“All right,” she said at last. The artificial lilt had gone out of her voice. Without it she sounded tired and older than her years, which might number thirty. “You win.”

“It’s not about winning, believe me.” As it came out of his mouth, Scott remembered a college teacher once remarking that when someone added believe me to a sentence, you should beware.

“You’ve made your point, then. I can’t come down and pick it up now, and Missy’s already at work, but I will after we close. You won’t even need to turn on your porch light. I should be able to see the . . . leavings . . . by the streetlight.”

“You don’t need to do that.” Scott was starting to feel slightly mean. And in the wrong, somehow. You win, she’d said. “I’ve already bagged it up. I just . . .”

“What? Wanted to get one up on me? If that was it, mission accomplished. From now on Missy and I will do our running down in the park. There will be no need for you to report us to the local authorities. Thank you, and good evening.” She started to close the door.

“Wait a second,” Scott said. “Please.”

She looked at him through the half-closed door, face expressionless.

“Going to the animal control guy over a few piles of dog crap never crossed my mind, Ms. McComb. Look, I just want us to be good neighbors. My only problem was the way you brushed me off. Refused to take me seriously. That isn’t how good neighbors do. At least not around here.”

“Oh, we know exactly how good neighbors do,” she said. “Around here.” The slightly superior smile came back, and she closed the door with it still on her face. Not before, however, he had seen a gleam in her eyes that might have been tears.

We know exactly how good neighbors do around here, he thought, walking back down the hill. What the hell did that mean?

*

Doctor Bob called him two days later, to ask if there had been any change. Scott told him things were progressing as before. He was down to 207.6. “It’s pretty damn regular. Getting on the bathroom scale is like watching the numbers go backward on a car odometer.”

“But still no change in your physical dimensions? Waist size? Shirt size?”

“I’m still a forty waist and a thirty-four leg. I don’t need to tighten my belt. Or let it out, although I’m eating like a lumberjack. Eggs, bacon, and sausage for breakfast. Sauces on everything at night. Got to be at least three thousand calories a day. Maybe four. Did you do any research?”

“I did,” Doctor Bob said. “So far as I can tell, there’s never been a case like yours. There are plenty of clinical reports about people whose metabolisms are in overdrive—people who eat, as you say, like lumberjacks and still stay thin—but no cases of people who weigh the same naked and dressed.”

“Oh, but it’s so much more,” Scott said. He was smiling again. He smiled a lot these days, which was probably crazy, given the circumstances. He was losing weight like a late-stage cancer patient, but the work was going like gangbusters and he had never felt more cheerful. Sometimes, when he needed a break from the computer screen, he put on Motown and danced around the room with Bill D. Cat staring at him as if he’d gone mad.

“Tell me the more.”

“This morning I weighed 208 flat. Straight out of the shower and buck naked. I got my hand-weights out of the closet, the twenty-pounders, and stepped on the scales with one in each hand. Still 208 flat.”

Silence on the other end for a moment, then Ellis said, “You’re shitting me.”

“Bob, if I’m lyin, I’m dyin.”

More silence. Then: “It’s as if you’ve got some kind of weight-repelling force-field around you. I know you don’t want to be poked and prodded, but this is an entirely new thing. And it’s big. There could be implications we can’t even conceive of.”

“I don’t want to be a freak,” Scott said. “Put yourself in my place.”

“Will you at least think about it?”

“I have, a lot. And I have no urge to be a part of Inside View’s tabloid hall of fame, with my picture right between the Night Flier and Slender Man. Also, I’ve got my work to finish. I’ve promised Nora a share of the money even though the divorce was final before I got the job, and I’m pretty sure she can use it.”

“How long will that take?”

“Maybe six weeks. Of course there’ll be revisions and test runs that will keep me busy into the new year, but six weeks to finish the main job.”

“If this continues at the same rate, you’d be down around 165 by then.”

“But still looking like a mighty man,” Scott said, and laughed. “There’s that.”

“You sound remarkably cheery, considering what’s going on with you.”

“I feel cheerful. That might be nuts, but it’s true. Sometimes I think this is the world’s greatest weight-loss program.”

“Yes,” Ellis said, “but where does it end?”

*

One day not long after his phone conversation with Doctor Bob, there came a light knock at Scott’s front door. If he’d had his music turned up any louder—today it was the Ramones—he never would have heard it, and his visitor might have gone away. Probably with relief, because when he opened the front door, Missy Donaldson was standing there, and she looked scared half to death. It was the first time he’d seen her since taking the photos of Dee and Dum relieving themselves on his lawn. He supposed Deirdre had been as good as her word, and the women were now exercising their dogs in the town park. If they were allowing the boxers to run free down there, they really might run afoul of the animal control guy, no matter how well-behaved the dogs were. The park had a leash law. Scott had seen the signs.