A BRIGHT SMILE, DARKLY

By Samuel Colfax

Ever since they’d seen The Lion King, Ted and Tina McClosky had simply been nuts about Africa – quite possibly more so than any other couple in suburban Cleveland. So for their tenth anniversary, they decided to go on a safari. Before leaving, Tina bought herself several khaki suits and a lovely pith helmet. Then, as the Frommer’s guidebook suggested, she got her teeth whitened.

The safari had been going splendidly until the ivory poachers showed up. From their camp several miles away, they had seen the procession of Land Cruisers rumbling across the savannah; they had also noticed the preternatural gleam of Tina McClosky’s pearly whites, and had concluded correctly that she would be easier to handle than an elephant or rhinoceros. Guns and pliers drawn, they surrounded the vehicles one afternoon and quickly extruded all of Tina's freshly polished teeth. The remainder of the safari passed pleasantly enough, though Tina spent much of the time prostrate and weeping.

The McClosky household just wasn’t the same after the poaching incident. Ted seemed lost in a world of melancholy, and Tina kept getting caraway seeds stuck under her new dentures. Then things really fell apart: Tina discovered that Ted was having an affair with their neighbor, Gloria Hildebrand. Worse, he had seduced her with an aphrodisiac specially ordered from Tanzania ― a white, musty-smelling powder made of ginseng, hippopotamus gallbladder, and Tina McClosky’s pulverized molars.

(There is nothing author Samuel Colfax won’t do for a fresh, tasty yam.)