Summary

The unnamed narrator of this story tells us that he is in Lima (we can assume the capital of Peru) to work on a recording project there. He lives in the United States. His unnamed cousin is a dentist in the city, and he tells us that, during his time in Lima, he had a standing appointment at his cousin’s office.

When the narrator was a boy, he tells us, his cousin lived with his family in Birmingham, Alabama. The narrator remembers that his cousin took many romantic phone calls from girls in town. The cousin’s dental assistant at his Lima office was a young woman whom the narrator, during his appointments, constantly sexually fantasized about in order to get through the pain of the procedures.

The cousin was engaged to a woman named Carmen, who was finishing law school. On...