“Oh, Mr. Carl,” said Dr. Pfeffer’s receptionist, “we’re so glad you’ve come in for a visit. You’re looking well, I must say. And such a nice tie. The doctor is seeing another patient right now, but he’s certainly expecting you. If you could just fill out this new-patient questionnaire, we’d be so very grateful.”

It was bright in Dr. Pfeffer’s flat beige waiting room, too bright. The colors of the magazines laid out in perfect rows on the side tables were washed by the relentless incandescence of the fluorescent lights overhead, the air itself was conditioned by the jaunty Muzak pumping loudly through speakers in the ceiling. And then there was the pretty young receptionist herself, with her daunting cheerfulness, her own wondrous smile, her lies about my tie. Her perk made my aching tooth ache all the more. Walking into Dr. Pfeffer’s waiting room was like walking into a timeless, context-free capsule of dental cheer. We could as easily have been soaring to the moon as in a building in Philly, but wherever we were, we would show off our pearly whites and be jolly.

As I took the clipboard with the questionnaire, I noticed something strange on the wall beside the reception desk. Hanging in their wooden frames were an array of smiles, photographs of gleaming, perfect sets of teeth one above the last, just the smiles, nothing else, a sort of hall of fame of happy dental hygiene. I looked at all those perfect mouths, rubbed my tongue along the rows of my ragged teeth, and then retreated to one of the generic beige chairs and started on the questionnaire.

NAME: Sure.

DATE OF BIRTH: Getting a bit far away.

EDUCATION: Too much.

INCOME: Not nearly enough.

FAMILY HISTORY: Murky, at best.

HEALTH HISTORY: Surprisingly good, except for a tooth.

NATURE OF PROBLEM: Dental.

CURRENT MEDICATIONS: Sea Breezes at dusk.

HEALTH INSURANCE: Deficient.

DISABILITY INSURANCE: Why does this question make me nervous?

LIFE INSURANCE: Yikes.

GREATEST ACCOMPLISHMENT: Huh?

GREATEST DISAPPOINTMENT: Excuse me?

DARKEST SECRET: You’re kidding, right?

PERSON YOU’D MOST LIKE TO MEET: A dentist. I have a toothache and I’d like to meet a dentist.

ARE YOU CURRENTLY IN A FULFILLING SEXUAL RELATIONSHIP?

That last question sent me back to the receptionist. “What is this all about?” I said.

“It’s the new-patient questionnaire, Mr. Carl. Every new patient fills it out.”

“But it’s getting a little personal. Like this question here about current relationships.”

“Well?”

“I don’t understand the relevance to my sore tooth.”

“Dr. Pfeffer takes a holistic approach to the practice of dentistry. You don’t just treat a tooth, he likes to say, you treat a person.”

“How about if the person only wants to treat the damn tooth?”

She sighed cheerily. “That’s fine, Mr. Carl. Only answer the questions you are comfortable with, so long as you put down all your insurance information.”

“I don’t have dental insurance.”

“Then we take Visa and MasterCard.”

“Of course you do.”

“Just give us your card number and the expiration date. But remember, Mr. Carl, as Dr. Pfeffer constantly reminds his patients, every tooth is connected to a nerve, and every nerve is ultimately connected to every other nerve in a series of switches we don’t yet fully understand.” Her bright, cheery smile was suddenly not so cheery. “You wouldn’t want to cure the tooth only to find something else stops working.”

I smiled politely back until it hurt, sat down, read again question sixteen.

Are you currently in a fulfilling sexual relationship? How does one answer such a question? Do I talk about my past affairs, my hopes for the future? Do I discuss the dates I had been on in the last couple of months, the prospects I was prospecting for as we spoke. And what does fulfilling mean, anyway? Can a sexual relationship be equated to a brisket, where after your third portion you push away from the table and say, No more, thank you, I’m fulfilled? By and large, my fulfilling relationships had not been sexual and my sexual relationships had not been fulfilling and that seemed to me exactly the way the world worked. So I thought about it some more, all the twists and turns, the ambiguities inherent in the question, when a door opened.

A woman holding a file strode out, her smile blinding in its whiteness, its width, its perfection. She was tall, thin, her ginger hair straight and silky, her eyes blue. She was dressed like a high-fashion model on a runway and was every bit as lovely.

I watched as she handed the file to the receptionist.

“How did it go, Ms. Kingsly?”

“Fine, Deirdre, wonderful.” She rubbed her tongue, pink and glistening, across her upper teeth. “He has such gentle hands.”

She glanced my way. I tried to smile. She turned back to the receptionist as if my chair had been empty.

“The doctor wants to see me in four months. A Wednesday would be best. In the afternoon.”

They chatted a bit more as the receptionist went through the book and staked out an appointment. Ms. Kingsly leaned forward to reach for a pen. Her supple body formed a dancer’s line with her arched back, her raised leg, her pointed toe. When she stood straight again, her nose wrinkled and her pretty teeth bit down on her lower lip as she wrote out her address on an appointment-reminder postcard.

I looked down once more at question sixteen. “No,” I wrote.

“Victor Carl,” came a voice, strong and Germanic. It was a voice that brooked no possibility of dissent, the voice of a leader of men. I rose instinctively, stood at attention, looked around for the voice’s source. She was standing tall in the doorway, dressed in white, holding a file to her chest. Her shoulders, her breasts, her hands were all strangely outsized. She looked like she could wring me out like a damp rag and that, quite possibly, I’d like it.

“Y-yes,” I said.

“We are ready for you, ja,” she said without a breath of emotion flitting across her stony face. “I am Tilda, Dr. Pfeffer’s dental hygienist. We are very pleased that you have come to us. This way, and bring your questionnaire.”

I glanced nervously at Deirdre and Ms. Kingsly. They both looked back, widening their eyes encouragingly. Gentle hands.

“Sure,” I said. “Yes.”

Tilda, the hygienist, stepped aside as I walked past her into the hallway. Her scent was woody and strong. The brightness from the waiting room dimmed. The Muzak hushed when she closed the door behind us both.

“You will be in examination room B, ja,” she said.

Well, I thought, that sounds cheery. Examination room B. Transpose the letters and it spells Maximum Pain. Doesn’t it?

She led me to a clean, brightly lit room down the hall. Arrayed around a large orange examination chair were drills and lights, X-ray guns, sinks, flat trays full of barbarous instruments. She ordered me into the chair, and I complied, lying back as she jacked it up and down and up again. My vertebrae bounced against the orange leatherette.

“Comfortable?”

“Put on some Jimmy Buffett, give me a margarita, and I could be at the beach.”

“Ja, well,” she said, clearly not amused. “This is not the Costa del Sol. Wait here. The doctor will be with you shortly.”

“That’s exactly what I was afraid of.”

A few minutes later, he swept into the room, the doctor. I could tell he was the doctor because he wore a doctor’s mask over his mouth and a doctor’s scrub cap over his hair and the lettering on his white linen doctor’s jacket read DR. PFEFFER.

“What have we here?” He picked up my file, scanned quickly through the new-patient questionnaire. “Victor Carl, yes. And you are having some sort of problem?”