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 hopped 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?”