LITMIR.BIZ

      ONE

      “WHAT’S NEXT?” David Morales asks. He swirls the ice in his glass keeping cold the last drops of scotch.

      Joseph Levy shifts in his chair and looks over his neighbor’s shoulder, out the kitchen window toward the eastern sky. His distant stare doesn’t reflect back much. “There’s my tooth,” he says thoughtfully.

      Levy’s desk is clear for the first time in decades. He’s mailed his publisher the final draft of a manuscript, the end of a 16-year project. What is next? His entire adult life has been one massive, multi-year project after another. He’s finally free, and he blinks his eyes in the glare of the present.

      Levy says, “This might be a good time to take care of my pesky tooth.” Nothing that serious, but he doesn’t like that it’s gone on for several years. “Now that I’m back in Wheaton, I can see my old dentist in Phoenix.”

      His previous dentist, in Willowville, recommended a new crown, but Levy wanted to wait. The secretary scolded him for delaying. “You’ll need a root canal if you don’t let him replace the crown right away.” The tooth settled down soon enough and he forgot about it.

      “Sounds great,” Morales winces and chuckles. “Celebrating with dental work.”

      “That crown’s been a pain,” Levy says as he pours more mid-quality single malt scotch into his own and his neighbor’s glasses. He sees his own ice is gone. “It fell off right before a two-month trip through Europe in the 90s. The glue didn’t hold, and it came off again while having lunch that first week away.” Not that it was a normal lunch; rather, a five-course wine-drenched feast at Sandoz Pharma in Basel. The home of LSD. “A dentist in France put it back on, but that only lasted a couple of days.”

      “That is a bad tooth,” Morales agrees, frowning.

      Levy laughs. “That was a bad tooth trip. Another one broke the next week. We were eating cold soggy veggie burgers in Scotland in the rain.”

      Morales looks as if he’s remembering something, “It’s like one of those dreams where your teeth break and fall out.”

      Dr. McPherson, Levy’s old dentist in Phoenix, hasn’t aged noticeably over the 20 years since their last visit. He remains youthful and energetic, with only touches of gray in his mustache. The office lights reflect off his mostly bald head, as Levy remembers they did back then. His office is different, though. Three times the size of his previous one, it’s busier, more pressured. Levy wonders how much is due to McPherson’s

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