HYGIENISTS IN PRINT—RDHs ROCK--FICTION & NONFICTION-AUGUST 2011 [[AUTHORS’S ANSWERS]] MIDNIGHT IN PARIS, the movie, talking about time travel, I went to the DDS, and he had no novocaine. HORRIBLE BOSSES-the movie-Jennifer Aniston “plays a dentist who is annoying, inappropriate, disrespectful... in short, anything but good.” I haven’t seen it yet. In June, 2011, 81 year-old James “Whitey” Bulger, the #2 most wanted criminal on the FBI list was caught in Santa Monica, CA. He is from Boston. RDH Catherine Greig, 60, his longtime girlfriend, also from MA, was arrested with him. They have been hunted for 16 years. She got her teeth whitened every month & had her hair done regularly so the FBI put out notices in different place & cities to help find her. It worked. My big question is how did he meet her? Was it getting his teeth cleaned? According to 1 source on Google, the couple met thru mutual friends. She had a few aliases & a twin sister. INK FLAMINGOES= Karen E. Olson The story has roots in the mall on the Vegas strip where Brett Kavanaugh has her high-end tattoo shop The Painted Lady. Why did singer Dee Carmichael get another tattoo from someone other than Brett since she did all her others? Why is the tat colored if she’s allergic to dye? Who murdered her? It looks like someone is trying to stick Dee’s death on Brett. This person is also impersonating Brett in more ways than 1, doing a blog claiming Brett murdered Dee, stalking Brett, taking pictures of her, putting them on a blog, & breaking into her & her brother the cop’s house. Pack in a couple of more murders that Brett fortunately has an alibi for. PAINTED TIDBITS: Ainsley Wainwright is a RDH who either appears or whose name is mentioned throughout. really not her fault that she gets murdered. [[Olson created Ainsley as a RDH because= “I needed an occupation for Ainsley & I had just been to the dentist for a teeth cleaning. The RDHs at my DDS’s office are all lovely women & it just seemed to be a no-brainer for Ainsley. I wanted her to be a nice girl, but one who had this secret life as a tattoo blogger, & it fit her.”]]=1. "I swallowed hard, forcing some saliva into my mouth so I could speak." 2. [[“I included the cleaning because it was a way to get Joel into the office to ask questions.”]] "She worked for a DDS,' Bitsy said, holding up a piece of paper she'd taken off 1 of the dressers. Looking closely, I saw it was a pay stub from a local dental group. 'Maybe we'd have better luck going there & talking to them.' Bitsy suggested. 'Maybe you cold get your teeth cleaned or something.' 'Or maybe you could' 'Or maybe Joel could.' We both started cracking up a little over that, sending Joel to a DDS just to get information." 3. "But since Tim said the dead girl in here was identified as Ainsley , & the paycheck stub Bitsy had shown me inside had indicated that the woman who lived here & worked for the DDS was, in fact, Ainsley, then for some reason her sister was using her name." 4. "She worked at a dental group?" "She was a hygienist." 5. p.. 263/4 "Her sister worked for a DDS.' I struggled to remember what it had said on that paycheck stub. 'Carruthers? Columbia? Something with a '' 'Corinthian.' The word slipped off Joel's tongue easily.' .Bitsy made me make an appointment for a cleaning. I’m supposed to go tomorrow. See what I can find out.' He made a face. 'I don't like the DDS’ '[[People don't generally love going to the DDS.. I even have a friend who takes Xanax to go. I avoided the dentist for years because I always ended up having work done when I went. But we have a new dentist now who's great & I'm taking better care of my teeth so I haven't had any issues lately, knock on wood! And my dentist does have evening hours one night a week, so that's where I came up with that concept.”]] 'No one likes the DDS,' I said. 'So why don't we go now? Pretend that you thought the appointment was today. we could ask questions.' ...'It's too late, ' Joel said. 'It's after 7.' 'Sometimes DDSs stay open late. It's a Thursday. Maybe they're like banks & they're open late on Thursdays." 5. "We're going to check out that DDS office where Ainsley Wainwright worked. See if they knew anything about her sister." 6. "...and I squeezed my long legs in the back, angling them so I wouldn't feel too squished. Joel told Jeff where we were headed. 'DDS, huh?' Joel just grunted, clearly put out that Bitsy had put it on him to handle this unpleasant undercover operation." ..."I needed to be at the top of my game, because I was sure that there would have to be some fancy footwork to find out anything about Ainsley Wainwright at her former place of employment. But as the car turned into the parking lot, it became obvious that this was not going to be our final destination after all, even though my suspicions about the office staying open late were on target." 7. "What if this really was Ainsley, & it was her sister who was murdered instead? I mean, she had been at the DDS office where she worked & then gone to her apartment. What if the murder had been a case of mistaken identity? What if whoever killed her sister had meant to kill her instead?" But that would mean that the Ainsley I met was leading some sort of double life. RDH by day, sex kitten for Sherman Potter by night." [[Olson inlayed “I am smiling as I write this. I had no idea I had so many dentist references in this book!! Thanks so much for donating a copy of the book to the museum!! I'm so thrilled!!”]] DENTAL DRIVEN TO INK Karen E. Olson = Vegas tattoo shop owner Brent Kavenaugh loans her car to her friend’s mother & her fiancé so they can use the drive-thru wedding chapel. When Brent gets her car back, she discovers a dead man in her trunk with a tattoo machine clip cord around his neck. DENTAL STICKERS: 1, :Jeff took a toothpick out of his front shirt pocket & stuck it in his mouth, chewing gently on it.” 2. “She wasn’t here when they got here. She came in late. DDS or something.” OTHER RESORT CITIES STORIES=Tod Goldberg =PALM SPRINGS Tania used to work & take the bus in Reno. Now she’s in Desert Hot Springs, working in Palm Springs, still riding a bus, & still working in a casino as a cocktail waitress. At 47 she remembers what her 20’s were like. Life didn’t go as she planned. Tania hit it big once in Vegas & got enough money to put a down payment on a house in the 90’s. Tania’s looking for her adopted Russian daughter Natalya, whom she adopted her after her dog died. The inspiration came after watching a TV show about Russian orphanages’ troubles. “She would look into dental hygiene schoolseveral girls she’d worked with at the Mirage were studying at the community college during the day to become RDHs, & it sounded like a good job, albeit 1spent on your feet all day bent over people, which in concept sounded not much different than cocktailing. She soon discovered adopting isn’t easy but is costly. Her winnings weren’t even enough. Her family gave her money.. Tania “wonders if she were a RDH-if she somehow managed to finally pass chemistry” (she failed a number of times), “if people were able to tell just by looking at her. Maybe she might be mistaken for a doctor occasionally. That wouldn’t be so awful, And maybe people would treat her with respect without understanding why they did it.”…..”The idea of being a hygienist was a good 1, & she really pursued it during that year of waiting, if not else because it looked good on all of her applications. She wasn’t just a cocktail waitress, she was ‘studying to become a RDH, & people at the various agencies seemed to treat that with some dignity.” Tania realized if it weren’t for a date, she’d be on the internet searching for Natalya, & also she probably won’t ever see her again. One good line in the story LIVING ROOM, “when Zack doesn’t show back up after 7 hours, I decide to slip into his casita to see if he’s sick or if he’s fallen in the shower or if he’s hanging by a noose made of dental floss.” In the story THE MODELS there is a place called Sawtooth Mills, a gated community in Scottsdale. There’s also a restaurant called Thai Smile. In OTHER RESORT CITIES Tania is back to when she had just gotten Natalya who spit out that Vegas isn’t like home. “I’m going to work on that,’ Tania says, though the truth is that she has no idea how she’ll change anything. She’s been in school for the last 6 months trying to become a RDH to give herself& Natalya a chance at a life outside Vegas, but has failed chemistry twice in that span.” At 1 point she stopped going to class. “Tania’s father now has a doughy quality to his skin & has become obsessive about odd things; the price of gas, the amount of advertising in baseball stadiums, other peoples’ teeth.” He does comment to her that, “Aren’t you surprised by how nice Natalya’s teeth are. I just assumed they’d be in really poor shape.” There is a note at the book’s end stating “These stories originally appeared, often in significantly different form, in the following publications: PALM SPRINGS was in HOT METAL BRIDGE, & THE MODELS in SANTA MONICA REVIEW. BURN NOTICE THE END GAME Tod Goldberg In Miami ex spy Michael Westen is asked by partner Sam Axe to help a wealthy man save his wife & young daughter who are on a yacht with no idea that they’ve been kidnapped & could be murdered. Someone wants this man to lose a huge yacht race. Helping him is his brother Nate & Fiona Glenanne, who is a number of things to Michael, including ex girlfriend & former IRA person. HOT DENTAL: 1. He noticed Walt even had dentures now. Weird, because the last time they’d done work together was just a few months previous, & the guy had a full mouth of god-given teeth. 2. After about 10 minutes of this 1-handed show, which also involved Walt making a weird clicking noise with his tongue against the roof of his dentures, he set the laptop aside. Technology has a way of passing you by if you’re busy getting dentures & playing golf. 3.-He really had to ask him about the denture thing. It was quite curious, since the NSA had a helluva health plan. What happened with your teeth? Got tired of ‘em, he said. One less thing to worry about. …..Day you retire, you’ll start thinking about getting rid of your chompers, too. .4. But his teeth were staying put. In the spirit of being fraternal, however, Sam thought he’d ask Walt for the name of his DDS at some point so Walt wouldn’t feel like Sam was just using him for his technological expertise. Walt ran his tongue over the front of his “teeth” ! thought about it for a moment. 5. He had a lot of ego for a guy with no teeth, but a few seconds of clicking delivered Sam the answer he was afraid of. 6. Walt smiled, which made Sam recoil. Man, those teeth looked strange. They were just too white, 6. His gums were too pink & his tongue, well, his tongue was too gray. Sam made a mental note that when he retired he was going to brush his teeth 3 times a day, just to make up for whatever karmic tarnishing was going on this day. 7. The guard smiled & Fi saw that her teeth were insanely white. Nice teeth are important but this was absurd. It was like she had a mouth filled with piano keys. 8.-Sam could hear a light tapping sound, as if maybe Darleen was clicking her teeth together,….He heard that tapping sound again & realized that was actually the sound of her typing in the background. 9.getting his square on the chin might snap your temporomandibular joint like a chicken bone. 10. even if your ancestors didn’t see a saber-toothed tiger lurking…. BURN NOTICE-THE FIX-Tod Goldberg =Cricket O’Connor fell in love & got screwed by a guy who claims he was on a hushed secret mission. Michael Westen & friends are out to get her money back. DENTAL SOLUTIONS: 1. “Hit someone in the mouth, there’s an excellent chance you’ll end up with teeth lodged in your knuckles, which is hard to explain when you’re in the hospital.” 2. “I broke his nose & took out at least 5 teeth, maybe more if he swallowed a couple, but 5 was what was left on the ground.” 3. After Blue Shirt & Striped Shirt stopped gagging, Stripped Shirt on the perfect mixture of his own blood & a nice sum of his own teeth, I gave a whistle to get their attention.” 4. “I looked over at the fellow under the mirror, the ! who would need some real dental care if he hoped to chew anything ever again..” 5. I’d forgotten him entirely if I hadn’t had to pull bits of his teeth & bone from my skin using tweezers that morning.” BURN NOTICE-THE GIVEAWAY--Tod Goldberg =Michael Westen gets a call from 1 of his contacts asking him to help his friend Bruce Goldberg, “a legendary gentleman thief” Now of jail, Bruce is back to his own profession, & unfortunately, he ripped off a motorcycle gang. Some stuff he wants to give him back. He also wants to help his sick, elderly mother. DENTAL PROBLEMS: 1. “Max,’ I said, ‘you’ve been hit in the face.” “My jaw really hurts,” he said’ “It’s going to for about a week. You might want to see a DDS if your bite feels off.” 2. “Barry made a noise into the phone that sounded a lot like a painful groan. As if maybe he were having a root canal without Novocaine.” THE EXECTUOR Jesse Kellerman =Joey Geist, from a dysfunction family in the mid west, goes to Harvard for a PhD. After 8 years he hasn’t finished it & his live-in girlfriend & Harvard spit him out. He gets a job with a 70-something year old woman as a conversationalist. From that point on, things go down hill & not just for Joey. There are 3 deaths to contend with. My question is, what does one do with a PhD in Philosophy, other than teach? DENTAL DOS:-1.-“Something didn’t jibe,& I had the feeling that I was staring into the mouth of a scam.” 2. “A group of teenagers had gathered in front of the entrance to the T: the Pit Kids, suburban goth-punks with safety pins in their ears, their ragged outfits belied by years of expensive orthodonture…” 3.-“I brushed my teeth until I spat blood.” DEAD RINGER= Michael A. Black & Julie Hyzy=(Both have other series)=The book is written from 2 points of view. Michael does the PI/ World Heavyweight Kickboxing Champion Ron Shade.& Julie does reporter Alex St. James taking place in Chicago, including a Vegas visit. Slade’s been hired by an insurance company to look for Robert Bayless, married with a teenage son, who supposedly died in a traffic accident & was buried. Someone swore he heard Bayless’ distinctive laugh while visiting Vegas. Shade goes to where Bayless’ car supposedly caught on fire after hitting Deadman’s Curve. He was only able to be identified by dental records. Once Shade shows discrepancies into this to the local police, they become much more interested if Bayless is really alive. His secretary left town after he died. Things get dicey for Shade while rooting this out. Alex’s boss at the TV station wants her to go undercover, going outside at night under a bridge portraying a homeless person even though it isn’t safe. He even gets her a taser that is illegal to use. There’s a young cameraman around to “help” her just in case & 2 people in an unmarked news van. She’s also trying to find out about her real parents. An old friend of her adopted parents is a lawyer & has agreed to help her. He bridges her to a priest who has a place to help the homeless whom she contacts before the assignment. The 1st time she goes out, things get dangerous when 3 big guys come after her. She wonders if it was a set up. She decides to hire Shade to protect her when going undercover again. [[Black injected:: “It's been a while since we wrote that one & to tell you the truth, I'm not sure about a lot of your questions. My DDS buddy blasted me on the "anterior molars" gaff, but I figured since Colon was a bad dentist, it wouldn't matter too much if he misspoke. My father was a dental technician & actually worked on the first Mayor Daley's bridge. My dad was head of the bridge department for South Shore Dental Lab. They moved to the Pittsfield Building & I used to be delivery boy in the summers as a kid. I also use to don an apron & do articulations in the lab when I wasn't delivering packages to DDSs in the Loop or taking the train to Hyde Park to make deliveries. Some of them I just can't recall the reasons we wrote it as we did. It was a couple of books ago.”]] [[Hyzy’s injections: I didn't realize how many times we made references to teeth. Quite the eye-opener. Mike & I have a mutual friend-also named Mike-who is a DDS. I think he had a couple of issues with a few passages, but mostly thought we'd gotten it right. Always tough, playing to the crowd that knows their stuff far better than we do! I can tell you that the reason I had Alex find the appointment card was to give her an excuse to see Dr. Colon. He, as you know, is a key player in the scheme & had to get her there somehow. The appointment card was an important clue. As far as Vicki is concerned, I was shocked & surprised by an article that showed the ravages of meth addiction. How much it ages people, ruins their teeth, their faces, their lives. Pictures were vividly horrifying. Anyway - that's why I mentioned Vicki's teeth in that section. And... just so you know ... my husband, my kids, and I all religiously have our teeth cleaned/checked every six months. In fact, one of the hygienists has inspired me to write a scene with her. I haven't figured out where to put it yet. She's very sweet. Anyway, I have a humorous scene figured out - just nowhere to put it.”]] FIERY DENTAL: (Note-The RDH is portrayed only once as a RDH The other times she’s called the receptionist & assistant.) These appear throughout: Dr. Colon, X-rays, dental records; receptionist/assistant) 1. “Dick’s smile was about as genuine as a politician’s campaign promise.”:2. “Two years older than I was, he’d worn braces before the rest of us got them.” 3. “The report explained that his DDS had given him the prescription because he’d had 2 teeth pulled. An aside by the DDS stated that Bayless had been warned not to imbibe. Mixing alcohol with the painkiller could have a synergistic effect, which could cause drowsiness. They had to wait for ID verification from Bayless’s DDS, a Dr. Keith Colon, who subsequently provided it. There were no copies of the X-rays, but the report said the identification was positive.” 4. “Vicki winced, showing black-crusted teeth.” 5. “Dental records. Came down right away. Overnight mail. Actually, he took a 1/2 step closer to me & lowered his voice, even though there was no one else around, ‘the oral cavity was pretty well-preserved, considering the extent of the burning.” (This is mentioned a few times.) 6. “He pointed to a jagged grouping of rocks sticking up along the shoulder like an eruption of crooked teeth.” 7. “Dr. Keith Colon’s office looked less than impressive. It was located in Rogers Park & occupied a section of a strip mall down from cleaners, a used bookstore, a restaurant called Poppa’s & a 7-Eleven. Plenty of parking, but not too many cars.” “The waiting room was small & unoccupied. Behind a small glass window, a sharp-looking blond in a light blue medical type smock smiled at me.” “May I help you, sir?’ Her voice was anxious, like I was the first catch of the day. “ “Is the doctor in?” “Yes.’ Her reply was punctuated with a wide smile. Her teeth looked pretty good, but I figured it would be a bad business move to employ someone whose teeth weren’t.” “…An insurance problem.”….DDSs made most of their bread & butter from the insurance payouts.” “She came back with a swarthylooking guy close behind her. He was dressed in the same light blue medical-type outfit. His hair was dark brown & feathered back like a rock star’s, with a greasy sheen to it. Or maybe it was just so much mousse. I estimated him to be in his early-to mid-30’s. His face had a narrow look to it, & I noticed he was either trying to grow a mustache or he’s missed large spots with his razor. A pair of dark eyes, like a hawk’s sized me up quickly as he extended his hand.” 8. “If this guy could find anything in a hurry in that shit pile, I was the tooth fairy.” “I’m not sure I should be discussing a patient’s history with you.” “Why not?” “…there’s a matter of confidentiality, HIPAA laws & all that.” 9.. “He was having some mandibular malocclusion. I put some veneer on his anterior molars, &also on his lateral. The latter was more cosmetic than medicine, but with the insurance paying….” …”I also did some amalgam fillings in his 2nd & 3rd molars & I made 2 extractions.” 10. “I’m sorry, Mr. Shade, but my next patient’s almost here. I have to get the examination room ready.” 11. “There was no Mrs. Ferguson coming in to get her teeth scraped by Dr. Greasy.” 12. “He hadn’t received any hefty insurance payoff. Or had he? Substitution of dental records to ID a badly burned corpse would have to carry a heavy price tag. Plus, whose records were they?” 13. “His teeth had almost as many gaps in them as the street had potholes.” 14. “Brewster spread his lips, pointed to rotted-out teeth.’ New ones. Good ones. He looked real good. ‘Rybak did?” “Brewster sighed, “Nice teeth. New ones. He come back to show us. Bought us food. And then he was gone. If I got new teeth, I’d be gone, too.” 15. “When I caught sight of his brown teeth, I started to wonder if it was tobacco in there.” …”He stopped, snagged the wad of white between his incisor.” 16. It was a dental appointment card, reminding Rybak that he had a 6month cleaning scheduled for this month.” (Mentioned again) 17. “This man was as jumpy as a patient anticipating a root canal.” 18. “My father, who had been a dental technician, had worked on the original Mayor’s bridge work…” 19. “…we might get a chance to poke around in Colon’s files before we catch up with him.” 20. “I’d pressed to leave immediately after we’d found Colon & his hygienist stretched out in that pool of blood,…”, 21“I mean, Colon fixed the teeth of the homeless & Farnsworth buried them.” PEARL OF CHINA Anchee Min: Novel about Pearl S. Buck= 1.-My teeth were green from chewing milkweeds. 2. Her missing side teeth made her cheeks look hollow, as if she were permanently inhaling.” 3. Check out your handsome rooster. Don’t be surprised if he grows a set of teeth one day.” 4. “Each child was given paper flowers and instructed to smile with their teeth showing.” THE LACUNA—Barbara Kingsolver-I heard her speak & she said, Your independent book store is like your teeth, if you don’t take care of them, they will go away. Novel about Diego Rivera & Frida Kahlo DENTAL GOODIES: 1. “Attached to the collar a long rope, & holding the rope, a man with no teeth singing.” 2. “He was as fat as a giant & horribly ugly, with the face of a frog & the teeth of a Communist.” 3. “It only went in the book so you would know you’ve been seen. You can tear out that page. But as the wife of a man who keeps a Luger next to his dentifrice? You could be more careful.” 4. “They want it so badly they shake the world until its teeth fall out.” 5. “Most peculiar of all: around each neck, a sort of cravat or necklace made of human lower jaws, with the teeth still in place! It was a riveting sight, these bizarre, scalloped strands of mandibles strung together, looping low across the former chests, a fashion beyond anything even Frida might wear” Why do you think they made necklaces like that, of human mandibles?” 6. “Most of the people weren’t important enough to collect real human teeth, you know, the regular low-class citizens. So they made fake ones, flint teeth stuck into clay jawbones.” 7. “Most of them were probably like Mother, crouched somewhere trying to work out how to make fake jawbone jewelry that would look like the real thing.” 8. “Her earrings today were a pair of heavily embossed golden snakes, but with her newly shorn, glossy head she looked like a sea lion. With gold teeth.” 9. “ Her gold incisors flashed.” 10. “When Bunny reached on tiptoe to set her floral crown on Van’s head, he smiled so broadly his molars gleamed.” 11. “Something inside them, the heart or teeth or legs would be a little soft from so much hunger in the formative years.” 12. “I thought you might like to know that, as you sit somewhere in your thousand ruffles read this, flashing gold teeth0metal that could be used in some alloy for artillery castings, come to think of it.” 13. “I practically jumped when I spotted them, right across the page from Mary Martin holding her Calox tooth powder.” 14. “Then the quick smile, a flash of strong teeth with a tiny center gap.” FORGET ME KNOT—Sue Margolis=Florist Abby Compton is engaged to Toby Kenwood. She deposited in an elevator with a hunk on the night she is to meet her future mother-in-law. The hunk just happens to be the director who comes to check out her flower shop for the possibility to use it in an upcoming movie. Along with sharing a good bottle of wine in the elevator, she shared some personal info. They use her shop so she & Dan see a lot of each other. DENTAL DOS 1.. “..but this little girl with her tight black curls, puppy fat & braces..” 2. “Swan & Marshall-founded in 1887, as their carrier bags proclaimed in proud gold lettering-had until recently been the nation’s favorite chain store. S & M was as British as bad teeth, cream teas, & rain during Wimbledon fortnight.” 3. “Isn’t it about the simplest explanation always being the most likely?” “Oh, OK, Occam’s shaving brush, then. Or Occam’s toothpaste.” 4. “She looked at her watch & said she had to get going or she would be late for her DDS appointment.” 5. “And look, she’s had her teeth whitened.”