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{noontime appointments} michael cooper “Ever seen lipstick on a doe’s teeth before?” the patient’s wife asks Dr. Eubanks. “What shade?” he asks, speaking low into the phone’s receiver. “Vermillion, salmon.” For her, fishnet stockings are pathological, he knows, but very cute, with yellow-striped, blue Adidas. The next day at noon, the doctor comes to talk to her husband about his problem. He pulls up to the patient’s cabin in his black-and-gold Charger, the kind villains drive in thrillers with synthesizer soundtracks. The doe stands on its hind legs at the cabin’s window. The animal watches him and pants. Eubanks cuts the engine, sits for a minute, but the doe doesn’t leave. It wears a blonde wig. It presses its snout against the window, leaving a red smear around which a ring of condensation dissipates. Eubanks arrives home at sunset. His wife recently left him. He’d ordered the largest-known fruit bat in the world, which had recently passed away in an Indonesian zoo, and had its stuffed body delivered so he could mount it next to the flat screen hanging in the living room. That night, Eubanks opens a bottle of aged Transylvanian whiskey. He stuffs a red Washington apple in the bat’s open mouth. He falls asleep on the couch criticizing open-heart surgeries on a medical network and wakes up the next morning with the bat and apple in his vision. This time, the doctor calls his patient. “Does the doe still have on its lipstick?” “Of course,” she says. A long bout of silence ensues. The doctor had really pushed the apple into the bat’s mouth, so far that he would have to wait for the fruit to desiccate and shrivel before pulling it out. Otherwise, he might harm the bat’s teeth. “Should I come by at noon?” “Of course,” she says. |
