“I wish Ned Hat had seen me do that,” thought Melba. Bev Hat certainly wouldn’t move dumpsters around if she’d just come back from the dead. Bev Hat had always despised dumpsters. Back when Bev Hat was still Bev Horn, she refused even to empty her own lunch tray. A small girl with pink, naked eyelids and fluffy gray hairs grouped on the center top of her head would empty it for her. No one knew that girl’s name. A larger version of her was still seen from time to time near the Hat residence, where perhaps she helped with chores.
Melba liked the alley and stood as comfortably as she could manage given her skeleton, which, no matter what her position, kept her from feeling fully at ease.
Having a human body is like eating a fish for dinner, thought Melba. You have to be so slow and careful. You can’t just enjoy yourself. There’s always a worry about the bones.
Melba sighed and tried to concentrate on the alley. The bakery vents hummed and dripped. She knew that the dough inside the dumpster was rising, pushing up the lid. There was so much activity in the alley, but not like a footrace or a conversation, where it was expected that you would stagger on and there was always someone to try to get the better of; it was the unaffected and aimless activity of waste processes, not the sort of thing anyone endorsed.
“Hello, alley!” saluted Melba.
A screen door rested up against a lanky junk tree, and there was a cairn of oblong stones that Melba knew to be pestles though she had never seen one used. Between the stones and Melba lay something invisible.
Jelly, thought Melba. Or maybe Mr. Sack was right, maybe it was miasma, something slighter than jelly, viscous and a little nasty, but it wasn’t just between the stones and her body, or the dough dumpster and the stones, thought Melba, it was between the stones and the stones, and between her body and her body, and the dough dumpster and the dough dumpster, because the stones and her body and the dough dumpster each existed in other times, in the past and future, and the jelly was what got in the way of seeing all the other stones and all the other Melbas and all the other dough dumpsters; the jelly kept changing its clearness, showing, for example, one Melba, then another, then another; one dumpster, then another, then another.
“I’ll never figure it out,” thought Melba. “Meanwhile, people keep dying and where they do they go in the jelly? Do they rot in the jelly and make more jelly? Could time be made of people?”
Melba walked slowly from the alley. Inside the bakery the air was warm and fragrant and the phone had fallen silent. Melba heaved a sigh of relief as she settled onto the stool. Sleepily she considered the pretzels on the trays through the glass countertop. Any of them would do for breakfast, with butter and Peggy Shine’s orange marmalade, which Melba kept on a special shelf in the walk-in refrigerator. Suddenly the door burst open and Melba sprang to her feet.
“Jumpy aren’t you, Melba?” said the man who stood backlit in the doorway. Melba stared at the silhouette.
“Officer Greg,” she said, and he approached the counter.
“I’ll be the one to name names around here, Melba,” said Officer Greg. “If I can even call you Melba.” He seemed unwilling to look at Melba head-on and kept his head turned to the side even as he came forward.
“I’m not committing myself to seeing you, Melba,” said Officer Greg. “So don’t get any ideas that I’ll testify on your behalf as an eye-witness.”
“You’ve been talking to Ned Hat,” said Melba and she couldn’t keep the smug, deductive note from her voice that she knew Officer Greg, like so many officers, found offensive in lay people.
Officer Greg bumped into the counter and stopped coming forward. Melba looked at his profile appreciatively.
“Have you considered becoming a nose model?” she asked.
“I am a police officer, Melba,” rapped out Officer Greg, but Melba observed that his nostrils had flared slightly at the compliment.
“Or something more part-time. Donating your nose to science?” she continued, warming to the topic. “It wouldn’t take very long and it would do such a world of good. I would donate my own nose but it’s an inferior specimen and it seems to me that science should get only the best from people. Think of all science does for us.”
“No, Melba, I won’t,” said Officer Greg. He took a thick roll of clear tape from his pocket. Melba looked at the tape, then followed Officer Greg’s gaze. He was looking at the cash register.
“You don’t mind if I check for fingerprints,” said Officer Greg, scratching the roll of tape lightly with his fingernails, which were long, Melba noted, no doubt for the very purpose.
“It’s so difficult to find the end of the tape,” she murmured, hoping with the comment to establish a kind of sympathy between them, but Officer Greg flinched. He did not look toward her but Melba saw that his lips trembled with emotion, at least on the left side of his face.
“It’s the beginning of the roll of tape,” said Officer Greg at last, sighing. “The beginning! Melba, I’ve championed you to the men of this town, men who claim that you’re a succubus, because you’ve always seemed diurnal to me, decently dressed, and your mother is an athletic woman, but how can I champion you at all if you’re going to say such negative things?”
After a pause filled only with the sound of mixers and the light scratching of Officer Greg’s fingernails, Melba spoke, painfully aware that her words must sound coy or ungrateful.
“I don’t know,” she said. “Maybe I don’t deserve a champion.” Officer Greg did not answer but moved swiftly about the bakery, applying and removing strips of tape to the counter, walls, and ceiling, which he reached using a collapsible police stool that doubled, in its collapsed state, as a cudgel. Melba marveled at this device but said nothing about it. She did not find it easy to speak with police officers. One always wanted something from them, aid or exoneration, or else to be left alone entirely, passed over unnoticed or, if noticed, quickly forgotten, and this made it impossible for one to speak freely, as, say, a rational, disinterested party might be expected to speak in the public sphere. Melba was always imputing some hidden agenda to the comments she made to police officers and this incessant fishing around her own mind for possible motivating factors or subterfuges caused her considerable stress. When faced with a police officer, she would flush and sweat and wring her hands in a manner bound to strike even a near-sighted, kindly, non-inquisitorial person as unreservedly degenerate.
Now, to occupy her hands, the palms of which were already mashed together, fingers jumbled, she became brisk, rising from her stool and pulling out first one tray, then another, scanning the baked goods for desirability.
“Would you like a pretzel?” she asked Officer Greg, and he grunted, labeling the strips of tape and, after punching a hole in each one, slipping them onto a key ring which he clipped to his belt. Melba selected three pretzels and wrapped them carefully in wax paper before nestling them in a large white paper bag. She passed them over the counter to Officer Greg who reached out for them, head still turned to the side, opening and closing his hand like a pincers several times on empty air before Melba could aim the bag between his fingers.
Officer Greg sighed, his profile surprisingly eloquent for the profile of a police officer at that hour of the morning. It wasn’t just the above-average nose, but the long drape of the eyelid, which was thin and trapezoidal, nothing puffy or stubby about it.
“My gut tells me you’re not supernatural, Melba,” said Officer Greg. “I don’t quite believe you’re an employee …”
“But I am an employee,” broke in Melba. “Leslie Duck is my boss. What else could I be?”
“I’m going to run these prints and we’ll see,” said Officer Greg. “You could be a lot of things. A wife, a mother, a safe-breaker, a patient …”