Or else maybe not. Maybe it wasn’t sweeter gum he was after. And maybe he was sonless, and maybe he was wifeless, and maybe his pharmacy was thriving to the point where without thinking twice he could turn a blind eye when the flatcapped orphans who lived up the street pinched handfuls of candy from the jar on the counter, yet something, despite his success, was missing. A lasting contribution—he wanted to make one. How could he make one? What did people need? What good could he do? He had a talent for chemistry, but wasn’t any genius. He’d patented a syrup that slowed down nosebleeds. He’d patented a syrup that helped close mouth sores. His syrup for the treatment of neckache and heartburn was mostly just opium, ethanol, and cherries. His lasting contribution would not be a syrup. Better chemists would invent better syrups soon enough. He needed, in other words, to get out of syrups. Out of syrups into what, though? He hadn’t a clue. Lozenges, maybe? Possibly salves? But what was a lozenge if not hardened syrup? What was a salve if not topical syrup? And eardrops were syrups that went in the ears, and tonics bitter syrups with lower viscosity, and lotions and creams but salves that smelled pretty, topical syrups with floral noses. The chemist was despondent. He’d walk around the town at night and try to get lost, yet couldn’t get lost, couldn’t even manage that; the town wasn’t big enough, the chemist wasn’t dumb enough. The chemist was glum. But then one night, as he was plodding past an alley, he overheard an orphan saying to a dog, “Don’t you think this gum should have a lot more chew in it? I bet if it chewed more I could blow it up into a ball-type shape, see. Like stretch it with my tongue, then breathe it out round. Make like a bubble. Call the stuff bubbleychew. How do you like that? Ah, you don’t understand. You’re just a stray animal I once fed a scrap to, and me I’m crazy and stupid the both. Doomed and crazy with my stupid ideas, just like Sister Alameda says. Doomed. Blow it in a ball shape and call the stuff—what was it? yeah—call it bubbleychew. Sounds like a faggot’s name. A queer baking cookies. A homo in an apron with sprinkles on top. Honest to Christmas, what’s wrong with me, muttso?”
Regardless of the source of the chemist’s inspiration, though, his recipe, I supposed, revolutionized gum. It was far less a failure at retaining sweetness than it was a success at sustaining chewability and, epiphenomenally, enabling bubbling. It forced the tide to rise. All the other brands of bubblegum still around today—your Hubba Bubbas, Bazookas, Bubbliciousi, and Bubble Yums—developed in its wake. Dubble Bubble stood for progress. And the sun was high, too, and the pantry was stocked. So was the fridge. I had 150 Quills.
Then again I had only 150 Quills, an empty wallet, no credit to speak of, and this was 2013—shouldn’t Dubble Bubble, in the intervening decades, have figured out a way to make the sweetness longer-lasting? If so, did that mean Dubble Bubble stood for regress? Maybe it did.
And yet a case could be made for original formulas—the benefits of sticking to them. Cases could no doubt be made for nostalgia (I wasn’t as against it as the thinkers said I should be). One could argue Dubble Bubble had come to stand for regress, but that regress in a world that had gone to the dogs was a form of progress, or, at worst, digression. Had the world gone to the dogs, though? Who was I to judge? I wasn’t even creditworthy. Or maybe I was and nobody knew it. They sent me those offers, but I never signed up. I was sure of this much: it was past 12 p.m., which meant the mailman had come, and I wanted to believe Dubble Bubble stood for something. Digression, progress, regress—something.
I walked to the mailbox, dragging at my Quill, determined to blow a bubble full of smoke. Though not too determined. A couple failed attempts, and I forgot all about it. The mailbox held a Newsweek and three or four catalogs, atop which lay an envelope from Social Security. Inside was a check for $1,100 made out to my father. My SSDI check.
The change that came over me wasn’t dramatic. I still wasn’t sure Dubble Bubble stood for anything. I still wasn’t sure what I wanted it to stand for. I realized, however, that I’d ignored the possibility it might stand for stasis, and I found myself hoping it didn’t stand for stasis. I’d have rather it stood for nothing than stasis.
* * *
At the bank I lined up behind one or two customers, depending on whether you counted the one who was already being helped at the counter. I hadn’t been to the bank since my mother was living, yet the teller looked familiar. Her eyes did at least. They were gray, though, which threw me. The gray-eyed seemed always to be on the verge of offering a hug to whomever they were looking at, or stretching their limbs out in hopes of getting belly-rubbed. Since strangers aren’t like that, at least not usually, you think, “Not a stranger’s,” when you see some gray eyes. You think it automatically. On top of that, her body was round as a pie. She had to be at least twice the recommended weight. Wouldn’t I have remembered a person with that build if she had those eyes? I tried thinking back to high school, then junior high school—the teller looked my age, give or take a couple years—and came up with nothing. Then again, “heavy with lovely eyes” was such a rampantly trampled cliché—what prom-going beauty ever lacked a best friend who matched that description?—that maybe the teller, back in our school days, wouldn’t have even stood out enough to register, let alone be remembered twenty years later. And to complicate matters even further, it was possible adulthood had compromised her shape. She might once have been thin, or not so unthin.
The man she was helping headed for the exit, briefly decongesting my line of sight and allowing me a glimpse at her nameplate on the counter. It read LOTTA HOGG, white letters on woodgrain. Dementia plus ninety-nine blows to the head couldn’t force you to forget a girl named Lotta Hogg. So the matter was settled. It was just the gray eyes.
Another teller appeared at the next station over while Lotta helped the customer who’d been in line in front of me. This new teller hadn’t put his nameplate on the counter, so I didn’t think his station was officially open and, assuming he needed more time to set up, I remained between the queue poles, which seemed to annoy him. “Um, sir?” he said. “I’m open here, sir.”
He wore a pinstriped vest and decisive mustache. From the vest’s top button fell a golden chain that disappeared inside the watchpocket, forming half a smile. My father, had he been there, would have probably asked the teller if Halloween had come early. Or, if he were in a not-good mood, he might have called the teller chief and offered mock solace like, “I know it must be hard to stay so true to yourself, but one day, believe me, the whole neuters-impersonating-railroad-barons look will have a big-time comeback, most people won’t want to pound your teeth down your throat, and you will, mark my words, have consensual sex, chief.” I wasn’t like my father, though. I wasn’t good at dominance. Approaching the teller, I said, “You’ve got a pocketwatch! I love those things.”
“Oh, this,” the teller said. He tugged the golden chain, and a pale infant cure attached by a collar the circumference of a dime crawled out from the watchpocket, blinking and sniffling. It was medium-tailed, two-legged, and its velvet was black—it seemed as standard as they came—but when the teller cupped his chain-tugging hand at his ribs, the cure didn’t climb in.