The Longshot by Katie Kitamura

Author:Katie Kitamura
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Free Press
Published: 2009-05-20T16:00:00+00:00

7

Riley sat in the car. He watched as people exited the gym. He watched as they climbed onto the bus. They were still talking. Even watching from the car he could tell they were still talking. He sat and he waited until they all got on. The door swung shut. It took just about forever doing it. The bus backed out of the parking lot. He kept watching as it drove off and disappeared down the street.

He exhaled. The air slipped out ragged, catching on the edge of his front teeth. The dentist had done a good job. He’d done a real good job. Riley had used him twice, and then he’d gone on to recommend him to just about every guy he met. He never even remembered about his teeth until times like this. Then all of a sudden he’d hear his breath whistling right up inside his head, like wind flapping through a half-open door.

He sat with his hands on the wheel and he thought about his teeth. The first time he’d almost swallowed them. It had been that fight with Sircello. One of his hard left hooks—it had been all he could do to roll with the punch and spit out his teeth like apple seeds on the way. He’d gone on to win the fight and in the victory pictures he was grinning like some kind of gap-toothed maniac. He’d been too punch-drunk to remember about his teeth. Once it hit him, he shut his mouth and kept it sealed shut, all the way home to the dentist.

The second time he didn’t even have to bother spitting them out. The teeth just flew out his mouth and across the ring where they fell to the canvas, pit pat. Between rounds he told his corner to make sure he got his teeth back. His corner kept telling him he had to get his head into the fight. They kept telling him he was going to lose if he didn’t hurry up and start making it his fight. He told them to worry about getting his teeth back and leave him to worry about winning the fight. He’d had some kind of stupid idea he could put them back in and save on the dental bill. He thought about it all through the second round and into the third, about how it would work, about how much he would save just not having to make the crowns, wondering if maybe the dentist would give him some kind of a discount seeing as how he was shaping up to be a repeat customer. He figured it was the thinking that cost him the fight. The thinking and the worrying about his teeth.

Well, it could have been worse. It could have been like Atkinson. Snorting teeth through the nose while the television producers shouted for a cut. It could have been a hell of a lot worse. He had to remember that. He could have shat them out of his ass, for all he knew.

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