TEETH
335
meetings, papers, meals and pillow. Weekends, nights, vacation days
found her in Harper Library or downtown at the Newberry reading
account books, newspapers, doctors' diaries, the works of Coleridge,
De Quincy, Bramwell Bronte and other well-known users of the
drug. Her fingers bore dots of yellow where the dust of the old
accounts bit into the curious, living flesh: her addiction marks. When
~he
got to the use of opium by dental surgeons, she was brought
up short.
It was May, a year from her terrible encounter with Dr. Grant.
Walking home from the bus stop one evening, facing the strawberry
light off the lake, she felt the root atremble in her heart. "Your liking
and your lust is fresh whyle May dooth last,/When May is gone,
of all the year the pleasaunt time is past."
Carpe diem,
Miss Wilmott.
Old time
is
swiftly flying. "Oh dear," she said, taking her long, slow
strides into the fading light. "It isn't simple."
But the next morning, she telephoned Dr. Hobbie and asked if
she could come in to have her teeth examined. No, there was nothing
special wrong except that her jaw ached when she ate ice cream,
and her bite was a little unsteady. Dr. Hobbie told her to come in on
Tuesday.
Monday night, he telephoned and said he was awfully sorry,
he couldn't see her tomorrow. "The old man kicked the bucket
today. This afternoon. I'll be real busy tomorrow. How about Friday?"
"Of course," she said, "and I'm awfully sorry about him."
"Three-thirty, right in his office." For a moment, she thought
it was her appointment time, and that he was moving into his father's
office. "Had his stethoscope on a patient and kicked the bucket right
there, listening. Seventy-eight years old."
Miss Wilmott could not think of opium that May night. There
was a burr stuck in the evening: Dr. Hobbie's mortal phrase, "Kicked
the bucket." It was not worthy. Offhandedness had limits. Distaste
helped blunt her disappointment at the postponement. By Thursday,
however, she could hardly wait to see him.
It
was ten-thirty. She must have been his first patient, for she
had to wait outside the locked door. When he arrived, he said,
"Don't have to work so hard now. The old man left me eighty-four
thousand bucks. Never thought he was within fifty of it. Suzanne
would hit the deck if she knew how much she lost out on. I'm
