Dan Read Online Free

“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.
    Melba’s mother had once offered Melba an explanation.
    “That Ann Dump!” Melba’s mother had cried. Ann Dump was the town clerk, and not a good one. Under Ann Dump’s clerkship, many vital records in the town hall vault had been consumed by snails.
    “That Ann Dump!” said Melba’s