The next morning, Bethany walked into the office clutching her chin and massaging her cheeks. Her face was swollen. She said nothing, which didn’t seem like her. Bethany loved to chitchat. She never slipped in and went directly to her desk; she liked to act like the mayor of the office. Going back and forth, greeting everyone as if it hadn’t been only less than a day since they’d last seen each other. Charlie and Lena exchanged looks. Mouthed at each other a conversation about whether they should, or could, ask if she was okay. Instead of logging into her computer, Bethany sat at her desk. She stared at her STRESSED IS JUST DESSERTS SPELLED BACKWARD! poster as if there was something deep and wonderful that she could learn from the motto or the cake illustration.
Day 15: You are told by Charlie (the manager) that you will be doing online leadership courses given by corporate. Someone is stealing Bethany’s (the receptionist) yogurt and she is fed up. The water continues to taste weird and everyone is annoyed that Bethany has forgotten to order a water cooler. Lena showed Charlie her sheet and whispered, “Maybe she’s really into the idea of being fed up that someone ate her yogurt.”
“Maybe,” Charlie replied. “She’s probably getting divorced. That seems like a my-romantic-life-is-a-mess face, not a someone-ate-my-fucking-yogurt face.”
They both turned to Mariah as if she were a real human resources person and might say something. She was watching a video of cats knocking things off desks and muttering to herself, “Nice one.”
Lena went back to her desk. She tried to psych herself up to ask Bethany what was wrong. Bethany was visibly crying now. She opened her mouth. Her tongue was black as if she had swallowed printer ink. She reached in and pulled out a tooth. Whole and bloody with what looked like a vein still attached. The moment pushed Lena briefly out of her body and away from her emotions. She felt she could see everything in high definition. Bethany’s blood-smeared chin. The drops of blood on the neck of the light-pink blouse she was wearing. Dark red on her fingertips. The off-white tooth. Bethany’s black tongue, the vein in the center a graphite-gray. Then Lena returned to her body, sure she was going to faint. She focused on her keyboard, the gray stain on the letter “I.” She took a gulp of water. Her neck and ears felt sweaty.
Charlie stood behind her. He put his hands over his eyes.
One of the observers, whom Lena thought of as Haircut, scribbled a note but didn’t say anything.
Lena dug in her purse, pulled out a bottle of pain pills she was prescribed for her wrist and her tiny first-aid kit. She placed them on Bethany’s desk without looking directly at her bloody chin and mouth. “Bethany, maybe you should go home.”
Bethany opened her mouth and another tooth fell out. It was pointed, probably a canine.
Ian walked back in holding a bag of potato chips from the vending machine. His eyes traveled from Bethany’s bloody mouth to the tooth on the ground to the tooth she was still clutching in her hand. He sat down in the closest chair. Dropped his chips. They scattered on the floor.
Charlie’s voice was firm. “Please go to the hospital, Bethany.” The observers, all of them, were looking at Bethany or looking at their notepads as they scribbled down everything that was happening, their mouths a thin line. One murmured, “Interesting.” The sound of their pens scratching on the paper sped up as Bethany moaned in pain.
“Good data,” one said, pointing at another’s sheet.
“I’m fine,” Bethany said, her voice muffled.
Lena wondered how Bethany could talk. The pain must have been incredible.
Tom put his head between his knees and was taking deep breaths. Lena clicked around on her screen, pretended she was working. Disgust was pressing its lips against her ears, her mouth, her neck. The tangy smell of blood and bad breath was in the air. Lena’s face was hot. She refused to give in, to vomit or faint. Lena covered her mouth and nose with her hand, breathed in the hand sanitizer smell.
Bethany held seven teeth in her hand, rattled them. She stood up and walked over to Lena’s desk and touched Lena’s shoulder. Her fingertips were wet, and Lena shut her eyes for a moment. Bethany touched a front tooth with a finger. Pulled. It slid out. Lena smelled blood again and stale coffee. Bethany held the tooth close to Lena’s face. “I never thought teeth could be warm. They feel so cool in my mouth.”
Lena turned and threw up in the recycling bin near her desk. She didn’t bother to wipe her chin. “This is a fucking nightmare.”
Another observer came out into the work area and walked down the aisle between the cubicles. He was pale in a way that people probably couldn’t resist commenting on. His hair looked as if he had just pulled off a winter hat. It was the observer from the morning after the cabin. The hair on Lena’s arms stood up. Her mouth opened, and she shut it quickly. Maybe his job was to deal with study subjects whenever they were about to have a meltdown. Taking Lena to get treated, he had spoken to her the entire time so she wouldn’t think about the pain. Lena couldn’t remember now what he had said, only the sound of his voice: calm, low, smooth. He brushed past her, didn’t seem to notice her, and took Bethany’s arm. “Let’s see if we can make you feel a little better.”
Dr. Lisa let everyone go home for the rest of the day. Ian celebrated a little. “Yes, long weekend,” he said to himself, not noticing everyone else’s uncomfortable looks.
As they pushed open the doors to the parking lot, Dr. Lisa touched Lena’s shoulder and whispered, “Holy shit, that was the grossest thing I have ever seen.”
Before Lena could figure out how to respond, Dr. Lisa was already in her car, swinging the door shut.
13
Lena drove to Larson & Sons, the locally owned grocery store. She had what she tried to call a case of the Sunday Nights, too anxious about the work week ahead to enjoy her time off. What if they did something to make her lose all her teeth? What if they sent her back to the cabin? She cleaned her apartment, but it was only 6:30. Texted a little with Tanya. Her 8 p.m. video-chat date with Deziree only lasted 10 minutes; she’d had unexpected dinner plans with some of the ladies on the block. Had to get back over to Miss Cassandra’s for dessert and cards.
To take her mind off of everything, Lena puttered around the store, picking up containers of things like cookie butter and looking at them for a long time. Was it butter flavored like cookies? Cookies that had somehow been turned into a paste?
From the corner of her eye, she saw a man wearing a white T-shirt, a baggy jean jacket, and a backward blue baseball cap. He wasn’t pretending to look at the soups at the aisle’s end. Face and body were turned toward her. He was sizing her up, carefully watching her hands. He had a blond mustache, no beard, eyes that were maybe blue. His face was red, as if he had been rubbing it in frustration, or maybe as if he’d been drinking before coming to the grocery store.
Lena turned away and left the aisle. She grabbed a basket and went to the produce aisle. Tomatoes, olives from the salad bar, fresh parsley. The misting system came on and she resisted the impulse to put her hand beneath, catch some droplets. When she turned, the man was at the strawberries, his arms folded. Again, he didn’t pretend not to be watching her.
Tomorrow would be her third week in Lakewood, and Lena was starting to get used to someone watching her. But here she was aware, if he wanted to, he could easily pick her up. No one knew where she was. Her car was parked at the back of the grocery store parking lot. beneath the flickering light, probably out of the range of the security cameras. Every time she engaged with the news, there seemed to be another story about a black person getting murdered in a public place by an angry white man or a scared white man or a high-on-drugs white man. She pulled out her phone to call someone, then put it back in her pocket. It was better to be aware. And besides, what was she going to say—I have a weird feeling? And PS, I’m currently in a well-lit space, with people around.