Orphans

I started to laugh and my tooth fell out. It's a strange feeling, that. For most people, the last time you lose a tooth is when you're still a kid. There's magic involved, and ritual. An old tooth falls out and a new one pushes its way through your gums to fill its place. Then the placing of the lost tooth under the pillow, waiting for it to turn into treasure.

When your tooth falls out as a sexagenarian though, it is only ritual. And it happens to all of them - except there no more new ones waiting to descend.

I remember the first time it happened to me. We were at the dinner table.

"I can't eat it," I told her, "it's too hard."

"Don't be silly, I know how to cook," she said, flashing me an encouraging smile.

I trusted her. That was my first mistake, the reason I fell in love with her. As soon as I bit into it I heard a muted pop and then the rushing high-frequency sound of pain ringing my skull like a bell. My jaw howled and the gums that surrounded the tooth swelled like red balloons.

This last time though, it only took a smile. She'd told a story about the time we'd gone to a traveling carnival that had just come to town.

"Remember," she said laughing and covering her mouth, "remember that horrible carnival we went to when we were kids; the one they set up in the old church parking lot?"

It was the kind of carnival with old hand-me-down rides covered in grease and somehow still squeaking. Torn down and put up so many times it looked like it was beginning to unseam, like an overused air mattress; leaky, unable to hold shape, deflating around you just slow enough not to notice.

"Yeah," I said. "The one where I spent $20 playing that game trying to win you a pink teddybear? The balls just bounced off the rims no matter which way I threw em. That game was rigged!"

"I still have that bear," she said smiling.

"That's nice. All I have is the memory and some missing teeth."

"I told you I was sorry about that, she said. "I was hoping you'd choke, but instead you just lost a tooth!"

We began to laugh, and as my lips pulled back against my incisors I felt a strange slipping sensation. My tooth had given out like a loose slat in an old wooden fence. My tongue rushed to catch its fall and then surveyed the area around the gum.

"What happened," she asked, as I took the orphaned tooth into my hand.

"You old bitch, you did it again!" I told her.

"At least this time you can't blame it on my cooking," she said.