"Oh, will you ever forgive me, Bedford?" Mrs. Crimm begged and sniffed.

His magnifying glass caught the edge of the napkin and he yanked it out of his collar and flung it to the floor, his worst fear realized.

"Just tell me how," he said as cramps seized his submarine. "How did you find them? The phone book? Dinner parties?"

"Never at dinner parties." She was stunned that he might think she would go to a dinner party and steal a trivet. "I would never do anything that low. Nor do I need to," she added somewhat indignantly. "I found them on the Internet, if you must know. You can find anything on the Internet these days, and the temptation has been overwhelming. Oh Bedford, I just can't help myself. No matter how ashamed I feel, I know it will happen again. I suppose there are much worse flaws I could have."

"There is no worse flaw you could have! And Pony must be in on it, too," the governor said breathlessly as his submarine cut through the dark, convoluted surface of his well-being, the periscope up and spying on the enemy, which in this case was his unfaithful wife. "That scoundrel Pony had to know what you've been doing since he's here waiting on you hand and foot all day. And I doubt they've been sneaking into the mansion at night. Please don't tell me they have! That would be the most vile of degradations if you've been sneaking them in at night while I'm sleeping in the same bed! Go back upstairs this instant!" he ordered his daughters. "We're having a fight, and you know we never fight in front of you!"

"Never at night," Mrs. Crimm swore as her daughters' heavy footsteps sluggishly shuffled around and thudded back upstairs. "After I get them, they always arrive the next morning, sweet husband, and I've been hiding them in a linen closet."

"Well, you can rest assured I'll check every linen closet the moment I arrive home today," the governor thundered, and he would have checked now, but his submarine was in distress and headed straight for a mine. "And if I find them there-or even one-that's it. I mean it."

"You won't," she said, dabbing her eyes and calculating where she could hide the trivets after she snatched them out of the linen closet the instant he left. "I promise on my life. You can check the linen closets all you like forever, my dearest, and they'll have nothing in them but linens. All of our pretty linens, neatly pressed, folded, and stacked."

The governor broke out in a heavy cold sweat as the first explosion reverberated through his hollow organs in an awesome, foul wave and rolled with gathering momentum toward his orifice. Bedford Crimm IV's submarine armed its torpedoes and slammed shut its sphincter muscle hatch as he fled with great commotion to the nearest powder room.

Six

Once a week, Dr. Faux took the ferry to Tangier Island, where he donated his time and skills to people who had no local physicians, dentists, or veterinarians. It was his mission in life, he often said, to help the less privileged watermen and their families, who were unaware of his unusual billing practices and creative coding that routinely defrauded Virginia's Medicaid program.

Dentists, Dr. Faux thought, had no choice but to supplement their incomes at the expense of the government, and he sincerely believed that subjecting the Islanders to unnecessary or shoddy or fake procedures was only fair in light of his great sacrifice. Who else would come to this forsaken island, after all? Well, nobody, he reminded everyone he worked on or pretended to work on. He adjusted a lamp and moved a mirror around Fonny Boy's back molars.

"Seems to be a lot of commotion out there," Dr. Faux commented, deciding that the tooth he had just filled would require another root canal. "Now Fonny Boy, I strongly remind you to cut back on the soda pops. How many a day are you drinking? Be honest."

Fonny Boy held up five fingers as Dr. Faux looked out the window at all the women and children washing a mysterious painted stripe on the street.

"Entirely too many," he admonished Fonny Boy, who was fourteen, tall and lanky, with windblown sun-bleached hair and a nickname he had earned because of his funny habit of shirttailing and progging-or wading about with a stick or net, not in search of crabs but treasure. "You're clearly more susceptible to cavities than most folks," Dr. Faux pointed out the same thing he did to all of his island patients. "So I think you should at least switch to diet drinks, but preferably water."

Fonny Boy had spent most of his life on and in the water, and for him to drink it would be like a farmer eating dirt.

"Nah, I can't drink it," he said, and his numb lips and tongue felt ten times their normal size. "I'm so swelled up, I'm likete choke!"

"What about bottled water? They have some really good ones these days with fruit flavors and lots of fizz." Dr. Faux continued to stare out the window. "Why does that spotter plane keep circling overhead? And who is that soaking wet trooper with a paint bucket and a bottle of Evian and why is everybody chasing him down the street? Well, while I've got you doped up, I may as well adjust your braces."

Dr. Faux paused to jot down several codes and notes on Fonny Boy's thick dental chart.

"Nah!" Fonny Boy protested. "That gives my mouth the soreness. The braces, they are good enough save for the little rubber bands always flying out for neither good cause."

Fonny Boy had never wanted braces in the first place. Nor had he been happy when the dentist had insisted on pulling four perfectly good teeth earlier in the year. Fonny Boy hated going to the dentist and often complained to his parents that Dr. Faux was a picaroon, which was the Tangier word for pirate.

"He gave me a look at a photo of his car," Fonny Boy had said just the other day. "He got a huge black Merk and his lady got one, too, only of a different color. So how come he can have cars so dear if he works on ever one of us for neither money?"

It was a good question, but as usual, nobody took Fonny Boy seriously, and in part this was because of his nickname. His neighbors and teachers found him amusing and peculiar and loved to trade tales about his poking through the trash-strewn shore for treasure and his uncontrollable compulsion to make music.

"I swanny," Fonny Boy overheard his aunt Ginny Crockett comment after a recent Sunday prayer meeting. "He has a mind that ransacking the shore's gonna land him a barrel a silver dollars. Heee! His poor mom's always blaring at him, and I can't say as I fault her. She's done all what she can for that boy, and on back of that, I wish he's keep quite on the juice harp."

"I'm a die! He totes that juice harp everywhere and sure plays a pretty tune." Ginny's friend said the opposite of what she meant, because it was everyone's opinion that when Fonny Boy played the harmonica, which was constantly, he made nothing but an awful racket.

"His daddy ought to give him the dickens, but he's always bragging on that boy," Ginny replied, and in this instance, she meant exactly what she said, because Fonny Boy's father was hellbent on believing that his only son was the envy of the island.

"Soon as we get these braces off," Dr. Faux said as he pulled on a new pair of surgical gloves that would be billed for three times their value, "I'm going to recommend crowns for eight of your front teeth. You up for a little blood work this morning?" he added, because Dr. Faux had discovered there was quite a market for selling blood to shady medical researchers who were doing genetic studies of closed populations.

"Nah!" Fonny Boy jerked in the chair and gripped the armrests so tightly his knuckles blanched.

"Not to worry about crowns, Fonny Boy. I'll use precious alloys and you'll have a million-dollar smile!"