Alexa bravely sat into the dentist’s chair. I stayed with her because I thought she would freak out, but she didn’t. The dentist brought over a portable X-ray machine and took a couple of images. When he was done, he showed them to me.
“That tooth is really bad,” he said. “They weren’t lying to you in the U.S. She needs a root canal.”
“What about just taking it out?” I asked.
“It’s not due to come out for a couple of years, so it’s better we leave it in, even if it’s a wounded soldier, to keep the rest of her teeth coming in normally.”
“OK,” I said.
He reached into the cabinet next to the chair where he kept the huge syringe for the Novocaine, and he grabbed a freshly wrapped cartridge and needle. I shot him a look, and he put them back. He then let his assistant, positioned behind Alexa, take them out and give them to him in a way that didn’t allow her to see them.
“Alexa,” I said, “I’m going to need you to close your eyes for just a few seconds, OK? I’m not gonna lie. You’re going to feel a pinch in your mouth.”
“So this is when they’re gonna stick that humongous needle in my teeth?” she asked.
“How do you know about that?”
“I looked up ‘root canal’ on the internet.”
“Just close your eyes anyway, OK?”
She did. And she never even flinched.
Chepa was done, and she elected to stay with Alexa. I decided to take a look around.
“When you’re done with Sierra’s cleaning,” I said, “why not meet me at that open restaurant we saw when we came in, just a few doors down, OK?”
She agreed, and I went out to the bustling street. In the hour we had been inside, the number of gringos in town had multiplied by quite a few. A lot of them drove their own cars, and there were even a couple of busses unloading groups of 30 or so who had apparently come in for dental or medical work.
As I started away from the dentist, I was stopped by a stylish woman in her late 40s. She asked me how a particular hat she was trying on looked on her. I told her it was pretty. A man next to her laughed. “I told you it was pretty, dear.”
“You can’t always trust your husband like you can a perfect stranger,” she said.
“Well, you’re right there,” he said. “You get lucky sometimes with perfect strangers.”
“You got lucky when you met me,” she said.
The man, noticeably older than she, grinned. “And you got lucky when you met me.”
“Did you come in for dental work?” I asked.
“Not this time,” the woman said, “though we have.”
“This time we came for my Viagra,” the man said. “We both got lucky when we met each other, you see, but she’s 25 years younger than I am, and she likes to get lucky more than I can guarantee, so we came to get a little insurance.”
He held up a plastic bag with three or four good-sized boxes in it: “No prescription, much cheaper, and a romantic day in Mexico all at the same time.”
The woman paid for the hat, and off they went.
I walked down to the little restaurant, past shops selling cowboy boots and leather purses, one selling liquor, another a pharmacy. I took a seat on an outside table and ordered a bottle of Corona. Cost? One dollar. I’m not much of a beer drinker, but it was already blisteringly hot, and, hell, I’d been to the dentist. I deserved a treat.
My beer came quickly, with a heaping pile of limes on a plate. I asked the waiter why he brought so many of them.
“If you’ve been to the dentist, and most gringos here have been, then you have to wait ’til 4 p.m. for the work to be done, so you will need several more beers — and for those, you’ll need a plate of limes.”
It was hokey and a little garish but beautiful. This was what some of the border towns I knew were like before the drug war, before the killing emptied the streets. I asked the waiter how badly the drug war had affected Nuevo Progreso.
“We had a few years that were very quiet because of the war,” he said, “but we were never as bad as some of the other cities because there is no real smuggling road out of here. We more or less got caught in the war between Reynosa and Matamoros but didn’t really have a war of our own. But things are good again. They’ve been good for about two years now.”
In a few minutes I was joined by Chepa and the girls, and after cold sodas for the girls and a $2 margarita for Chepa — second one free — we headed for lunch at Arturo’s, the most famous restaurant in town. It was jammed with well-heeled Mexicans and gringos — there were several fur pieces on display despite the heat outside — and we decided we were simply too underdressed. We made our way across the street to a fourth-floor restaurant with fantastic views of Nuevo Progreso’s main street.
After lunch, we did some shopping for presents for everybody else in the family back home, and then we made our way back to the dentist. We were early, but that wasn’t a problem. The work was done and fit me well. The only unfinished piece was a bridge belonging to one of our friends which needed repaired. That would be done by noon the next day.
For the night, we crossed the bridge and drove to McAllen, across the river from Reynosa. We returned the next day and picked up a load of beautiful ceramics along with the finished bridge.
The tally for four cleanings, two extractions for me, one root canal, a lower bridge, the work Chepa needed (nobody’s business), and the repaired bridge came to $1,404. Plus, another grand for the rental car, the gas, hotels, food, and presents. Based on my math, we saved about $7,500.
Driving home, I couldn’t believe how little evidence of the drug war we encountered. In the entire first day and few hours of the second, I saw only one military vehicle: a Ford pickup fitted with a fixed .50-caliber gun in the bed which appeared to be patrolling the town. One man stood at the trigger while four men with automatics sat at the corners of the bed. Another man with an automatic rode shotgun. They all wore ski masks, a reminder that things had been very ugly and dangerous not too long ago.
Home, I made dozens of phone calls to medical clinics and dental offices in Mexican border cities all along the Texas line. Everyone had the same response. Come on down. There’s a ceasefire in effect, and the party is just getting started.
