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It is a wet morning in the large city, as the #104 bus opened its doors to the small waiting crowd ,all of whom were as wet as a catch of mackerels….among the fish was Simon, an unassuming dentist on his way to his midtown practice, that early morning, with a patient – Mr. Crowell – arriving at the crack of 7:30 AM for a root canal. Simon’s fingers will soon be in the mouth of that pained and needy man, Mr. Crowell, whose tooth must be repaired before life can go on for him. Managing to grab a seat on the warm and wetly uncomfortable bus, one by the window and a single seat that allows him to relax somewhat without worrying how he might be impinging on a large and overstuffed fellow passenger, Simon Dudley is happy for the first time in the morning. A single seat! What luck! His damp skin parted with relief from the scratchy wool of his freshly washed shirt and sweater, the scarf around his neck undraped, he felt gratefully, from his sweaty neck. He felt he owned the piece of property that was now his seat on that 104 bus, and he quietly rejoiced. His well-practiced and nimble, well trained fingers pulled more of the damp clothing away from his humid body, and he imagined that a flow of cooler dry air began to caress his body. He meditated dry and cool, and rubbing his tongue over the smooth ridges of his front teeth, he felt himself relaxing back into the blue plastic bus seat even more. Maybe he could drift off into a comfortable snooze before reaching 42nd Street and Madison Avenue, where his well-established dental practice had been for over a decade. He had not caught much sleep the night before. He had worried instead of slept.
The new virus had come to town, the COVID 19 virus from somewhere the Far East, and news headlines were filled with dire warnings of the ease of its spreadability. It seems the new invisible enemy was highly contagious. Would he be forced to close his dental practice until the danger had passed? That worried him. But even more niggling was something far more pedestrian. more predictable if you’d like, given the dead state of his marriage to Miriam: he had fallen in love with his dental hygienist, Myrna, and the possibility of their being unable to keep their hands off each other was growing slimmer every hour they worked side by side! Contagion of germs and contagion of love! One could kill him perhaps, the other could kill his comfortable but dull 25 years of marriage. One chilled him at the thought (the virus was said to be an uncomfortable one) and the other – the falling dangerously wildly and passionately in lust with Myrna, aroused him, so that he had to press his morning bag of magazines and breath mints closer to his lap. This bus had no room for untimely erections.
The deepest fear was a combination of both new facts: what if he was forced to close his practice , thus cutting off any and all access to his new hot flaming Myrna? What if he was forced to stay indoors , in their stuffy 3-bedroom West End Avenue apartment alone with Miriam all throughout the livelong day and night? What if the smells of her challah-baking and stewing chicken baking overcame him to the point of morbid suffocation? What if his library full of books fell off the shelves and buried him forever on West End Avenue?
What if the hours and hours of life with Miriam turned into even more hour after endless hour of no possible escape imprisonment with his fat unbearable wife ?
Immediately, in his poor starved imagination came pictures of a blue Hawaiian beach, Myrna in a flimsy two-pieced swim suit – hell, it was HIS imagination- Myrna draped in a loosely flung small towel, with her pulsating blonde and hairless slender form awaiting him beneath that towel?!! His erection got larger, but his spirits got lower as the bus rounded the corner of 42nd Street at Broadway. Soon, he would have to get off the bus and walk the block and a half to his 7th floor office suite. Perhaps he would stop at the corner florist (were they even open this early?) and buy some flowers to brighten Myrna’s day. Maybe, after Mr. Crowell’s root canal, he and Myrna could close the office, cancelling all other patients for the dismal day, and repair to a clean, cool and dry midtown hotel room for hours of pleasure with each other, giving into a temptation he was sure they both had been feeling for too long a time.
That thought did nothing for his erection, but did help him gain the energy to stand, covering the midsection of his aching body with his raincoat and bag, in preparation for disembarking the bus at his upcoming stop