Joanna Ruocco: Dan

Dan.

Dr. Buck laid his gloved fingertips lightly on the back of Melba’s neck. She felt his breath tickling the exposed line of skin away from which she folded the left and right halves of her hair.

“What do you see?” asked Dr. Buck. Melba was holding her breath and she had to exhale noisily before she could speak. Dr. Buck patted her back.

“My father,” said Melba Zuzzo.

“Melba, I am your father,” whispered Dr. Buck. Melba stiffened. She cried out. She slapped her palms instinctively against the window as though trying to reach Zeno Zuzzo, who had shaved a sliver of olive and was contemplating the sliver where it clung to the blade of the knife. Dr. Buck began to laugh.

“Not biologically, Melba,” he laughed. “But we are just alike in our souls, don’t you think? Do you like pralines?” He gripped Melba under the armpits and set her on the ground, then rose to fumble in a kidney-shaped tray. He extracted a praline.

“I like pralines,” he said. “But I would rather you have it. This praline is for you.” Melba took the praline between her lips, then pushed it with her tongue so that it fit between her gums and her cheek.

“You didn’t eat the praline,” said Dr. Buck.

Melba nodded. “I did,” she said, the saliva puddling around the praline so that a sugary tendril of drool escaped from the corner of her mouth.

“You did not,” said Dr. Buck, sadly. “No matter. I will write you a prescription.”

That very night, Melba developed a system of nasal irrigation, snorting a broth of white pepper, tobacco leaves, and mustard powder. Within the week, her polyps had dissolved. Adopting a maintenance therapy of rigorous honey consumption, Melba attained a fully oxygenated, even ruddy good health. As the years passed, she experienced small ignominies — thinning hair and frequent infestations of eye mites — but she did not seek out Dr. Buck. He asked about her, Melba knew this, and sometimes he came into the bakery, pretending not to recognize her, but leaving little gifts: paper bags of empty gel-caps for her to fill with whatever she wished.

Melba wondered if she would ever find out for sure about horses and islands. If she would need some sort of reference material or travel regimen.

The man in the window was still calling to her.

“Bev,” he called. “Bev.”

Seeing another human being operating so vehemently under a false perception made Melba feel a kind of relief. She smiled and waved at the man in the window, walking her bicycle forward with her legs on either side of the top tube.

“It’s not Bev. It’s Melba,” called Melba. “From the bakery.”

The man in the window gave a jerk, striking his head against the window sash.

“Oh Bev! Why have you come back as Melba?” the man moaned.

“Oh Bev! Why Melba? Why Melba?”

Melba could no longer bear to crane her neck at the man. She let her helmeted head fall forward, slumping over her handlebars.

The man was still shouting. “Why Melba? Why Melba?”

“Why, Melba,” came a voice close at hand. “Now you’ve done it.”

Melba dragged her head to the upright position and saw Hal Drake, the successful machinist. He patrolled the streets of Dan in the early hours when Officer Greg was still asleep. Melba had never seen such a somber look on his face.

“That’s Ned Hat up there, Melba,” said Hal Drake, grimly.

“Ned Hat?” Melba’s eyes flew to the figure in the window. “But that’s an old bald man! Ned is different. He isn’t like …” Melba faltered.

“Like what?” Hal gave a short, harsh laugh. “Like me, Melba?”

“Like that ,” said Melba. “I mean, like that man in the window.”

“He is now,” said Hal. As he spoke, he worked his mouth as though he were chewing on the sides of his tongue. Melba looked away.

“A lot can happen to a man in the night,” said Hal, quietly. “You wouldn’t understand.”

“He’s frothing at the mouth!” cried Melba.

“Let him be,” said Hal. “It’s the peroxide.”

“Someone has to do something,” protested Melba. She glanced uneasily up and down the empty street. “Where’s Bev?”

Hal went rigid.

“She’s dead, Melba,” said Hal. “She died yesterday.”

Melba squeezed the grips of her handlebars. She inclined her chin to look again at the man in the window and she felt the weight of her helmet tug her head backwards.

Melba’s thoughts of Pam Dempsey returned to her. Melba wondered if it was still possible to walk off, to lie quietly. Her head lolled.

“It was helium poisoning,” continued Hal. “She was filling campaign balloons for Mayor Bunt …” his voice broke.

“Ned thinks I’m Bev Hat!” burst out Melba, straightening her neck with a sudden rush of isometrics.

“Ned doesn’t know what to think,” said Hal. “It’s very early in the morning and he hasn’t gotten much sleep. He’d have to be crazy to imagine that Bev has come back as you, Melba. Where would you have gone, then, answer me that? If you’re Bev, where’s Melba? It would be better if he’d never seen you, but now that he has, there’s nothing you can do. He’ll forget this whole thing soon enough. The best thing you can do is get to work. I’ll handle Ned Hat.”

“Bev!” Ned yelled.

“Go Melba!” said Hal, and he slapped the back wheel of Melba’s bicycle as he aimed a flare gun at Ned Hat’s window with his free hand. Melba pushed off and pedaled faster than she ever had, flying down the hill, until she saw the lighted windows of the bakery shining onto the dough dumpster that Bert Bus, the garbage man, had forgotten to drag back into the alley where it belonged by day, upright amid the liverworts.

The lights in the bakery were always on because the owner, Leslie Duck, thought the lights gave the impression of industry.

“Folks see the lights,” Leslie Duck had said, “and they say to themselves: ‘even now, even in the dead of night, the bakers are working in the bakery, baking fresh and golden pretzels,’ rather like elves, Melba.”

Melba was a docile employee, but something — the reference to elves — forced her to question Leslie Duck.

“I’ve often wondered,” she said, “can’t elves see in the dark? Like opossums? Couldn’t they work the mixers in the dark?”

Leslie Duck stared at Melba for a moment.

“Well, that sounds a little sinister, Melba,” he said finally. “That sounds strange and sinister. You don’t go around town saying things like that, do you Melba?”

“Of course not,” said Melba quickly. “I don’t talk about work. It’s impolite, what with so many people unemployed. Imagine if I started saying that opossums worked in the bakery when half the young men in Dan are so idle and bored they’ve petitioned scientists to put them in chemical comas! There would be a riot. The bakery would be burned to the ground.”

Leslie Duck did not look convinced, but Melba began to apply rock salt to the pretzels with such avidity that eventually he nodded with satisfaction and left her to her task.

Now Melba ran about the bakery, uncovering trays of pretzels and crumpets and sliding them under the display case. She realized that her skirts were damp with dirty water from the storm drain and that her hair had been flattened and burred by the helmet. She tied an apron over her muddied shirtfront and dropped onto a stool behind the counter. She tried to forget about Bev Hat. Bev Hat was just one woman and her absence around town could not be as significant as, for example, the absence of a whole group of women. Melba recognized that even the absence of a group of women was not, strictly speaking, significant , that is, from a statistical perspective. The population of Dan was not large, yet somehow it was difficult to account for all of the residents.