Four months to the day he first encountered the boy at Walmart, the last of Phil Pendleton's teeth fell out.

When the child started screaming, Phil Pendleton had his arms loaded with chocolate bars and his girlfriend cooing in his ear. Later he would of the moment prior to that klaxon-like intrusion as one of utter bliss, a rare occasion in which is customary concerns were in absentia.

It was a Saturday, so he was off work and had woken up pleasurably late after a night of equally pleasurable lovemaking. And while he had briefly considered doing some much-delayed yardwork today (if only to stave off the disapproving looks of his neighbors), Lori had convinced him to actually take the day off and join her in doing nothing more taxing than lounging before the TV with a veritable stockpile of chocolate. As the invitation had been extended while she stood in the bathroom doorway wearing nothing but her pink silk underwear, and with the memory of her uncharacteristic sexual abandon still fresh in his mind, he hadn't needed to be asked twice.

His mission was a simple one: procure as much chocolate as possible and return home, a task which saw him standing in the candy aisle at Walmart, Lori doling out her requests over the phone in between bouts of sexual innuendo as he tried to focus on the overwhelming selection on the shelves before him.

Yes, he would have said the day was a fine one indeed.

Then the scream had come, so abrupt and so unexpected, Phil's whole body jerked as if someone had punched him between the shoulder blades. Jamie Lee Curtis had screamed like that in Halloween. Loons did too. A half dozen or so chocolate bars rained from the cradle of his arm to the floor, smacking against his feet. Only his quick reflexes kept his cell phone from joining it. This last was a relief. As Lori was so fond of reminding him, he'd had to place the phone twice this year already due to natural clumsiness.

"What in God's name was that? The fire alarm?" Lori asked. In the fright, the phone had slipped down to his cheek. Only luck had kept it pinned there. Now, hands unexpectedly free of candy, he grabbed it and put it back to his ear.

"No. Someone's kid." As he said this last, he looked to his right, to the source of the sound.

There were a half dozen or so shoppers wandering the aisle. Many of them were making concentrated efforts not to look at the thin woman standing midway down the aisle, or the towheaded child currently tugging at the hem of her unseasonably heavy coat. On the faces of the shoppers, Phil saw his own emotions reflected back at him: irritation, pity, and relief.

Irritation at the obnoxious introduction of such a hostile and unwelcome sound into the general lazy-Saturday ambience of the store.

Pity at the sight of the browbeaten woman forced to accept responsibility for her child's misbehavior.

And relief that the child belonged to someone else.