Part Seventeen – Lentil Dental’s New Premises

Today, Glinton, the owner of Lentil Dental, gets caught up in the goings on! Poor man only wanted a pastry and a new place to have his business!

Glinton Dayley was a prominent dentist. He wasn’t altogether sure that this was a good adjective, but he allowed it. His main issue arose from the fact that to call himself ‘prominent’ seemed counter-intuitive to a profession that sought to make teeth less so. Unless you were whitening them and then that made sense. No one wanted whiter teeth unless they wanted someone to notice them.

However, he was pleased that he had outgrown the small premises he kept just off Stookey Hill. He had hired a second dental nurse and a receptionist and had an ad out for a dentist. Business was booming. Which was in part due to the fact that it was nigh on impossible for anyone to get an appointment anywhere these days. So Glinton worked long hours, took on an extensive clientele and was enjoying the fact that he could start looking for somewhere else from which to operate.

This took him to the old shoe shop just past The Frog and Cricket. While there was no parking, it was a large two-storey building with ample opportunity to create several rooms and an office. He liked the thought of an office. And he wanted one of those beds that folded up flat against the wall and looked like a cupboard. Not that he especially wanted to sleep in his office, but his frequent wranglings with Mrs Dayley meant a better dog-house than the downstairs sofa would suit him just fine.

Standing outside what had once been Quik Price Shoes, Glinton looked at his watch. She was late – the woman who was going to show him the property. He had taken an hour for lunch, pushing three appointments to after 5pm in order to accommodate – he checked the business card – Ciara Hammersmith, so he wasn’t best pleased that she was holding him up.

Cupping his hands above his brows, he leaned against the glass to look into the shop. It was clearly in a bit of a state of disrepair. There were still some shoe racks and there was a cash register, the drawer open and evidently empty. No doubt to keep thieves at bay. Nothing to see or steal here.

A gust of wind alerted him to the slow entry of a bus, and he watched as a few folk alighted. There was no businesswoman among them, however. Looking at his watch he decided to give her three more minutes.

He wasn’t a fan of Stookey Hill. It was prone to litter and belligerent youths. Some of the shop owners had endeavoured to make their store fronts look appealing. Elena was one and Harry did his best. But they still had a sort of lacklustre veneer to them. Even the neon pizza sign buzzed and hissed, blinking every now and then as though it too couldn’t be bothered to make an effort for this street.

He felt a low rumble in his belly and remembered – he hadn’t eaten breakfast. Which he rarely did. At least not an organised sit down affair. But, he had left in haste at 7am to make an early appointment, narrowly missing being slapped up the back of the head with Mrs Dayley’s slipper. It was more chance than design that her hurtling it at him had not met its target this time. Usually it did. She was an extraordinarily good shot.

But he heard it bounce off the back door as he hurried out. She was screaming something about eggs. And while he had told her many times not to make him breakfast, she kept on doing so.

“I think,” he had told Candy, his dental nurse, “it’s because she wants me to sleep on the sofa. I think she wants me in the proverbial dog house…”

Candy nodded, holding the sucker in Mr Anderson’s mouth. Three times she had sucked at his cheek without realising and now she was trying to pretend there wasn’t blood, despite the old man’s wide-eyed expression. Glinton seemed oblivious, instead, pausing to lament his marital woes every minute or so.

Now, with Mr Anderson sent to A&E for stitches, Glinton felt hungry. He’d love some of Mrs Dayley’s eggs. She was a firecracker, but he was still fond of her.

Spying the bakery at the far corner, he decided to go and pick up a pastry. If he felt generous once he got there, he might get one for Candy too. Maybe even Kath, his receptionist. He wasn’t at all fond of her though. She was efficient, but she was mean.

Glinton checked his phone. No missed calls. Sighing, he made his way to the bakery. His new problem was: toasted teacakes or pecan whirls. He liked them both. He’d decide when he got there. Maybe even one of each.

Mrs Dorado waved at him as he went by. He had a soft spot for her. Mainly because she didn’t sue him when he accidentally removed the wrong teeth. Candy told him dentists should be able to tell when x-rays are upside down and the wrong way round, but he thought it was easy for her to say. Either way, Mrs Dorado had found the whole affair quite amusing. Which may have, in part, be due to the fact that she had unfettered access to gas and air. She had sang a few Elton John hits before passing out on the chair.

Glinton watched as she made her way to the print shop. Nice old thing, he thought. Not like that son of hers though! He was a piece of work.

Just as Glinton was about to pass Mrs Dorado’s house, however, he saw that her front door was ajar. Silly old thing, he thought to himself. He turned to call her across the street, but she was gone. Wherever she was heading to, she had disappeared.

Glinton hesitated. He could just pull her door closed. But what if she had forgotten her key? Maybe he could wait. She wouldn’t be too long in the print shop, surely. Glinton looked at the front door. He could just check – maybe Mark was still in.

“Hello!” he shouted, pushing the door a bit further open with one finger.

There was a rustle and a bang.

Mark must be in! Relieved, Glinton went to go. And had he turned just a few seconds sooner, he might not have seen anyone. He would have gone for his pecan whirls, bought two because he wasn’t really going to get Kath one, and returned to make sure Ciara Hammersmith hadn’t decided to show her face after all.

But, alas, he did see someone. And it was no one he recognised.

Now, Glinton insisted, once he was inside the house and tied to a chair in the upstairs spare room, he was never going to recognise someone in a balaclava!

“Be quiet!” the voice was female. This surprised and unnerved Glinton considerably. On two counts: one, she had manhandled him upstairs without assistance and two, she was extraordinarily large. Most women he knew were shorter and rounder than he was.

“I am just saying, I could go and say nothing about this and…”

To Glinton’s surprise, when the door opened, a tall bespectacled man came in. Glinton recognised him as James Hindbright, the barber.

“This is most unfortunate,” Hindbright said, nodding to the balaclava girl that she could leave.

“It is rather,” Glinton nodded agreeably. He felt the plastic ties on his wrists pinch and grimaced a little.

“What were you doing here?” Hindbright sat on the edge of the bed, his arms crossed.

“Well, I thought Mrs Dorado had left her front door open and so came in to…”

Hindbright held up his hand. Glinton found this quite rude. However, he wasn’t sure if the man had a weapon and he wasn’t keen on being wrestled again by the woman in the balaclava so he pressed his lips together as a sign of both his disapproval and obedient silence.

“This is most unfortunate,” Hindbright said again. Glinton went to tell him he’d already said that but thought better of it. He nodded instead wondering if he could barter his way out of this situation with the promise of a free scale and polish.

There was a knock at the door and the woman in the balaclava reappeared. The two spoke in low, conspiratorial tones, none of which Glinton caught. His hearing wasn’t that good. He thought it was the incessant drill noise that took up most of his days. Candy said that was ridiculous, it wasn’t a pneumatic drill.

Hindbright nodded and took a pair of scissors from his inside coat pocket. Glinton’s eyes grew large. Was this how he was to meet his demise? Scissored to death? After all the near misses he had had with his dental apparatus? Like the time he dropped the box of sharps and three anaesthetic needles impaled his left foot and he had ended up with an infection. Or the time when he swung the arm of the overhead light with too much gusto and had knocked himself clean out with it. Poor Janice Jones had never seen his suddenly unconscious body coming.

To his relief, however, Hindbright just cut the plastic ties and was about to say something when Glinton saw his chance.

What chance he saw exactly was hard to say. With a ‘haaayaaa’ he chopped one hand at Hindbright’s neck, the blow to his windpipe making him choke and fall to his knees. This surprised balaclava girl who, rather than engage with Glinton, started to run downstairs. Glinton, emboldened by his sudden success, made chase after her, taking the stairs two at a time, before launching himself into the living room.

Unfortunately, he hadn’t counted on the fact that balaclava girl might have friends, and suddenly his face was pressed against the carpet, chafing his right cheek.

“What a pickle,” he thought to himself, rueing the thoughts he’d had of pecan whirls and good deeds.

And before long, he was once more, in a chair, plastic ties on his wrists and ankles staring into the angered eyes of Hindbright who was stemming his bleeding nose with a towel. A trail of blood from the stairs to the chair he was in made Glinton tut. Mrs Dorado would not be happy about that. She would not be happy at all.