Circle View by Brad Barkley

“Ray.”
    â€œRawlings,” I answered, “Charlotte.”
    â€œRawlings? That’s the name on this ball.” He held up the grass-stained baseball.
    â€œGive me that,” I told him, reaching with red-painted nails.
    He grinned, snatched it away. “This ball is game weary,” he said. “Snagged hide, lopsided. A throwaway.” He made to toss it in the trash barrel.
    â€œIt’s mine,” I said, and grabbed it, tucked it safe in my bag. He spat again.
    â€œYou’re a real queen,” he said, and grinned. Let me tell you, in a young man, boyishness is a seductive thing; by middle age it’s a tumor on the personality. Three weeks later, we were married.
    It’s Saturday, and Ray sits home filling out bill-me-later subscription cards for my Ladies’ Home Journal, Redbook , and Banking News (I’m a teller at First Federal). Five-year subscriptions on each, in the name of his best friend, Earl. All because Earl mailed us a giftwrapped box of rotten banana peels and fish heads. I stand at the sink eating an English muffin and doing arm curls with the Sears catalog. Lately, I’ve been trying to improve myself, and have even looked in the community college listings for a course to take on one of Ray’s nights out. Right now it’s a toss-up between Knot Tying For Sportsmen and Basic Auto Mechanics .
    I do a curl, take a bite—pain shoots through me like a hot needle, from my tooth straight down my arm.
    I keep my head in emergencies. Three years ago, at First Federal, I had just popped on a rubber thumb to begin the final drawer tally for the day, when in walked two men wearing Halloween masks, Casper the Ghost and Spiderman. One of them jammed a stubby pistol in my cheek and told me to fill the grocery sack the other man tossed on the counter. I bent, stuffed in some bills, then a dye bomb, then more bills to cover it. They rolled up the bag, walked out the tinted doors. Channel Five News that night showed police dragging the suspects out of their Vega, which had crashed in a ditch when the bomb exploded. The insides of the car and outsides of the robbers were covered with the red dye, which comes off, the label warned, only when the skin cells wear away. The robbers looked like they’d been turned inside out. The next week, Mr. Tuttle put my picture in the bank lobby with “Hero of the Week” written underneath.
    I hold an ice cube to my jaw as I dial the dentist; a recording tells me Dr. Jackson is on vacation, his patients are to be seen by Dr. Neuman. I call his office and he answers, tells me to come right down.
    â€œRay, will you drive me to the dentist?” I say, trying not to move my mouth.
    â€œEarl’s bringing over his remote-control dune buggy,” he says. He signs Earl’s name to an offer for free information on Eva Gabor wigs.
    The pain jumps down my arm again, and I shiver. “I want you to take me, Ray.”
    â€œYou telling me you can’t play injured, Charlotte? Now, be a good girl and don’t bite the doctor.” He whacks me on the rear. When I look at him, he grins and turns back to his work.
    Dr. Neuman’s office feels cool, smells of cinnamon mouthwash. Magazine stacks dot the wicker furniture like sprouted flowers, and Beethoven music plays in the background. The doc himself sits at the receptionist’s desk. I read his nametag and study his hands, which are spread out over a pile of bills. His ring finger sits empty, which I still have good radar for noticing after ten years off the market.
    â€œMarge doesn’t work Saturdays,” he says. “You’ll have to excuse me.” He glances up, and I find myself nailed by eyes blue as the plastic ice blocks that keep beer chilled in the cooler. Back in the examining room, he lowers me in the vinyl chair, points at me the thing that looks like a headlight mounted on a silver tea tray. I see my reflection, the inside of