'Look on the bright side,' he said.

'Is there one?'

'Definitely. The Roux girl is looking at a month of soup and milkshakes.'

'Georgia? I heard she took a hit. How bad?'

'She'll live, but it's going to be a long time before she's pretty.'

'That one was never going to be Miss Apple Blossom.' And, in a lower voice: 'Was it her screaming?'

Barbie nodded. Georgia's yowls had filled the whole hospital, it seemed. 'Rusty gave her morphine, but she didn't go down for a long time. She must have the constitution of a horse.'

'And the conscience of an alligator,' Ginny added in her foggy voice. 'I wouldn't wish what happened to her on anybody, but it's still a damned good argument for karmic retribution. How long have I been here? My darn watch is broken.'

Barbie glanced at his own. 'It's now fourteen thirty. So I guess that puts you about five and a half hours on the road to recovery.' He twisted at the hips, heard his back crackle, and felt it loosen up a litde. He decided Tom Petty was right: the waiting was the hardest part. He reckoned he would feel easier once he was actually in a cell. Unless he was dead. It had crossed his mind that it might be convenient for him to be killed while resisting arrest.

'What are you smiling about?' she asked.

'Nothing.' He held up a set of tweezers. 'Now be quiet and let me do this. Soonest begun, soonest done.'

'I ought to get up and pitch in.'

'If you try it, the only pitching you'll do will be straight down to the floor.'

She looked at the tweezers. 'Do you know what; you're doing with those?'

'You bet. I won a gold medal in Olympic Glass Removal.'

'Your bullshit quotient is even higher than my ex-husband's.' She was smiling a little. Barbie guessed it hurt her, even with painkillers on board, and he liked her for it.

'You're not going to be one of those tiresome medical people who turns into a tyrant when it's her turn for treatment, are you?' he asked.

'That was Dr Haskell. He ran a big splinter under his thumbnail once, and when Rusty offered to take it out, The Wiz said he wanted a specialist.' She laughed, then winced, then groaned.

'If it makes you feel any better, the cop who punched you took a rock in the head.'

'More karma. Is he up and around?'

'Yep.' Mel Searles had walked out of the hospital two hours ago with a bandage wrapped around his head.

When Barbie bent toward her with the tweezers, she instinctively turned her head away. He turned it back, pressing his hand—very gently—against the cheek that was less swollen.

'I know you have to,' she said. 'I'm just a baby about my eyes.'

'Given how hard he hit you, you're lucky the glass is around them instead of in them.'

'I know. Just don't hurt me, okay?'

'Okay,' he said. 'You'll be on your feet in no time, Ginny. I'll make this quick.'

He wiped his hands to make sure they were dry (he hadn't wanted the gloves, didn't trust his grip in them), then bent closer. There were maybe half a dozen small splinters of broken spectacle-lens peppered in her brows and around her eyes, but the one he was worried about was a tiny dagger just below the corner of her left eye. Barbie was sure Rusty would have taken it out himself if he'd seen it, but he had been concentrating on her nose.

Make it quick, he thought. He who hesitates is usually fucked.

He tweezed the shard out and dropped it into a plastic basin on the counter. A tiny seed-pearl of blood welled up where it had been. He let out his breath.'Okay. Nothing to the rest of these. Smooth sailing.'

'From your lips to God's ear,' Ginny said.

He had just removed the last of the splinters when Rusty opened the door of the exam room and told Barbie he could use a little help. The PA was holding a tin Sucrets box in one hand.

'Help with what?'

'A hemorrhoid that walks like a man,' Rusty said.'This anal sore wants to leave with his ill-gotten gains. Under normal circumstances I'd be delighted to see his miserable backside going out the door, but right now I might be able to use him.'

'Ginny?' Barbie asked. 'You okay?'

She made a waving gesture at the door. He had reached it, following after Rusty, when she called, 'Hey, handsome.' He turned back ^nd she blew him a kiss.

Barbie caught it.

8

There was only one dentist in Chester's Mill. His name was Joe Boxer. His office was at the end of Strout Lane, where his dental suite offered a scetiic view of Prestile Stream and the Peace Bridge. Which was nice if you were sitting up. Most visitors to said suite were in the reclining position, with nothing to look at but several dozen pictures of Joe Boxer's Chihuahua pasted on the ceiling.

'In one of them, the goddam dog looks like he's unloading,' Dougie Twitchell told Rusty after one visit. 'Maybe it's just the way that kind of dog sits down, but I don't think so. I think I spent half an hour looking at a dishrag with eyes take a shit while The Box dug two wisdom teeth out of my jaw. With a screwdriver, it felt like.'

The shingle hung outside Dr Boxer's office looked like a pair of basketball shorts large enough to fit a fairy-tale giant. They were painted a gaudy green and gold—the colors of the Mills Wildcats. The sign read JOSEPH BOXER, DDS. And, below that: BOXER IS BRIEF! And he was fairly speedy, everyone agreed, but he recognized no medical plans and accepted only cash. If a pulpcutter walked in with his gums suppurating and his cheeks puffed out like those of a squirrel with a mouthful of nuts and started talking about his dental insurance, Boxer would tell him to get the money from Anthem or Blue Cross or whoever and then come back to see him.

A little competition in town might have forced him to soften these Draconian policies, but the half a dozen who'd tried to make a go of it in The Mill since the early nineties had given up. There was speculation that Joe Boxer's good friend Jim Rennie might have had something to do with the paucity of competition, but no proof. Meantime, Boxer might be seen on any given day cruising around in his Porsche, with its bumper sticker reading MY OTHER CAR IS ALSO A PORSCHE!

As Rusty came down the hall with Barbie trailing after, Boxer was heading for the main doors. Or trying to; Twitch had him by the arm. Hung from Dr Boxer's other arm was a basket filled with Eggo waffles. Nothing else; just packages and packages of Eggos. Barbie wondered—not for the first time—if maybe he was lying in the ditch that ran behind Dipper's parking lot, beaten to a pulp and having a terrible brain-damaged dream.