Maybe it's the nitrous talking but I think I'm in love with this book.
I'm reclining in the dentist chair getting a filling. Maybe it's silly to do nitrous for a filling, but I haven't had to get a filling in forever and god, I'd probably do nitrous for a cleaning if I didn’t feel like it was excessive. Just knowing I could get a little gas while they were hunting around in my mouth made the days leading up to this less stressful. Nitrous in my nose and an audiobook in my ears, anything to keep my brain occupied, to force it away from doing that thing where it thinks about the gruesome things they're doing in there, in my mouth.
Jessica Anya Blau is filling my ears with words. Her book is Shopgirls, and right now the girls are in a car, singing an ode to the air-freshener hanging from the rearview mirror.
I started singing loud and clear, pushing my voice out through my nose the way Barbra Streisand does.
"Dear Jesus, Air-Freshener Jesus, help us find a spot—a spot—a spot—big enouuuugh for this carrrrrr."
How is it that I feel good and relaxed right now? Maybe it's the nitrous or maybe it's Air-Freshener Jesus, or maybe it's the fact that my dentist and I talked books before she went in for the novocaine jab. Told me what she's reading right now (Elizabeth Strout's Tell Me Everything), told me she bought it because of a staff recommendation at a bookstore, told me the best way to buy books is from the staff recommendation written on a shelf-talker hanging from a shelf in an independent bookstore. "The best way!" she said. I said, "It's because you're getting a recommendation from a human who you know loves books!" And she pointed at me and fist bumped at me in the dentist chair.
Now as I lie with her hands in my mouth, I can hear the murmur of her voice, and the hygienist's voice, through the sound of Shopgirls in my ears. Chatting as they work. The murmur of the dentist sounds distinctly like, "in the book" and I realize with some nitrous-heightened sense of profundity that the dentist is talking about books while I'm reading a book so I have book on top of book in my ears. The murmurs somehow tell me that they're discussing Tell Me Everything, their conversation sparking off of our own. I'm fixated on their murmurs even as I'm able to concentrate on the shopgirls in my ears, and the fact of this moment seems to tell me everything about the world, at least about the good part of the world, and the dentist could be distracted by her book like I'm being distracted by my book but I don't care! Sometimes in the middle of this high stress world, things can be beautiful, and because of that, I'm certain that my book and the dentist's book, they're both the very best book in the whole wide book.