managers only bothered you about this if they were feeling particularly obnoxious.
“Didn’t you just take some time off to take care of these things?” He said, referring to the time off I needed for my root canal.
“I spent that time in a dentist’s chair,” I told him, immediately exasperated. “Is this how we’re saying ‘hello’ these days?”
He shook his head and went back to the hosting. “I hope you’ll find some time to take care of these things,” he said. “You need to be in uniform.”
I went to get my tables ready and was seated twice before long. I took the order and put it in and found a few spare minutes on my hands so I dished myself a cup of the shrimp and lobster bisque.
I ate a spoonful and chewed the tiny shrimps a bit, and suddenly I felt something uncharacteristically hard and square in the soup. It was my temporary crown, fallen off. I slammed the soup down and took off for the bathroom. I spent several minutes in the bathroom flipping my crown around, checking different angles, while my tables were almost certainly tapping their fingers and wondering where I was. I finally found a spot where it would sit comfortably, but wobble a bit and eventually fall off. With my toungue I could feel the tiny bandages that covered the repaired nerves in my mangled tooth.
I decided I didn’t like the idea of holding a small pebble in my mouth while trying to wait tables that evening, so I told the manager I needed to go home.
It was Saturday night and I had to leave. Worse, I was scheduled to work during the day on Sunday, and I knew there was no chance of seeing a dentist until Monday. I was convinced that for the moment eating was out of the question.
When I left that night it was pouring. I ran through the parking lot to my car and still wound up soaked. My windshield wipers couldn’t keep up with the force and volume of the rain drenching the Bay Area.