Lucky Girl

by Tatiana Pahlen

     Two things Nora feared the most: dentists and horses. She wouldn't mind sitting on the back of a horse and riding one, in fact, she loved it, but God forbid standing in front of these beasts and feeding them. Only God knows what horses are looking at, but never into the human's eyes. She couldn't bring herself to trust anyone that couldn't maintain eye contact. Nora remembered her best friend from elementary school, Lisa, lying on the ground: her ruffled white blouse dotted with a bloodstain in the exact shape of an apple, like the red Macintosh she was clutching in her hand. It was the horse Lisa had looked after that killed her.
     For years Nora couldn't erase this dreadful scene from her mind. Just like her reminiscence of her first visit to the dentist when she was eight. She liked going there at first. The room was filled with toys; they even insisted she take home a plush rabbit she favored, the one with bent ears. A man resembling a butcher in a starched white robe rolled up his sleeves and asked Nora to chant the letter "A-A-A" and keep her mouth wide open. Nora did, and was rewarded by a severe pain around her gums. She fainted. When she opened her eyes, the hairy arms had been shaking her shoulders, and the red apples were multiplying on the butcher's robe, blood straining from her mouth, sore and numb, leaving this awful metallic taste in her tongue. The smiling man showed her the craggy tooth he had just pulled out; Nora then fainted again.
     It took two decades before she dragged herself back to the dentist. The pain in the jaw was unbearable.
     It all started six months ago when she filed for divorce. Stanley, a former jet pilot, lean and toned with the appearance of a perfect gentleman with blond neatly combed hair and strong features, in his late forties, didn't accept her demand for a divorce. They had been married for ten years and Nora in the beginning was happy. They travelled the globe taking studies in foreign languages. He taught her golf, and she taught him tennis and dance. Often, at the nightclubs, they were the most attractive couple on the dance floor. Then suddenly it all changed. His jealousy grew like poisonous mushrooms after rain. There were no more clubs; he cut her off from their friends, then relatives. Stanley controlled her every step. Frequently, when he had assumed men were looking at her, he had started fistfights mostly in public places, particularly in restaurants, as waiters were carrying hot dish trays that would fly over their heads.
     She just had turned thirty-six and looked rather winning with her shapely long legs, which made her appear taller than she actually was. Her thick brown hair was casually tied in a ponytail. Her large brown eyes seemed hypnotic. She had been raised under the absolute authority of her father; hence she had become the absolute possession of her husband.
     For the last two years Nora had worked in a small printing company, owned by her late father. Every morning Stanley walked his wife to the office and brought her home, embarrassing her in front of the employees. Thinking of it, the pain in the jaw increased.
     She examined the clock hanging on the wall between Dr. Katz's two diplomas and a large reproduction of Monet's "Lily Ponds;" the dentist was behind in his schedule. Nora went through the pile of "New Yorker" magazines and checked quite a few before she unearthed a five-year-old, withered issue, dated May 22, 1995. She stopped on the enticing title: "Jealous Husband Returns in Form of Parrot" by Robert Olen Butler. Turning the page she forgot all about the pain; her lips stretched in a generous sneer as she was reading the parrot's tale: A suspicious husband climbed the tree to spy on his promiscuous wife. He fell and died. Later he became reincarnated as a parrot. One day his wife went to the pet store and bought this peculiar bird.
     "Poor thing," Nora chuckled. "Imagine if it was Stan! Lovers? I was robbed out of my girlfriends!"
     Nora remembered that once when she was on the phone, having fun with a friend Sandy, Stan, enraged, painfully pulled her ponytail shouting that she was not laughing at his jokes but others.
     The day Nora requested a divorce, Stanley destroyed all of her shoes, most of them Manolo Blahniks that he personally had picked at Barneys. He locked her in the study room and disconnected the phone lines. She managed to break out and run away barefoot. He found her at her cousin's place and dashed her head against the wall before he was whisked away by the police. Since that day the excruciating pain remained in her jaw. After the divorce Nora had to obtain an order protection against her former husband and moved far off from her bygone neighborhood.
     All this time that Nora had spent in the waiting room she hadn't noticed that the radio was loud before it had begun playing "Love Bites," the song they both enjoyed in the early years of their marriage by the rock group, Def Leopard. She felt sad and lonely. The lyrics were bringing her to tears. She moved her lips, singing silently: "Love bites, love hurts . . ."
     The door opened and a tall woman in her early fifties with a long, narrow face and enlarged mouth entered like a fire. Her red mane hung over shoulders; a scrawny forelock laid with such aplomb on her forehead, like that of a racehorse, that could be found in some overripe women with the protruding bangs of a girlish hairdo. Her smile was a bit too friendly. Her beeper went off and she emptied her pockets in search of change.
     "Can't believe it – I left my wallet! Damn, my cell phone too?" She groaned with a raspy voice, a poor imitation of Marlene Dietrich. "By any chance . .?" She looked at Nora.
     "Sure," said Nora offering a handful of change.
As the woman dialed from a nearby public booth, Nora went on reading. Now the husband/parrot had been placed near the master bedroom of his wife/mistress, where he screamed viciously from his cage. The jolly widow daily received a group of male visitors. The parrot watched the men, spitting like a camel through the bars and cursing at them with a whim of a sailor.
     And again Nora thought about Stanley. They met through their mutual friend Paul, who lived next door from her. She didn't know it was all planned; he confessed later how he begged her neighbor to introduce him to her. He worshiped her name "Nora," the name of the mother he never knew; she had died in a plane crash when he was two. Hating everything about the aircraft, Stanley had become a pilot just to fight his fear of flying.
     Stan proposed on the first day they met. She agreed to exchange vows the following week. But during the last year of their marriage, he kept reverting to the same question: his humiliation in having to wait a week for her decision. Why did she marry him? He was charming, passionate and determined. Did she love him then? She wasn't sure. But her feelings for Stan had grown stronger over the next years.
      A flippant voice on the phone caught her ear.
      "You don't smoke? I'll make sure there are no smokers on my short list! What about age? Okay." She reached for a notebook. "Brunettes?"
The woman pulled her head from the phone booth and measured Nora. Then she winked at her. Nora covered her face with "The New Yorker." She wanted to finish this story of a jealous husband, before she would be called into the dentist, but couldn't go on, stuck between the radio and this grating voice . . .
     The other seemed overjoyed. "You really want to get married?" she yelled the last words, making sure that Nora got the message and peered at her brazenly, sticking out her left thumb with a perfect pink fingernail. Nora glimpsed at her own nails which didn't look groomed and hid them in the small fists.
     "I'll call you right back!" She hung up and approached Nora. "How old are you honey?"
     "I am not interested." Nora was astonished by the sound of her own voice; it had given away all signs of a desperate woman.
     "Hey, listen, girl! I have a man for you! A dream man, any woman's desire!" she smooched the tips of her fingers. "A Fab-b-bulous guy!"
     "How do you know I am single?" Nora followed up with a fake annoyance.
     The redhead looked at her lovingly like a mother at a child.
     "It's so obvious, dear! Your height?"
     "Five foot five."
     "No problem! Do you like golf?" Nora shook her head.
     "We can fix it!" The raspy voice softened. "Old movies?"
     "I prefer to watch them alone!" Nora figured if she would continue giving hostile answers, it would let her off the hook. She asked herself why she let this woman interrogate her in the first place.
     The woman ignored the last comment.
     "Walking on the beach, dining out?" She smirked revealing a row of long teeth.      "Who doesn't? How about fishing?"
     "Entirely."
     "Opera? Theater?"
     "You bet!"
     "Perfect," roared the voice. "What a lucky girl! The man wants to get married. What are you doing later?"
     "I'm having dinner with my cousin." Nora began to blush. No more answers she decided. No matter what she's going to hear.
     "Break it, dear. This is a real thing!"
     "Sorry, I didn't catch your name." Nora hated herself for carrying on the small talk and, against her own will, added, "I'm Nora."
     The matchmaker glanced at the watch she wore on the right wrist, a golden Cartier with the diamonds around the square head.
     "It's Ms. Stitch. You can call me Sara Veronica."
     "You know, Sara Veronica, I'm not too keen to meet men." Nora filtered the oxygen in her lungs. "I'm freshly unbound. I don't want to be married again" She felt a huge burden fall from her shoulders.
     "Good timing," cried the horse-head. "Shall I call him back, dear?"
The woman with the name as long as her face dialed over and over apparently stuck on the busy signals. Nora scanned abruptly the end of the story in the New Yorker, regretting this new acquaintance that had interfered with her reading before she had overheard.
     "Yes! Her name is Nora. Tonight at seven, at 'Palms.' Yes, I am positive."
The matchmaker hung up the phone with delight.
     "You're lucky, lucky girl! Can you believe it? The man worships your name! His mother's name was Nora!"
     Nora leaped from her chair; the pain in the jaw returned.
     "Were you just on the phone with Stanley Duke?"
     "How do you know dear?" The matchmaker was losing aplomb. Her forelock now laid flat as she suddenly looked like a tired steed that lost a trail.
     Nora made sure that Sara Veronica would not get her reply. The dentist's door with the sign "Dr. Leo Katz" went wide open, then loudly shut. Nora had just slammed it.