“I had a bad experience with depilatory creams,” said Melba. “My skin started to smoke, the skin above my upper lip, and the smoke went right into my nose. I had to wear your snorkel and sleep with my face in a bowl of water. I couldn’t possibly go through that again! I don’t even have my own snorkel, and …”
“It’s not about the depilatory creams,” said Gigi Zuzzo. “It’s about shopping more generally. When you shop, you expand, Melba. You stretch out your hand and also your psyche to compass the thing that you desire, and then, when the moment is right, you clamp down, you squeeze around the thing! Expansion and contraction, Melba, that’s shopping. It’s a spasm! A special spasm. You’ve heard of these spasms? Not just a pleasant jolt. Jolts don’t penetrate to great depth, and they have no duration. A spasm is different; it’s a rippling that works the fascia to keep your inner linings from drying out. Have you ever seen a person with her inner linings dried out?”
Melba considered.
“You have,” snarled Gigi Zuzzo. “Think, Melba. She never shopped! She worked in the bakery before you. How can you be so callous? You are her successor!”
“Lisa Cucci,” said Melba. She had succeeded Lisa Cucci as the bakery’s employee.
“But Lisa Cucci’s inner lining didn’t dry out,” protested Melba. “She married Seton Holmes and started a new life.”
“Lisa Cucci was spurned by Seton Holmes!” said Gigi Zuzzo. “The Business Council decided that the story should be suppressed. They kept it from you, Melba. I disagreed, but I’m not on the Business Council. I had no vote. What do I know about business? Nothing. If you’d been informed about Lisa Cucci’s being dried out and spurned, a husk of her former self, you might not have performed ably as her successor. You might have feared acceding to her position, knowing how it turned out. In that sense, I see the wisdom of the Business Council’s decision. In another sense though, I see the fallibility of the Business Council’s reasoning, because in not knowing Lisa Cucci’s situation, you have made almost exactly the same mistakes. It doesn’t bode well for your longevity as a bakery employee! But I suppose the Business Council made calculations about all of that, about your rate of deterioration under Lisa Cucci-like conditions. They are already training your successor!”
“If Lisa Cucci didn’t start a new life with Seton Holmes,” whispered Melba. “And she isn’t living her old life as a bakery employee, then what is Lisa Cucci doing?”
“She’s existing in a kind of limbo,” said Gigi Zuzzo. “She doesn’t do anything. She can’t. She’s neither here nor there, this nor that. You wouldn’t recognize her. She’s a wispy, pale thing, a tuft. It’s as though she’s been reduced to a single eyebrow. I bid you good day, Melba.”
“Good day,” said Melba.
“You don’t raise me?” snapped Gigi Zuzzo. “You see my bid and that’s all? Melba, have you no loins? No spark? Don’t you aspire?”
“I don’t think so,” said Melba.
“Good day,” said Gigi Zuzzo.
“Good day,” said Melba.
“Don,” called Melba now over the moan of the hand vacuum. “Don.” Don whirled, hand vacuum pointed at Melba’s head. For an instant, Don Pond and Melba Zuzzo stared at each other, Melba’s eyes flitting between Don Pond’s eyes and the dark slot of the upraised hand vacuum. Then Don Pond lowered the hand vacuum.
“Yes, Melba,” he said.
“Do you notice anything about my eyebrows?” asked Melba. “I mean, do you recognize anyone?”
Don Pond shrugged.
“Dr. Buck warned me you would ask about that,” he said. “He told me that you would become agitated whatever answer I gave and so I shouldn’t say anything. He recommended that I assign you to a part of the house where your mind would be occupied by a form of entertainment.”
“I’ll go,” said Melba. “I’ve heard that entertainment is a cure for being tired and for being wide awake as well. It might be exactly what I need. I didn’t know there was any part of Dan with a functioning form of entertainment.”
“You haven’t been paying much attention to the candidates if you think they’re making promises about entertainment,” said Don Pond. “Haven’t you been listening to the speeches?”
“Only when I can’t avoid them,” said Melba. “When someone calls me at the bakery or at my house or bikes along next to me with a megaphone.”
“I like that you look at my head when you talk to me,” said Don Pond in a rush. “Dr. Buck told me not to say that to you either, but I couldn’t help it.”
“Thank you,” said Melba, looking at Don Pond’s head more intently, although she knew that she did not deserve his compliment. As a girl, she hadn’t given heads their due, until one day her father took her to the Dan Diner. There she was reprimanded by the waitress, Barb Owen. Barb Owen had slammed mugs of coffee on the table, jostling the pink tablet settling into Melba’s drinking water. Melba stared at the bubbles streaming up inside the tall glass of drinking water. She skimmed the surface foam with the tip of her spoon then placed the spoon carefully on the napkin beside two other spoons. She wondered what to order. She thought she might like something with gravy. Meanwhile, Zeno Zuzzo was talking about the landbridge.
“In conclusion, crossing the landbridge was a beleaguering experience,” concluded Zeno Zuzzo. “I would have swum! But land was the new thing then. It was like a fad! Walking on land was the big thing.”
“Were there shoes yet?” asked Melba.
“No shoes,” said Zeno Zuzzo. He ordered the lunch special and Barb Owen brought Zeno and Melba Zuzzo each a Turkey Dinner. She slammed them on the table. Melba watched the gravy slowly lap the rim of the gravy boat. After finishing her Turkey Dinner, Melba waited at the door while her father brought the check up to the counter. Suddenly Barb Owen was beside her, bending over her, pushing her face close to Melba’s face.
“You are an anarchist, Melba Zuzzo,” she shouted. “You’re always looking at people’s hands or talking about their feet! Why can’t you pay attention to heads like a regular person?”
Stunned, Melba shrank back, but not before she had looked closely at Barb Owen’s head. She understood in an instant why Barb Owen was upset. Barb Owen had a sensational head, a head that warranted inspection. Melba had never thought of herself as an anarchist, but whatever term you put to it, her behavior had been wrong: looking down all the time, introducing shoes into conversation while sitting down at the table to eat turkey and gravy in a public venue. If it wasn’t anarchism, it was something very close, and Melba felt deeply ashamed, a feeling that stayed with her no matter how much praise she received. It felt good, receiving praise from Don Pond, but it could not alleviate the shame. Barb Owen deserved the praise, not Melba. Melba’s smile was bittersweet.
“Anyway,” she said, “I don’t care very much about politics. Mayor Bunt is as good a mayor as any other, so why we have to go through an election is beyond me.”
“I know someone who might change your mind,” said Don Pond. “He’s a candidate and if he wins the election he’s going to transform Dan completely.”
“Is that what you want?” asked Melba, curious.
“Depends on the kind of transformation,” said Don Pond. “This candidate will make us all rich. I don’t care so much about being rich myself, but it would be nice to be a citizen in a town of millionaires. Everyone in Henderson would go green with envy and everyone in Gerardville and Manstown and Wilma too, everyone in every town everywhere, once they hear how high on the hog we all are. We’ll have to fill all the warehouses in the hosiery district with our riches. I don’t know if you’ve noticed Melba, ensconced in the bakery like you are, but there’s a dearth of jobs in Dan. Unemployment is more enjoyable if you’re rich and this candidate I mentioned, he figured that out. And what a personality! Everything he says redounds to his credit. There is absolutely nothing I wouldn’t do for him.”