The Slippery Map

by N. E. Bode

  “People think they want this thing or that. Sometimes they just want and want and want. They can become lousy and rotten from wanting. But truly, once you find out what you really, really want, Oyster, you’ll learn that you’ve already got it. Do you understand?”

  “Not really,” Oyster said.

  Then the Mapkeeper leaned in close to Oyster’s face. She said, “I have three rules.”

  “You do?” Oyster looked up into the Mapkeeper’s pruned face, into her keen, narrow eyes.

  “Do you want to hear them?”

  “Yes!”

  “First, look at people and try to find the truth within them. You need to understand people, really understand them, if you’re going to be a hero, Oyster. Do you follow?”

  He nodded. He wasn’t sure that he followed, but he was trying.

  “Second, beware of things that shine and glitter and make promises, especially promises that play on your weaknesses. Do you have weaknesses?”

  “Yes,” Oyster said. “I’ve got plenty.”

  “Beware, then,” the Mapkeeper said. “Third, you have to have a strong imagination.”

  “Oh,” Oyster said.

  “I know you don’t have a strong one now, but you have to be willing to work on your imagination so that you can become something.”

  “I guess so,” Oyster said. He felt defeated already.

  “Well,” the Mapkeeper said. “Do you want to see your map?”

  “I guess,” Oyster said.

  “Okay, then, quickly,” she said. “I have work to do.” She handed it to Oyster.

  It fit nicely in his hand. He opened it quickly. There it was: a colored map of a yard, a house, a swing set. It was small and lacked detail—it was just a crayon square with a labeled X for the swing set.

  “Do you recognize it?”

  “Yes,” Oyster said. “I do.” Oyster felt hungry for it. He wanted to have the map, to keep it. He wondered if it would satisfy him—just to have the map, to carry it around in his pocket.

  The phone rang at that moment, a loud jangle from the office. It startled Oyster. He dropped his map. It hit the ground and curled up like a pill bug and rolled under the shelves.

  “I’ve got to get that phone,” the Mapkeeper said. “Collectors! Always after their piece of the pie!” She started down the row, then looked back at Oyster. “Reach under there and get that map,” she said. “I can’t bend so well anymore. Leave it on the counter, and I’ll put it up later.”

  Oyster did. He reached down and pulled out his puny map. He looked at the Mapkeeper sitting in her office chair talking to someone in a heated way.

  And this is the moment when he realized that he was going to steal the map, of course. It had been done before—like the boy and girl had stolen theirs those many years ago. It’s my map, Oyster thought. It’s my map, after all, not hers. You can’t steal what already belongs to you.

  So he turned, put the map in his pocket, and walked quickly to the door. The bells—he’d forgotten—jingled loudly.

  The Mapkeeper yelled out, “What’s that now?”

  Oyster stood in the open doorway. He looked back at her. She was standing in her office, staring at Oyster down one of the rows. Her hand was cupped over the phone’s mouthpiece.

  “I’ve got to go!” Oyster said. “I forgot that there’s an emergency! Someone with a bloody nose who needs a doctor!” And then, without waiting for her answer, he stepped out onto the sidewalk, letting the door shut, and took off running back past the bank with its velvet ropes. He rounded the edge of Artie’s Arcade.

  And there was the nunnery van and Leatherbelly and Mrs. Fishback with a plug of tissue stuffed up each of her nostrils.

  She saw Oyster and scowled viciously. “You left me here!” she said. Oyster had never seen Mrs. Fishback so afraid—not even earlier when she’d thought they were being attacked in the van by the broom. “Why would you do that?”

  “You told me to get help!” Oyster said.

  “I don’t like being left,” said Mrs. Fishback, her voice shaking. She lifted Leatherbelly and nuzzled him under her chin. “You would never do that! You love me!”

  Oyster remembered what the Mapkeeper had said—that some people had gone rotten with wanting. Mrs. Fishback wanted to be loved, not abandoned, but that just made her miserable to be around. Oyster could see it clearly now. He had to learn to understand people. Maybe he could do that. Maybe.

  “You’re just lucky I’m not dead! But we’re still lost! How is Leatherbelly going to get his teeth cleaned and possibly get braces now? How, I ask you? This is all your fault!”

  Oyster shook his head. “No, we aren’t lost,” he said.

  Because from his view here, looking back, he saw a sign in the sky above a building at the back of the parking lot. Dr. Fromler’s sign. They’d made it after all! Dr. Fromler! The famous Dr. Fromler who was all-good, all-loving, all-glittery smile—he’d shined his glittery love down on Oyster for all of his life. Oyster would have recognized those glowing teeth anywhere.

  Standing there in the bright sun, staring at the nunnery van and Mrs. Fishback with the tissues up her nose, he wondered what he would do with his stolen map. If he imagined his green yard and his house and his swing set and his parents and the boy with the blue umbrella clearly enough, with more detail, would the map become big enough for him to slip into that Other World? Maybe if he imagined more rigorously, his map would grow and he could meet his parents on the other side, by the swing set, with his friend from the Dragon Palace.

  Oyster felt strong, almost hopeful. He pointed up at the sign, the giant, glittery teeth smiling down on them. “We’re here,” he said.

  CHAPTER 4

  DR. FROMLER’S DENTISTRY FOR THE YOUNG (AND AGED)

  The walls of Dr. Fromler’s waiting room were striped red and white like a circus tent. Instead of chairs, there were merry-go-round horses. Oyster had never been to a circus or seen a merry-go-round, except in books. He’d never really had much in the way of toys. So Oyster liked the first horse he saw, a bright blue horse with giant white teeth. All of the horses had giant white teeth. There were pictures of clowns and cowboys and train conductors all with giant white teeth. There were puzzles of teeth, and helium SMILE balloons on strings, bobbing overhead. Oyster wanted to sit on the merry-go-round horse, but he knew Mrs. Fishback would yell at him, so he just petted the horse’s ears with one hand. The other was in his pocket. He was holding on to his map, not willing to let go of it for a moment.

  “Stop it!” Mrs. Fishback said. “This is a dentist’s office, not a petting zoo!”

  The only things that resembled ones in regular offices were the small coffee tables—adults can’t have a waiting room without coffee tables of some sort—but oddly enough, on each coffee table was an enormous candy dish.

  From his bedroom window, Oyster had seen such a thing on the counter of the Dragon Palace. When the door was perched wide open, he could make out the cash register and a bit of an indoor fishpond with orange blobs roaming around in it. There was a candy dish on a little stand in between. Oyster understood that someone might want to take a candy after eating a Chinese meal, but in a dentist’s office? Candy was the enemy, wasn’t it?

  On one wall there was a miniature version of the billboard, its smile lit up with Christmas lights. Oyster loved the smile, because it seemed like the smile loved him.

  Mrs. Fishback knocked on the glass window for the receptionist, Leatherbelly hooked under her arm.

  “Who is it?” a voiced cooed wearily.

  “We’re here to see Dr. Fromler,” Mrs. Fishback said.

  The glass window slowly squeaked open, and there appeared a young man wearing a tightly knotted necktie and thick glasses that slid down his beakishly sharp nose. He had very pursed lips as if he were trying to hide his teeth. He puffed his cheeks, too. Oyster wondered what he’d look like if he weren’t making such a strange face. “Dr. Fromler is in a fragile state,” he said, the words com
ing out weird as they were forced through the narrowed gate of his mouth. “With the Awful MTDs, business is down. See the empty office? He’s upset about it. You’ll have to be very nice to him!” He stared out at them blankly, as if he couldn’t see a darn thing.

  “I don’t care about all of that,” Mrs. Fishback said. (She wasn’t just rude to Oyster, you know. She was rude to all people. If you’re going to be rude, you should at least dole it out equally and fairly, I suppose.) “This is Oyster R. Motel for his appointment.”

  “Motel, you say? Odd name.”

  “It’s a stupid name,” Mrs. Fishback said, staring at Oyster. “But that’s why it suits him.”

  The receptionist jumped up from his seat, disappeared from view for a few minutes, then opened the waiting room door and said, “Can I also offer other products? Dr. Fromler has designed a special line of Mind and Body Products.” He launched into an incantation of the familiar small print on the billboard. Oyster mouthed along with him, almost like a little prayer he’d memorized. “Brain Enhancer Tablets, Mr. Pumped-Up Muscles Nose Spray, Child-Calming Menthol Drops; plus: High-School-Diploma-In-a-Bottle Kit, Fishing and Hunting Licenses, and Coupons for Hair Weaves?”

  “No,” Mrs. Fishback was saying all along, “no, no, no, no.” But then she stopped. “Go back,” she said.

  And so the receptionist listed in reverse: “Weaves Hair for Coupons and, Licenses Hunting and Fishing, Kit Bottle-a-In-Diploma-School-High; plus Drops Menthol Calming-Child…”

  “Right there! What’s that?”

  “These Menthol Drops were specially designed for the ornery kid, the rambunctious, hyper, wild, irritating, annoying, overly energetic, ants-in-your-pantsy child who grates on the nerves of all adults in a three-hundred-foot radius.”

  “Well,” said Mrs. Fishback, “at least until I can convince them to get rid of him, those will do. We’ll take some!”

  The receptionist was very pleased. “Excellent. You won’t be disappointed. These drops render a child listless and dull. Guaranteed!”

  “Listless and dull?” Oyster asked, hoping the terrified squeak in his voice wasn’t noticeable. That it sounded awful, like that time he’d thunked his head while climbing out from under the altar during a sad game of hide-and-seek, where he was the hider and the seeker.

  The receptionist shoved a six-pack of menthol bottles at Mrs. Fishback. “I’ll add these to your bill!”

  Mrs. Fishback shoved five in her pocketbook and one into Oyster’s pocket—not the one with his map—no, no—the other pocket, luckily. “You’ll take these on the ride home!” she said smugly.

  “Your boy needs to go to room number one,” the receptionist said.

  “He’s not my boy,” Mrs. Fishback said, and then she leaned in confidentially. “He’s a reject left on a stoop in the middle of the night,” she said in a hushed voice as if Oyster weren’t right there. “And he’s rotten. It’s hard to say what came first: whether he’s rotten and so he was rejected or whether he’s rotten because he’s a reject.” She sighed, perplexed by the whole thing. “The only certain thing is that he’s a reject.”

  The receptionist shook his head sadly. “A reject. Rotten, too. What a shame.”

  “I should go in with him,” Mrs. Fishback said. “He’s got sticky fingers. Liable to steal anything.”

  “No grown-ups allowed back!” the receptionist said through his battened-up mouth, pushing the heavy glasses up his nose. “No, no. That wouldn’t do at all! Those are the rules! Children need to decide the fate of their smiles.”

  “But I must ask the doctor about something important.” She looked at Leatherbelly, her prince with the crooked teeth. “I need to!”

  “Well, you can’t go back!” he said sternly. He looked at Leatherbelly too, clasped in Mrs. Fishback’s arms, staring but seeing little through his thick glasses. Finally he said, “What an unusual handbag!”

  “Thank you,” said Mrs. Fishback, turning to Oyster, shoving the dog at him. “You take my handbag back with you. Ask Dr. Fromler what he thinks of it. Ask him!”

  Oyster was now holding Leatherbelly. The dog had a paunchy weight, a bum as solid as a bowling ball. “About what?” Oyster said.

  “About the handbag’s teeth! What else?”

  “Does the handbag have teeth? That’ll cost extra!” the receptionist said greedily.

  Mrs. Fishback shoved Oyster into room one, gave him a stern look. “Just do it!” she said, and then shut the door.

  Dr. Fromler wasn’t in the room. There was only a black leather chair surrounded by metal arms with various attachments, a small white sink, and a little stool on wheels. Leatherbelly glared at Oyster, panting sourly into his face.

  “Why are you looking at me like that?” Oyster asked. “It wasn’t my idea to get your teeth looked at!”

  Just then the door to room number one popped open and there was Dr. Fromler. Oyster knew that it was Dr. Fromler because he said, “Hello, I’m Dr. Fromler.” But, in fact, this man looked exactly like Dr. Fromler’s receptionist, except that now he was wearing a white lab coat—so popular among dentists—and no glasses at all, and he was smiling. His smile was as big as the blue merry-go-round horse’s teeth and gleaming white. Oyster was momentarily dazed. He blinked into the glittery brilliance of it. The moon! Oyster thought. It was as if Dr. Fromler had swallowed it and it was glowing up from his stomach. The smile was pulled back tight, because Dr. Fromler’s cheeks were bulging gruesomely. Oyster wondered what they were stuffed with. His packed cheeks made his words come out somewhat garbled. He said, “You like the smile, doncha? I can tell by the glint in your eye.”

  The glint in Oyster’s eye was a reflection of the brilliant smile, which was forcing Oyster to squint. “You’re Dr. Fromler?” Oyster asked.

  “Of course!”

  “You look like the receptionist,” Oyster said.

  “Did the receptionist have this set of chompers? No, he did not! Only a dentist would have teeth this fine! Plus, receptionists are expensive, and business is slow.” He let out an angry huff.

  “I like your smile,” Oyster said, afraid that the receptionist Dr. Fromler had been correct about the dentist Dr. Fromler being depressed about business.

  “Go ahead!” Dr. Fromler said, smiling. “Go ahead and tap ’em. They’re solid and white and straight and heavenly! Better than real! Go ahead; give ’em a tap!”

  Oyster was scared, mainly of the dentist’s big, hard cheeks. But he did as he was told and tapped with his fingernails on the dentist’s teeth. They made a high, hollow, pinging noise.

  “Beauties, aren’t they?” Dr. Fromler said.

  “Yes,” said Oyster. He didn’t like the teeth, though. What were they made of? he wondered.

  “Sit up here,” Dr. Fromler said. Oyster slid into the seat. “Do you know what I hate?” Dr. Fromler asked.

  “No,” Oyster said.

  “I hate teeth! And you know what I love?”

  “No,” Oyster said.

  “I love candy!” Dr. Fromler pointed to his taut cheeks. Candy! They were filled with candy! Dr. Fromler widened his jaw and let one of the round candies stored in his cheeks slip out into his mouth. He crunched it. Then he quickly opened his desk drawer and fidgeted his fingers till they landed on a big, pink hard candy that he then shot into his mouth, filling the slack spot in one cheek. “I’m smart, boy. I go after the young. Fluoride has almost done me in—that and people brushing their teeth in circles. But if I can convince a child to do otherwise, get him on the right track of bubble gum and—oh, better—hard candies, well, then I’ve got a customer for life!” He beamed, lighting up the room with an eerie glow. “What’s with the dog?” he asked.

  “You thought it was a handbag,” Oyster said. “With teeth.”

  “What? The dog? The dog’s a dog. Do you need glasses? Are you blind?” He sat down on a little stool on wheels.

  “Bad teeth,” Oyster said. “Crooked, and his breath is bad.”

  “Good
!” Dr. Fromler was singing it. “Good! Good! Good news, indeed!”

  Leatherbelly started and buried his face in Oyster’s arms.

  Dr. Fromler stuck miniature vacuum cleaner tubes into Oyster’s and Leatherbelly’s mouths, then scooted around on his little seat on wheels and dug instruments out of drawers. The instruments looked ominous, like small wrenches and mallets.

  “A’ ’o goin’ ’o ’ix my ’oof?” Oyster asked, meaning “Are you going to fix my tooth?” Oyster didn’t particularly like the sucking tube in his mouth, and he didn’t like the way Dr. Fromler’s eyes were staring intently at the instruments. Leatherbelly was growling and biting the tube, wrestling from side to side.

  “Fix it?” Dr. Fromler said. (Dentists take special classes in understanding people’s speech that’s garbled by dentistry.) “No, no, no. Why fix a tooth when I can pull your teeth and put in ones that are better than real?”

  Oyster felt his throat close up in fear. His eyes got wide. He was so scared that he was hugging Leatherbelly. “Wha’?” he asked.

  Dr. Fromler was now wearing a green mask over his tight smile and nose. His cheeks still jutted out on either side. He was holding the shiny wrench tool, coming at Oyster with a plastic mask that was hissing out a sinister-smelling fog. “Listen to me, Oyster. Goodies are good. That’s why we call them goodies. Keep with them, and you and I will have a long friendship!” Oyster didn’t want a friendship with Dr. Fromler. He had before, when Dr. Fromler was a loving smile in the night sky. But not now!

  “Just breathe deeply,” Dr. Fromler said rather loudly because the vacuum tube had begun blowing air instead of sucking it. In fact, a wind from the sink basin had begun to bluster too. And this time Oyster was happy to hear it. He didn’t want Dr. Fromler pulling his teeth. Dr. Fromler himself didn’t shine down glittering goodness. He was a fake.

  “You’ll be asleep in no time! Just hold still!” Dr. Fromler was saying, but Oyster wasn’t holding still. He was climbing up the dentist seat with Leatherbelly clamped to his chest, holding on for dear life.