Read Online Dan by Joanna Ruocco - Free Book Online

the word “bird” so as to emphasize its tinny, brittle quality, alerting Melba to its irreconcilability with the word “friend,” which she knew had a warm center, like runny caramel in a chocolate square.
    “Shane Joseph’s vagrancy brought him to Pike’s ditch,” said Gigi Zuzzo, “but he was only passing through. He didn’t intend to stay there. He was a true vagrant, not the type that’s always looking for some excuse to settle down. But your father invited him to spend the night beneath the footbridge, and Shane Joseph agreed. The next thing … Kablooey!”
    “Kablooey,” echoed Melba.
    “Bird droppings are flammable!” cried Gigi Zuzzo. “Your father treads lightly. He had no problems skimming over the bird droppings that had accumulated under the footbridge. But vagrants shuffle, Melba. They have a shuffling gait, and they tend to take great big breaths, like this, Melba,” Gigi Zuzzu expanded her impressive diaphragm. “It’s a tendency vagrants have. They think it demonstrates that they are unconfined. These breaths are expressive of the vagrant’s sense of freedom, do you understand? Now combine these deep breaths with kicked up bird droppings, rum vapor, and a stubby cigar and what do you get?”
    “Kablooey?” whispered Melba.
    “Kablooey!” It was obvious that Gigi Zuzzo wished she had a small paper lunch bag she could blow up and punch explosively into a wall. She looked longingly at the milk carton Melba held in her hand, but Melba shook it up and down to indicate that it was as yet too full of milk.
    “Your father is lucky Officer Greg and I understand one another,” said Gigi Zuzzo, “or your father would very likely have been accused of vigilantism, or have had his name added to a registry of second-degree murderers and been forced to perform community services, landscaping, decorating paper plates for senior lunches, running the flu clinic, helping Dr. Buck check children for scoliosis and lice.” The conversation ended then, because Gigi Zuzzo, recalling Melba’s curvature, had forced her facedown onto a fitness ball, and spent the remainder of the evening pulling alternately on her left arm and right leg.
    Now, in the bakery, Melba noticed her left shoulder and right hip listing in opposite directions, no doubt the result of her uncorrected S-curve, and she wished she had been more stoic regarding her mother’s ministrations. Her mother’s words ran dizzy laps in her head and she looked at Officer Greg with wonderment.
    “Is it true you understand my mother?” asked Melba. Her question came almost too late. Officer Greg was leaving. She could tell by the way he’d drawn up the corner of his mouth, lifting the bag of pretzels to brace against his chest. Officer Greg spun toward her but, remembering that he did not intend to look at her full on, he overshot the mark, pivoting to present her with his other profile, this one jowly, not nearly as debonair. He blinked rapidly, staring out through the bakery window, squinting even, as though trying to read the backwards lettering frosted on the front of the glass.
    “That case has been solved, Melba,” said Officer Greg in a light tone designed to counteract the intimacy of the disclosure. “I won’t reopen it. You should worry about yourself. There’s nothing secure about your position. I can’t think of a single person who would vouch for anything about you. You say Leslie Duck is your boss, but I don’t have any records of Leslie Duck’s being anyone’s boss. Leslie Duck is a bachelor. The last I heard of Leslie Duck he was moving to the coast to start a banana plantation.”
    Melba’s mouth opened and closed. It had been quite some time since she’d laid eyes on Leslie Duck. And he had been talking about bananas!
    “Let me tell you something about bananas,” Leslie Duck had said. “They’re blanks, Melba. Sterile! Isn’t that wonderful? There’s so much fecundity in fruit form. It disgusts me, all the