Don Pond gestured at the coffee table on which Melba noted a thick book, a wooden yo-yo, a teapot, an oilcan, and several garlic sticks laid in a row on top of the bakery bag. Melba felt herself flush as she caught sight of the garlic crumbs smattering the highly glossed surface of the table. So Don Pond hadn’t forgotten.
“I prefer tea to coffee,” said Don Pond. “This tea I’ve steeped for you is anti-viral, with tumor-inhibiting properties.”
Melba clapped a hand to her earlobe. The carbuncle had grown. It was a tumor? She searched Don Pond’s face. She read nothing there, but the insinuating thrust of his words could not be parried. She probed the ear, probed it again. A tumor. She should have known.
“Who told you about the tumor?” she demanded.
“No one had to tell me,” said Don Pond. “I’m not blind. But Dr. Buck isn’t calling it a death sentence. He says that you haven’t assumed leadership of your family, that you aren’t ready for a serious illness.”
“That’s true of Melba Zuzzo,” whispered Melba. “But if there’s any truth to the allegations … Don, Ned Hat has alleged …”
“Dammit, Melba, nobody believes the allegations.” Don Pond tossed his head, and stroked his beard up and down, fingers hooked into claws.
“Oh!” Breathing hard, Melba set her mug carefully beside her on the cushion and launched herself from the couch, hitting the carpet on all fours. She stood up shakily, bumping the coffee table with her shin.
“I need to pace, Don,” she said. Don Pond nodded. He had calmed considerably.
“That’s fine, Melba,” he said.
“I’ll be careful I don’t end up at the bakery!” She gave Don a watery smile and in response a smile opened in the beard, splitting the gourdlike head. Melba circled the coffee table warily. It was very close to both the couch and the loveseat and as she paced the length of the table on either side her legs brushed alternately the couch and the legs of Don Pond.
“Let me put on some music,” said Don Pond, tactfully. He stood and disappeared into the corner of the house. The house was not big, but Don Pond matched the house very closely, and he was difficult to see as he bent and fiddled.
“This music was recorded in a cave,” he called. “If you don’t like it, I can play something else.”
“I’m sure it’s fine,” said Melba.
“I bet it’d be something special to listen to it, also in a cave,” said Don Pond, returning to the loveseat.
“It sounds like fluttering,” said Melba.
“That’s right!” said Don Pond. “There’s fluttering, and it’s very dark, and you’re in the company of personified forces.”
Melba’s legs brushed Don Pond’s legs as she squeezed between the loveseat and the table. She tried to hurry her pacing, but her skirts and apron tangled her up and she fell, turning her body sideways so that she landed in the slot between the chair and the table, upsetting neither. It was skillfully done.
“Oh don’t move,” said Melba, because she could feel Don Pond shifting his weight. “I’m going to lie here for just a moment.” The thick carpet cushioned the side of her face and if she angled up her eyes she could see the legs and the underside of the table, less highly glossed than the surface. Her ribs pressed protuberances—Don Pond’s feet—and her back pressed against Don Pond’s legs. Suddenly, she recalled, in vivid detail, a holiday. She had spent the holiday with Randal Hans, the two of them in dungarees, riding the same bike. After many hours, they dismounted, ate string cheese, and laughed about Melampus, who had announced to Melba the day before that she had decided to succeed Ann Dump as town clerk.
“But Ann Dump is so young!” laughed Randal Hans. “Younger than Melampus, and she would never give up her position. Ann Dump told me she was born to be the town clerk and that she would die as town clerk, and Ann Dump should know! She controls all the records in Dan. Melampus is very determined, and she is very beautiful and unafraid of hard work, but that will only set Ann Dump more firmly against her. Doesn’t Melampus wonder why she is named after a snail? Doesn’t she remember that she used to be named something else, something more appropriate for a beautiful girl? Who does she think changed her name to Melampus?”
Melba was laughing too hard to answer. Her mouth tasted mild and grassy with the string cheese and she was so happy!
“Melampus is stubborn and foolish!” she sputtered at last. “She says she likes the name Melampus. She says Ann Dump’s changing her name can only be considered a mark of distinction. She says only termagants and other women without desirable qualities prefer the names they were given at birth to the names they might acquire later on, through another person’s discretion. She even says she likes snails!”
Randal Hans’s eyes had disappeared; his cheeks were swollen with laughter. Melba grasped Randal Hans’s right hand.
“What do you most want in the world?” Melba asked Randal Hans, impulsively. Randal Hans hiccupped, then giggled, then drew a long breath, wiping his eyes which were just beginning to reemerge.
“I would like to be town clerk!” he screamed, doubling over. When he and Melba caught their breath again, he unwrapped a piece of string cheese and nibbled it, more or less soberly. He seemed to be thinking. They were at the top of Jake Hill so Randal Hans could look down at Dan as he thought. Lop Street and Satin Street and Hotot Street and White Street and Dwarf Street and Spot Street and Wooly Street and Tan Street and Main Street and Champagne D’Argent Avenue—all below, crisscrossing or winding off, missing the other streets completely, dead-ending in some lot or field, visible at this height as a pale or sable patch. Randal Hans had propped the bike against a telephone pole and he and Melba sat down beside it on a flattened box.
“I would like to be ribbon-shaped,” said Randal Hans at last.
“But not a ribbon?” said Melba Zuzzo cautiously, afraid of ruining the moment.
“Not a ribbon,” said Randal Hans. “A flatworm, maybe. Something that wiggles into the mud and the mud exerts even pressure on every part of its body.”
“You want to be squeezed?” offered Melba Zuzzo, more cautiously still. She bit into her string cheese, then, emboldened, flung the remainder into the dark tangle of roadside vines. She cupped her mouth with her hand. Her hand smelled sweeter than the string cheese. It smelled like a prune. She swayed toward Randal Hans and their shoulders jolted together.
“I want to be squeezed evenly,” said Randal Hans. “All over. It wouldn’t be possible from a human.” He sounded wistful.
“A bear?” asked Melba Zuzzo.
“It would have to be four bears,” said Randal Hans. “Enough to make a cube, or a sphere.” He continued to stare at Dan, the rooftops and scaly greenery and the sluggish holiday foot traffic, and Melba stared at Randal Hans. His yellow hair had picked up a stain, as though he’d been wearing a freshly dyed borsalino. Melba imagined squeezing Randal Hans, squeezing him tightly, joining forces with three bears, all of them working together, finding some way to exert synchronous pressures, wrapping Randal Hans in fur and flesh and bone, the bears blowing hot, fishy air from their mouths on her face and neck. She wouldn’t like that one bit. But if it was what Randal Hans wanted most …
“I’ll do it,” said Melba, but Randal Hans was pointing past her, at a gray spot on the edge of Dan, and didn’t pay her any mind.
“Look there,” said Randal Hans. “Did those kids just dig up a body in the gravel pit?” Melba looked and shrugged.
“Are they kids?” she asked. “Or could they be badgers? They’re so far away who could tell? But something about the way they dig, their determination … It’s obvious they know what they’re doing and that nobody’s whining about it.”
“You must be right,” said Randal Hans. He held up his empty hands and smiled at Melba. “No more cheese! Let’s get out of here.”
Then he and Melba had pushed the bike over the summit of Jake Hill. There was no street on the other side, just weeds interspersed with morasses and trash. They hoppe
d across a stinking rivulet to a place Randal Hans remembered where people dumped batteries.
Now, lying on Don Pond’s floor, in that narrow space between the chair and the carpet and the table, molded to Don Pond’s legs and feet, Melba felt that she understood Randal Hans, his craving, not for bears or mud in particular, but for an all-encompassing proximity. She felt that she belonged where she lay, with Don Pond and the chair and carpet and the table close around her. Her relationship with Don Pon was different now that they weren’t in the bakery. Now that she knew how she fit into his house, nothing could be like it was before.
“I know what you’re doing,” said Don Pond. “You’re making a cave, aren’t you? I’ve done the same thing. I’ve even written up proclamations for my cave, seceding from Dan.”
“Don’t talk,” begged Melba, her voice muffled. “You’re spoiling it.”
“Well, I can’t see how I’m spoiling anything,” said Don Pond, stiffly. “I know you’re using me as part of your cave. Dr. Buck warned me about letting you do exactly this, about letting you use me in this way. He said you have a kind of bleak power over people, that you turn men into stalagmites, but you don’t stay with them for long. You break into a stream of bats and rush away.”
“Is that what he said?” whispered Melba.
“Not exactly,” said Don Pond. “How could I say what Dr. Buck said? I’m not a doctor. It’s an approximation, Melba.” Don Pond’s toes jabbed between Melba’s ribs as he struggled up. Melba heard him stumbling through the house and fiddling with knobs and all at once the fluttering music died away. Melba crawled out from her slot. She felt dizzy and stumbled around the coffee table, climbing back onto the couch. Don Pond was standing at one end of the couch, looking at her.
“I’m not a doctor,” he said. “I’m not even a patient. I was the first customer at the bakery, but I gave that up for you.”
“How’s that?” asked Melba.
“Where are you, Melba?” said Don Pond, throwing out his arms. “You can’t claim that this is the bakery.”
“It’s your house, I know,” said Melba Zuzzo. “But really, it could be somewhere inside the bakery. The bakery is enormous and I never go past the first mixer or deep into the freezer. For all I know, your house might be inside the freezer. It’s warm enough in here, but who knows what it’s like once you open the door? No, I wouldn’t be surprised if we were still in the bakery. I always thought you had an arrangement with Leslie Duck.”
“He’s my landlord,” said Don Pond. “But that doesn’t mean my house is inside the bakery. Landlords own multiple properties, often non-contiguous. And if my house is in fact separate from the bakery, which it is, and you are in my house, which you are, then you are not in the bakery. The bakery, Melba, is effectively closed for business.”
Melba saw what he was getting at and tried to wave him off but he would not be silenced.
“How can I be the first customer, Melba, if there are no subsequent customers?” asked Don Pond. “By removing you from the bakery, I sacrificed my only defining characteristic and my only hope of compelling respect from other people. Not that being the first customer was a skill I developed on my own,” Don Pond added, modestly, in a manner that recalled his former self. “As you pointed out, I owed it to Leslie Duck, who rented me this property. But I like to think I went above and beyond the bare minimum required of a first customer.”
“You did,” Melba agreed. “The garlic …”
Don Pond leaned across the armrest. It was longer than Don Pond’s torso and so he ended up splayed across it on his belly in a seal-like posture.
“You noticed!” he said. “You cared.”
Melba fumbled for some way of expressing what Don Pond had meant to her. “First customer” didn’t seem adequate, but how else could she describe the role he played in her life? She slid away from him toward the other end of the couch, chewing the collar of her shirt.
“Your head,” she said, releasing the collar, using her fingertips to press the damp wrinkles against her neck. “You probably think I’m indifferent to it, but you’re wrong. I feel tense and distracted. It’s as if your head were a hard ball balanced on a seal’s nose and the seal might toss it to me, but Don, what if I miss?”
Don Pond groaned. The couch seemed to get longer by the second and Don Pond’s groan came from far off.
“Melba, you wouldn’t miss,” he groaned. “Not if you didn’t want to. You know you can just hold up the ends of your apron and catch anything. But it’s no good trying to convince you. You aren’t compassionate. You lorded it over everyone when you worked at the bakery. Now that that’s over, I wonder what you’ll do? In a way, you’ve lost more than I have.”
Melba did not know how to respond. It was too new, leaving her position at the bakery, the bakery closing for business, the day stretching out before her without activities or tasks. Curled in the corner of the couch, she contemplated the black vinyl expanse. The couch was really a showpiece, one of a kind, grimly magnificent, the house merely a shanty built over the couch to protect it from the elements. The cold, claylike cushions cased in the thin, vaguely tacky membrane—they did give one the sensation of snuggling dead flesh. Even the faint chemical odor of the couch seemed preservative in nature. Melba rubbed her hand on the vinyl and examined the pad of her thumb—no darker, but waxier.
Summoning all her strength, Melba crawled from the couch corner toward what she hoped was the cushion’s edge, a matte black horizon line where the gleaming vinyl graded into the dim and porous air. The vista dizzied her. She swung her arm, using the momentum to propel herself backwards away from the edge. She bumped against her abandoned mug and the tea sloshed but did not spill. She fumbled for it, grasping the mug in both hands and gulping without hesitation. The taste was not good. The texture, however, reminded Melba pleasantly of silt.
Like any female in a male’s house, she thought, I am being struck with ways to make improvements. She smiled, relieved to find that she had surrendered her contested singularity and merged herself with the anonymous multitude of women in general.
For instance, thought Melba, improvingly, enjoying her newfound freedom as representative of a group, how nice it would be to serve such a tea in a small dish, just the slightest bit concave! The silty tea would spread out wide and warm and shallow, and the guest could drink it with eyes fixed on the brown surface, as though peeping through rushes at the squidgy rim of a eutrophic lake. Having seen her improving idea to the finish, Melba sighed, her mind returning to its lonely track.
She heard rummaging and clinking and wondered briefly if animals had emerged from wallows beneath the couch before she glimpsed Don Pond setting a platter on the coffee table. The platter was rectangular, white plastic, arrayed with daubs of jam and sliced sausages in alternating lines. Melba noted the thin, curved shadow limning the blade of a white plastic knife. Setting her mug beside her on the cushion, she squirmed to the edge of the couch and extended her arm across the crevasse between couch and table until her hand hovered above the tabletop. After making a few calculations, she let her hand drop onto the platter and pinched with thumb and forefinger, coming away with a firm grip on the knife’s handle. She performed a similar maneuver and a garlic stick was also hers. She reached out the other arm and spread jam on the garlic stick. The jam clung together in a dense clot that fell from the end of the garlic stick and was lost to view, tumbling down to be swallowed by the carpet. Don Pond did not glance over. He was ignoring her, had crossed to the other side of the room, where he stood cleaning the windowsills with a hand vacuum.
Engaging her back muscles, Melba retracted her arms, regaining her position on the edge of the couch with her prizes in her hands. She sniffed the jam, which smelled gamey, then crunched the garlic stick between her teeth. Don Pond switched off the hand vacuum and she froze, jaws clenched, the garlic stick lodged in her mouth. The hand vacuum surged to life and Melba blew out through her nose, a noisy gust of air, and mauled the g
arlic stick with powerful up and down and also lateral motions of her jaws, snorting, the garlic stick itself grown wet and pliable, folding silently now into a sodden but lacy ball. She swallowed, blew again through her nose, and let herself be pulled backwards by the couch’s inexorable gravity. Soon she was back in the corner.
So this was what it is like to be unemployed, thought Melba. Navigating a man’s couch, poaching in the thick unclean daylight, as the man bustles about, hosting.
Of course, Melba knew there were different forms of unemployment; some people opted for chemical comas, others ate pears in the face of the wind that blew strongly on the top of the mountain, others shopped, relying on the television and telephone to identify goods and place orders, or visiting the outlet stores on White Street where damaged or slightly soiled blouses and slacks appeared in bins at unpredictable intervals. Melba Zuzzo did not shop very often, never having had the time, but some girls shopped a great deal.
Melba had been warned by her mother that she did not shop enough, and that by not shopping enough she was jeopardizing her chances for long-term happiness. The conversation had shocked her, but whether it was because of what her mother had said, or because she had not expected to speak to her mother at all on that occasion, she could not be sure. She had picked up the telephone to place a call to Mark Rand.
“Mark Rand?” she had said.
“Speaking,” replied Gigi Zuzzo.
Melba had paused, perplexed. She had felt the impulse to pull the telephone receiver from her head and examine it, but she did not give in to this impulse, which she knew to be a stupid one. Instead she looked around the vestibule, where her coats hung on pegs and the telephone sat in the center of a tiny telephone table.
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