She walked very slowly, going in and out of small stores, acquiring an ever-increasing number of plastic bags. And there I went behind her, encountering an impressive array of stores and shops I had previously been unfamiliar with, some of which I visited the following day. They were establishments in which, I discovered, one could make quality purchases, if one was so inclined and had the wherewithal. I myself purchased, so to speak, a bottle of coriander-scented hand lotion, which, out of a general sense of guilt for indulging in pointless obsessive behavior, I took home for Carine. This offering, incidentally, did nothing to assuage my guilty feelings, not least because Carine reminded me that the hand lotion I had chosen was both the brand and scent she had wrinkled her elegant nose at when we had gone out shopping the previous week.

When we arrived at my dentist’s building, I watched her disappear through handsome smoked-glass double doors as I leaned — both nervous and contented — against a lamppost. There is a curious, unquantifiable pleasure to be had in following someone home to a skyscraper, even a relatively short one. It was difficult, pleasantly so, to correlate that building, which I could only have seen all of from a considerable distance, with my dentist, whose hands and surrounding body were so small. As I leaned against my lamppost, I imagined her inhabiting whole floors of the building, palatial spaces through which she would move languorously, accomplishing tiny, mysterious tasks, looking around her as she went with wonder, satisfaction, awe.

In retrospect, as I have lain here listening to Hank Williams or to Mr. Kindt or to Dr. Tulp, i.e., while my present bleeds all over my past, this image has changed for me. Or rather another image has presented itself and vies for my attention as I think of leaning against the lamppost, looking up at the face of her building. In this competing image, my dentist, far from inhabiting whole floors, lives in an apartment the size of a closet. She has mounted hooks on the walls and on them hang all of her possessions, including the contents of the plastic bags she has most lately brought home. She cannot quite stand up in this closet-sized apartment. She has to take deep breaths to get any good out of the stale air. She sits very still on a chair in the center of all the hooks and hanging objects. Every now and again her hand goes out and brings something back to put in her mouth. Sometimes it is just the hand itself. The hand goes out then enters her mouth. Eventually, she falls asleep.

Still, what it is about the dentist I wanted to relate does not primarily concern the blue envelopes or following her home or the claustrophobic variants thereon that my memory has lately been offering up. It’s this — once it wasn’t she who worked on me. It was an associate, some guy. Now, unlike hers, this associate’s hands were very large, and his fingers were sort of spatulate, and he wasn’t too convincing with the tools. And his own teeth, on top of that, weren’t, let’s say, so nifty. In fact, more than a few of said teeth were dark brown. I think you’ll agree that nobody wants that kind of dentist. And as a matter of fact I told him so. He asked me, as a counter, if I had read the Odyssey, and after looking at him with eyebrow raised for a minute I said that I had. He asked me which translation and I told him I couldn’t call it to mind.

Ah, he said.

What are you talking about? I said.

Nobody. You said Nobody wants that kind of dentist. I thought you were making a literary reference.

Well, I wasn’t.

We had a little more back-and-forth and then he said, suit yourself. But at this point we were still midtreatment and my tooth was killing me. So I let him pull it, which he didn’t do too tenderly, and I left.

That evening I saw my friend Fish, a character, at the bar, and he said, how are you? and I said shitty, and he said why? and I pointed at my mouth and said, dentist. A drink or two later Fish told me a story.

He said, I had a creepy dentist once. Kind of like yours, only his teeth weren’t brown, they were fake. Supposedly he had abused his teeth pretty badly in his youth and after he lost them he saw the light and became a dentist. Kind of an oral-fixation born-again thing. Anyway, my creepy dentist, after he had done some shit to me without any pain-suppressing substance having been applied, put a needle-tipped jackhammer in my mouth and told me this anecdote: Once he had a dream. In the dream an angel with excellent choppers informed him that if he only dug deep enough he would find the answer to all his questions inside one of his future client’s teeth.

I don’t like this story, Fish, I said.

Fine, said Fish.

And we talked about something else. Since this something else was pretty interesting, and because it bolsters my contention that Fish was a character, I will include it here. What we talked about was where Fish was currently living. Or squatting.

Fish was a big squatter. Until fairly recently, Fish, who had once held down a boring but remuneratively satisfactory job as a copy editor that allowed him to inhabit a dingy one-bedroom in Chinatown, had proudly lived in a squat on East Sixth. The owners of the building, unable to get the squatters to leave, had decided to tear the building down. Fish had been the last to leave. He had been, as they say, forcibly removed. But not before making a minor celebrity of himself in the squatter and friends-of-squatters communities by standing completely naked on the fire escape, sort of dancing around and singing what I heard from other sources was a pretty decent operatic tenor version first of “Imagine,” then of “Rhinestone Cowboy.”

He had a new squat now. A big two-bedroom on Fourth between B and C. Or actually, as he explained, it was more of a share. When he moved in, it had been a squat, because the owner, according to the tip he had received, was supposedly dead and there was no next of kin and the city had no immediate plans. A key had been under the mat and there was some furniture (including a sinkful of unwashed but perfectly usable dishes) and the electricity hadn’t been cut off: paradise. He thought about letting a couple of his colleagues from the demolished squat in on his find but decided to keep a low profile for a while. Which was a good thing. Because the owner wasn’t dead. He came in the second evening as Fish was flossing his teeth on the couch: an old guy in a beat-up porkpie. Fish stopped stock-still with the piece of floss between a pair of molars. The old guy, however, did not appear to see Fish, who was sitting very much in plain sight. This was because, as Fish quickly gathered, the old guy was blind. He was also, apparently, extremely hard of hearing. Fish had spotted a monstrous pair of hearing aids by the bed in the room he had not chosen to sleep in and the old guy’s ears were currently unencumbered. Fish stood up, very slowly, and went and leaned against the wall farthest away from the door. The old guy, who had not removed his beat-up porkpie, immediately started puttering around in the kitchen and singing to himself. He did the dishes, which Fish had added to, and he put away everything that was on the counter. Fish thought about getting his stuff and making his getaway while the old guy did his thing around the kitchen, but instead he kept leaning against the wall, and when he finally moved after the old man had gone into the bathroom and started a shower, it was just to go into the little room he had chosen and to go to sleep.

He still doesn’t know I’m there, said Fish.

I don’t believe you, I said. I don’t believe a word.

I’m pretty discreet and if I see he’s got his hearing aids in I don’t move.

What, he can’t smell either?

The guy’s ancient. Plus he’s always cooking. He likes spicy food.

You’re full of shit.