The second tooth of an old lover Marguerite had acquired,  she had meticulously sewn inside the sleeve collar of an aged, deeply worn, black, cavernous cashmere sweater. When she wore it, she felt like she had just rolled out of bed and fell into life in the most fabulous and foggy way—a comforting way, a prickly breeze on a hot summer night, magical in its silence. It was the tooth of her third real boyfriend, Toni. 

Toni had lost the tooth in a fight supposedly defending her honor. When the fight was over, the drunken young man lay groaning on the visibly steaming cement. Toni snatched Marguerite’s wrist, pried open her pearl-like fingers, and spat out a bloody tooth. 

Toni grinned with pride at Marguerite. Luminous under the city lights and the wet summer air, Toni’s bloody smile glittered and gleamed, and it almost looked like what falling asleep in the sun felt like: warm.

The unknown man’s actions had led to Marguerite secretly savoring the warmth—the sanctuary of a toothless glittering blood-soaked smile—but they were small to her. Something that occurred so often that she had considered it an inconvenience more than anything else. 

The strange man, arm in arm, swayed through the city’s summer heat, which made still objects tremble slightly with motion. His sticky fingers fell on the exposed, damp skin of her upper chest. His mouth, which she never saw, slurred out a word she couldn’t decipher, but Toni could. 

Toni would not tell Marguerite what word this stranger had muttered at her. Forgetting his wet fingers had slid across her beach-soaked skin. The skin that still held the heat of a sunburn from two days before. She hoped her skin would scorch his fingertips off. He would be too afraid to grab groceries from shelves without a guilt-ridden conscience. She really just wanted him to feel guilty. As a Catholic, that’s way better than an apology. 

Toni was not Catholic, though his name made him a likely candidate. Toni didn’t care about guilt; Toni didn’t really care about Marguerite.  Toni liked the rush that his blood, sweat, mucous, and possibly other bodily fluids would likely get mixed with someone else he deemed inferior. They would bash fluids out of each other until one of them stopped moving. He spat the tooth in Marguerite’s hand; as a carnival prize, a trophy, he said, “Keep it.”

Now, when Marguerite fingers for Toni’s tooth in the inside sleeve collar, she does not think back on it with affection. She does not think back on Toni with affection. A few might say Toni’s actions were heroic, others might sigh romantic, at least caring…but all of those were stretches at great lengths. 

Toni wanted to mix his blood, his teeth, and his fluids into their love. Toni wanted to say,  “Hey, look, I got my tooth knocked out defending you.” He wanted to hold it over Marguerite until she shrunk to a dollhouse-sized version of herself. He intended and did make her feel so small. So small she was afraid he would gobble her up in his balled-up fist. Smashing her neck then her back in the process. Watching her fluids ooze out of her in a flurry of red, and seeing how loud a thud she could make on the closest hard surface. 

Marguerite had sewn the tooth inside of the sleepy yet glamorous sweater sleeve cuff to remind her where she was, who she was. To ground her from the performance, she put on outside the four small rooms of her apartment. To remind her she had mistaken for a brief fever dream of a moment, she had mistaken a bloody smile for love.