any tourist looked into the new bedroom mirror, he would see a jagged replica of his own smiling face, and, stepping closer, would watch his face break into dozens of separate faces. Then, pressing his temple and cheekbone against the glass if he wished, he could inspect the image of his own reflection in his eyeball. This way, any tourist looking into Dr. Sandborn’s mirrors secured instant friends. After just one tour, mouth mirrors would become funhouse mirrors.
He thought of everything. He went beyond the normal tour guide’s duties. For instance, he placed a can of Dee Fog Spray on the bathroom and kitchen sinks, in case any tourists showered, shaved, or did the dishes. He supplied empty Starlite and Shofu boxes in the bathroom and bedroom so tourists could deposit their cosmetics, keys, and change in case of an overnight stay. He filled water bottles with Sparkl solution and lined them up on the kitchen counter next to a small cardboard sign: “If you want to have a water battle with another tourist, use Sparkl! It’s safer and more hygienic than water, and it won’t wrinkle your clothes.” He scattered unmailed letters and Christmas cards addressed to patients on the coffee table, covering them with dentistry stamps, including the famous one depicting Henri Moissan and the two recent sets issued by Kuwait. And finally, for the coup de maître, he casually left Atlas of the Mouth opened to the pages on “Growth and Calcification Patterns of Enamel and Dentin,” and propped the open book up in front of the television screen.
Seven years earlier, Sandborn had sat comfortably in Dr. Riddle’s office chair.
“Listen to me, Sandbo. In one year you will be practicing. In one year I will have to call you doctor.”
“Yes,” Sandborn said.
“So you think you know it all? Now you’ve heard all about fissured tongues and subligual carbuncles so you think you’re a hot property, right?”
“So they tell me.”
“Who wrote The Talking Tooth?”
Sandborn continued to push the memory buttons on Dr. Riddle’s chair, enjoying the soft, humming whir whenever the chair moved.
“The Talking Tooth. Who wrote it?”
“We didn’t study that.”
“And I’ll tell you why you didn’t study it. Because it’s about pain. The real thing. Pain. You don’t want to know about pain. Only money. I’ll tell you who wrote it: Dr. Jim Cranshaw.”
“The Jim Cranshaw?”
“His first book; a novel. The only real book he ever wrote. Before he sold out and started that chain of roto-dentists in shopping malls. I got a flyer last week about his latest scheme. Founding the first Amway for dentists. Every dentist is a shareholder. Dentists peddling products to other dentists for Christ’s sake. An oral sensation. Word of mouth. DentAm. AmDent. DentAmerica.”
“Sounds like a good idea,” Sandborn said.
“Exactly. You think it’s a good idea because you still don’t understand what it’s all about. Listen to this passage from The Talking Tooth. It’s written from the perspective of a mandibular lateral incisor:
“The lesion began as a small blister, but soon fine white lacy lines were radiating from the margin. They closed around me like a pillow and whispered promises into the night. Vainly I believed them, ignoring the violaceous papules that subtly crept over my body. I slept most of the day and drank most of the night. Finally I realized what was really happening to me. I screamed to have my entire area indurated.
“Induration!” I screamed. “Induration or death!”
“That’s easy,” said Sandborn. “Wickham’s disease. The lacy lines will soon be—”
“I’m not asking for a prognosis, Sandhead! I’m talking about the real thing! The lacy lines will be your patient’s fingers wanting to close around your throat every time you go into a mouth! The screams you’ll hear at night! The pain you’ll never hear about! Don’t you realize what I’m telling you, boy?”
“No,” Sandborn said.
To appeal to the auditory sense, Dr. Sandborn provided a subtle alternative to elevator music—tapes that would be played suggestively in the background during the tour. He recorded some of the more popular TV shows with his VCR on the chance that the actors might make dental references, then rerecorded selected bits from the VCR tape onto a cassette tape, then remixed live from the cassette tape onto another cassette tape, dubbing in his own comments when appropriate, with a low-speed intraflex lux drill running serenely in the background. He began the tape with Fascinating Facts They Don’t Tell You on TV. For instance, when Bill Cosby said “There’s something berry crazy in the jello freezer,” the commercial failed to acknowledge that Cosby was sitting comfortably in a dentist’s chair at the time. Dr. Sandborn acknowledged it. When Johnny Carson ridiculed Dr. Mendelsohn’s letter asking for kinder treatment of the dental profession, NBC failed to admit that Johnny’s second wife divorced him because he ground his teeth at night—the real reason, Dr. Sandborn knew, why Johnny never told any bruxism jokes. Dr. Sandborn admitted it. Alex P. Keaton’s comment that he preferred an evening of mime to an evening of dentistry posed problems until Dr. Sandborn simply switched the words “mime” and “dentistry.” Surprisingly, some comments needed no editing, such as those by the dentist on M*A*S*H, who once avoided the latrine for eighteen hours straight and refused to kiss a nurse because of the germs. Of course, Dr. Sandborn excluded some material, such as Dick York’s son boring a butterknife through a piece of toast to mimic a dentist’s drill, and Dick getting his root canal atop a merry-go-round horse instead of in a proper dentist’s chair, with the heavily moustached dentist wearing an absurd purple cape and dressed like David Copperfield. Some tourists, Dr. Sandborn knew, would misinterpret such information if it were included, and his tape would become counterproductive.
For the more hip kids and teenagers, he used Thomas McGuire’s book, The Tooth Trip, reading aloud into a microphone from select sections of the book such as “A Day in the Life of a Germ,” “The Bad Acid Trip,” “Stimudents,” “Your First Encounter with Chief White Coat,” “Cavitron,” and “How To Tell When You Have One.” And, for the particularly squeamish, Dr. Sandborn read from Stolzenberg’s Psychosomatics and Suggestion Therapy in Dentistry, with a Red Wing lathe running in the background to subliminally ease any tourist’s lathe-anxiety.
“Did you ever realize,” he read aloud, “that it takes more muscular effort to produce a frown than it does to produce a smile? The recent war produced many examples of physical disabilities which, basically, were nothing more than the physical expression of the mental fear of being exposed to danger in the armed services. In psychological terms, the suspicion attaches to every dentist, as it does to every surgeon, masseur, policeman, animal trainer, hangman, etc., that he likes his work. The public expects them to hate their work and engage in it with repugnance, or else be tarred with the brush of cruelty and sadism. So smile, it really makes a difference!”
Dr. Sandborn listened to the tapes over and over until they became white noise.
Five years earlier, Sandborn had sat in Dr. Riddle’s dining room, eating the largest meal he had had in years.
“Taste this Sandy,” Dr. Riddle said, shoving a forkful of bouillabaisse in front of Sandborn’s mouth.
The bouillabaisse tasted like white rice with margarine. In fact, everything tasted like white rice with margarine, but there was no white rice with margarine on the table.
“Please dear, Mr. Sandborn looks full enough already,” Mrs. Riddle said.
“So you think he’s fat, do you?” Dr. Riddle said, poking towards Sandborn’s belly. “The wife here thinks you’re too fat.”
“Thanks, I really am full,” Sandborn said.
“You could stand to lose a few pounds,” Mrs. Riddle said.
“Now let’s treat our guest with some respect, dear. Tomorrow this boy graduates and goes into private practice with me.”