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Almostsure of it.
Maybe I should think about—
But he cuts that off. Amputates it. Think about shooting Maisie? Well-meaning, slightly overweight, always-thinking-about-Ozempic Maisie? Never!
Never? Really?
Is that a thought… or a voice?
He looks in the rearview mirror and for a moment sees Daddy, now back there instead of in the passenger seat, grinning. Then he’s gone.
7
Rothman, Trig’s dentist, points to the wall-mounted TV screen, where an X-ray of Trig’s teeth is currently on view.
“Number eighteen, your second molar.” He sounds like a funeral director. “It has to come out. No way to save it. Infection underneath.” Then he brightens. “Good news, your insurance will cover eighty per cent of the expense. May I go ahead?”
“Do I have a choice?”
“Not if you don’t want to keep taking an antibiotic for a low-grade gum infection. And you might consider wearing a night guard. You grind your teeth, and that poor molar has taken the worst of the abuse.”
Trig sighs.I thought the possibility of getting arrested was my only problem today.“Go ahead.”
“I’ll localize the area, but I recommend nitrous oxide to make the experience as pleasant as possible.” Rothman considers. “Well… extraction is never pleasant, but more comfortable.”
Trig considers. He doesn’t have a drug problem, alcohol was his downfall (not to mention a certain bullheaded certainty, a dubious gift from his father), but he’s heard that people under nitrous can be… what’s the word? Indiscreet? But with a rubber bite block holding his mouth open, he’ll be incapable of saying anything butooooandaaaa.
“Nitrous, by all means,” he says.
After several pain-killing injections, Rothman’s second-in-command puts on the nasal hood and instructs Trig to breathe through his nose only. “And relax.”
Trig does. For the first time since Annette McElroy, he relaxes completely. He’s barely aware of Rothman’s poking, prodding, drilling, and—finally—wiggling the bad tooth back and forth in its socket, cajoling the roots to let go.
Must finish up as rapidly as possible, he thinks,so I can also let go. This isn’t an entirely new thought, but his mind has been set free and the one that follows it is.Suppose I could be like the tailor who got seven at a blow?
Seven would be too many, but suppose he could finish withseveralat a blow? Including the one who’s most guilty? Is there a way that could be done?
With his mind floating free of anxieties, Trig sees that it could happen. And if it did, it would turn his crusade into a worldwide sensation; Trump getting shot in the ear would pale beside it. He’s not interested in being famous (so he tells himself), but suppose his actions could start a useful conversation about how often the innocent are branded as the guilty? There’s going to be one—possibly two—famous women in town the following week, and if there was a way to makethempart of the atonement for Alan Duffrey’s death…
“Just finishing up,” Rothman says.
“Iiii uhhh ayyy,” Trig replies.
“What was that?”
But Trig only smiles as well as he can around the block in his mouth.
Innocents must pay.
Chapter 10
1
The Sista Bessie crew’s move from the old Sam’s Club to the Mingo Auditorium is a work in progress. Jerome gets in by mentioning his sister’s name to Tones Kelly, the tour boss. He wasn’t sure it would work, but it does. Tones has been sitting in the lobby, idly plunking away on a Fender bass guitar, but he jumps to his feet as if Jerome had saidopen sesameinstead ofBarbara Robinson.
“Barb is Betty’s new best friend,” Tones says, “and a bear for work, which makes her a friend to everyone on the crew. Who knew a poet could move a Marshall stack all by herself?”
“We were taught hard work is the way you get on in the world,” Jerome says.