Alex never finished anything. He hardly ever finished his sentences. So, at school, they started calling him Al. Half a name for the guy who left everything half-done: chores, homework, sandwiches, graffiti (always had to run before he was finished), even the joints he made were half-rolled, which really pissed off his pals.
Al also had this nasty habit of biting chunks of nail, skin, and sometimes flesh from his hands. Dermatophagia, that’s what the shrink called it. And he had it. Came with his OCD, apparently, kind of like a gift at the bottom of a cereal box. He’d be sitting there on the sofa watching some crap on TV, nibbling, and his dad would turn from his newspaper and say, “How’s that finger, Al? Good, is it? Nice and salty?” He’d then shake his head in disapproval, resignation, and a touch of self-blame.
Al would stare at him, finger still in his mouth, skin glistening, big teeth flashing.
“Maybe a little undercooked…,” he’d reply, trying to be droll. But Al was never droll; Al always under- or overhit droll. Seldom on the mark, our Al.
“Stick it in the fire, then,” was invariably the retort. Or the toaster, if it was summer.
Al liked the taste of blood. No, that’s a misrepresentation. He liked the fact that he was tasting blood. Not the same thing. See, if he was tasting it, it was because he’d removed something substantial, and that brought great satisfaction. Another little piece of him gone; a chip out of the wall of the cell that was Alex Stubbs.
So, his sister, who was smart and cultured, started calling him “Al Dente”.
“It’s Greek, see,” she said. It means ‘just right to bite.’ Like your fingers, apparently!”
So this kid who never finished anything and liked to eat his own hands was known about town for the rest of his adolescence as Al Dente. Alexander the Tooth.
As the years went by, Al realized that his name was intricately connected with pasta, which he detested, and that it was actually Italian, not Greek, which really amused him. Maybe Carlie hadn’t been such a know-it-all after all. He’d have loved to tell her, but she was beyond telling anything now. But the whole pasta link brought him a world of grief after he moved to the city. Especially in the kitchens he bussed in: “Ah, here comes the Pasta Mafioso, Al Dente!” “Edward Scissorhands thinks his fingers are rigatoni!”
Yet, to his surprise, and true to the alchemy of life, this urban hellhole contained a rare gem, and the chances of Al’s finding her were so tremendously slight it could only have been destiny. Humans have this knack of taking one-in-a-million accidents and transforming them into something set in the celestial stone of fate. Lynne was fate; Lynne was a gift. Al could not have materialized her out of the universe because he lacked the imagination for something like Lynne. No, she must have materialized him.
In a café, on a winter’s day.
She was at the table next to his. He sat down, coffee cup trembling in his near-frozen hands. His thumb was bleeding around the hangnail, where he’d ripped away the edge of the fingernail down to, and including, a satisfying shard of rootnail under the fold. He’d also torn away most of the eponychium. His screw-you finger was also badly damaged, as he’d bitten off and spat out a full centimeter of skin from the cuticle to the DIP joint. The hands of both fingers were a mangled mess, and the nails had no free edges (the whiter bits at the end), and not a single lateral fold had been left unmauled.
Her diagnosis made, Lynne sighed heavily, and that was the beginning of their relationship. It turned out she was a manicurist, of all things. And his habit’s nemesis. Where most saw destruction and self-harm, she saw a chance at redemptive art.
But she was having none of this “Al Dente” lark. No, no.
One night, as the credits rolled on a movie, she turned to him and said:
“I don’t like that people call you Al Dente. And I hate that you call yourself Al Dente.”
“Why?” he asked. “Folks have been calling me that since I was a kid.”
“What folks, Alex? Where are these people? Back in Bumpkinville, trying to come up with some dumb name to call some other kid.” He fidgeted, raised his left hand teethward, and it was promptly slapped away from his mouth.
“Al makes you sound like a gangster. And Dente? Tooth? I mean, really? If it were Teeth, even… But no, singular: Tooth. Toothless, Tooth Fairy, not what I want in a man, Alex.”
So it was decided. She’d call him Alex like his mother had presumably intended, rest her soul. That way, if they broke up, she could drop the “Al” altogether and just call him “Ex.”
When he brought her home to meet the family, Lynne detested his dad on sight, and his dad thought she was way, way, way too good for Al, which meant he approved at least.
But there was one final proof. One final test. La Cantina.
Lynne sat across from him, on the other side of the flickering candle, with her best dress on and her hair done. She was smiling more broadly than he’d ever seen. She was beautiful, with an aura of ambience, radiance, and red wine.
The waiter took their order: she’d have the salmon with Sicilian lemon and risotto al dente. And Alex?
He smirked at her. She knew exactly what he was going to order. She always knew what he was going to do. She’d give him a pass this time. Step one of her mission had been accomplished: just getting him through those doors.
“I’ll have the pasta frittata, please. And the steak. Blood rare.”
INSTANT NOODLES 