Read The Candle Dancer / The Way That You Found Me for Free Online Page B

wearing his mask. He wore his hair rather unconventionally for a dentist, swept up in a ponytail. Dark and wavy. Then, I recognised him and went cold all over.
    No, no—it’s all right, I thought. He doesn’t know me. He won’t recognize me. Even if he’s seen me on the street, he won’t know it was me that made the complaint. My mind worked hard to assimilate this unlikely information. A
dentist
drives that car?
    ‘Hello,’ said Dr Carl, sitting beside me. ‘Suzy, isn’t it? We’ve just got to take some X-rays, Suzy.’
    ‘Suzanne,’ I said.
    They took the X-rays. Dr Carl showed me the dark shadow on the molar.
    ‘Nasty,’ he said. ‘Would’ve been hurting a while.’
    I studied the ceiling while Dr Carl gave me the numbing injection. I felt it pumping in, and my lips turned rubbery and weird. He put a noisy, vibrating instrument into my mouth and scraped the decay. My cheeks wobbled. After about fifteen minutes, he said:
    ‘You can rest.’
    I closed my mouth and eyes. Above me I sensed him and Nurse Lin exchanging implements.
    ‘So you complained to the police about my car?’ he said.
    My eyes flew open. He
knew
. I nodded, horrified at the stupid situation of
having trespassed against the dentist now fixing my tooth.
    ‘Why?’
    ‘Well, your dad complains about our band all the time. And—your car wakes me up. Do you realise how noisy it is?’
    ‘I do it to annoy him. He’s such an uptight prick. I never do more than four laps. I only stay there when the ex kicks me out.’
    One lap’s enough to wake anyone from the dead, I thought but didn’t say, mindful of the metal skewer in his right hand. When the work was done, Dr Carl surprised me by taking off his mask and smiling. He was good looking with superbly tended teeth.
    ‘All finished. You want to come out for a beer some time?’
    ‘What? Isn’t that against the rules? I’m your
patient
.’
    ‘We know each other. I come and see you play at Milk. I believe you’ve seen me there.’
    My mind raced back. Yes, I remembered. How had I not made the connection before? The face that did nothing to ease my giddiness. Yes.
----
    X.
----
    The affair with Dr Carl was the nail in the coffin for
The Roxy Rollers
. Doll had moved home for help but was still hiding vodka in her grandmother’s flowerpots and was too shaky to hold a guitar. She confessed that coke was damaging her septum.
    So we lost our lead guitarist.
    Selima was fired from
Milk
after replacing the halogen globes in the lamps with energy-saving globes. She told Jackie they were better for the environment.
    ‘Not
this
environment,’ Jackie had said. ‘Can’t you see what I’m doing here?’
    According to Selima, Jackie took off a lampshade and threw the new globe onto the floor. Selima responded by tossing her apron over the broken tube, and saying she was finished.
    And so we lost our venue.
----
    And then, one sunny afternoon after a naughty session with Dr Carl on Bill Dudley’s living room floor, I came home to find Benjy’s ute backed into our driveway. He was loading his drum kit.
    ‘Oh Benjy, please don’t,’ I said, shocked. ‘What are you doing? You can’t be leaving!’
    ‘I’m joining
The Squirts
,’ he replied. ‘They need a new drummer.’
    ‘
The Squirts
?’
    ‘Yeah.’ He paused. ‘You have to be under five foot seven.’
    I would have giggled if I hadn’t been so close to tears.
    ‘I thought you liked having a place to leave your drums set up…’
    ‘I liked being close to
you
, Suzanne. But you don’t like me in that way. And it’s too painful for me to see you with that arsewipe.’
    ‘He’s not an arsewipe.’
    ‘Yes he is. If he looked like Coppers instead of Johnny Depp you’d get that. And anyway, I need a break from Quatro covers.’
    ‘But—
our
band…’
    ‘Could’ve been great. But it ain’t happening.’
    Benjy closed the back doors of the ute, and gave me a small, compressed smile that was more like a grimace. Then he got