SPOKES: a collection of short short stories
and an exercise in improvisation

1925 words

Annie loved the bicycle. It was like an extension of her body; she moved her hand and it swerved, she pressed down with her foot and it pushed forward. She floated down the street lazily, looping around imaginary obstacles, squinting against the bright humid day. The sun was behind a cloud and the air gleamed with a strange, pervasive light. She pictured herself from outside her own body: a small girl with a red shirt, arrogant with her movement, blond hair full of light, turning circles alone on the street.


The bicycle was pink. This bothered Jared, who would have preferred blue or black, and he rode along the street with his head down to avoid the amused stares he was sure were coming from the people lining the sidewalk. But when he lifted his gaze from the asphalt, around him there was only light filtering through trees and the soft buzzing of insects near his head. He took one hand off the bicycle to swat at a mosquito and fell, turning his ankle into the space between the pedal and the gears. Jared lay there for a long time, his head resting on the cool asphalt, his fists clenched, his breath slow. He thought he could hear the faint sound of waves lapping at the shores of far-off seas.


Rachel had always wanted a bicycle, but her father thought they were dangerous. All it takes is one mistake, he said, you don't look where you are going, you run into traffic and you are dead. Or forget your helmet, one time, you go straight into a wall and splat! that is your brains there on the sidewalk. Rachel repeated these warnings to her friends, strengthening his accent and adding sound effects, and they'd laugh. You have such dorky parents, Melissa said, it's a wonder you came from that family. Soon the talk turned to boys and nailpolish and Rachel wandered over to the swings and began pumping, sending herself into the air. When she let go of the swing to land on her feet, she stayed frozen for an instant before falling and landing with a crack and a flash of pain in her leg. The teacher rushed over and Melissa began to cry, but Rachel would keep that moment in her head for a long time: that impossible feeling of freedom, that second suspended above the schoolyard, the children, the ground.


She always wore boots, even while riding a bicycle. They were ordinary, for the most part: a pair of men's construction boots from Kmart that had been an unexceptional tan color until in a fit of tie-dye enthusiasm she had turned them a gentle blue. "Jessica's blue boots," her friends called them. She let me hold them once, her feet in my lap as she lolled her head back against her chair. Sun slanted in through the half-covered window and illuminated the dust mixing into the air we breathed. I rubbed my thumb over the soft leather covering the tip of her big toe. She groaned. "I am so tired, and I have so much to do," she said. Her voice echoed in the enclosed space, moved the dull air of the tiny room. For gym class she kept in her locker a pair of worn sneakers, and when she ran the field she sped faster than us all. "The thing about wearing heavy shoes," she said, "is that when you take them off your feet are lightning."


Yesterday I went out on my bicycle. I rode up the hill to the shop where they sell dead butterflies in cases: miniature, luminous bodies draped ponderously over pins. By the cash register there was a basket of pearls. I stood there and counted out twelve into my palm. Little glimmering droplets, perfect chips off the moon. The air in the shop was thick and hot; it was the middle of the summer and I walked half-asleep, swimming through the day. I paid the quiet man at the counter and cycled back to my apartment. In the kitchen I poured water into a plastic cup and mixed in several spoonfuls of salt. I dropped the pearls in, one by one, and waited for them to settle to the bottom.


He remembered the first time he ever rode a bicycle: it had just rained, and the tree-lined streets shone with a thick wetness that dazzled him, a young boy so recently moved from Arizona. The flagstone sidewalks were too slick for his hesitant movements, and after the third time falling he pulled the bicycle back down to the asphalt. Then he was able to make his way up the street and to the grocery store to buy a bag of red corn chips and salsa, as his mother had requested. When he started back home, the sun was just setting and people were starting to move in the streets. Unbalanced further by the plastic bag hanging from one handlebar, he swerved directly into the path of a tall black woman. She stepped aside, giving him a look that, years later, he still co uldn't decipher. No, he wanted to shout, it was an accident, I don't want you to think-- but it was too late, the woman was gone.


Mary came over and asked if she could borrow my bicycle. "I don't want to bother you," she said, "it's just that we're going on a trip and I'm expecting, you know, and a bicycle's ride is much smoother than a donkey." "You're pregnant?" I said, stupidly. "I hadn't heard." She turned to the side. And it was true: I could see the gently rounded bump of her stomach beneath her blue robes. It wasn't fair. How could she do this to me? We had been best friends since we were toddlers. We had promised each other to be married together, to live near each other, to have children at the same time. But now not only had she married Joseph, that old lech, she'd gone and gotten herself pregnant. Ever since she turned fourteen she's been acting all stupid and twitty and stuck-up. Why did she change? "Darling, it's a boy. Isn't that wonderful? Joseph's so proud. He's outside now, waiting. So can we take it? Your bicycle, I mean. It would be so kind of you, Emma, pet." I don't know why I refused her. I made some awkward excuses about work and other people I'd already promised rides to. She frowned and smoothed her skirt, walked back to Joseph without so much as a goodbye in my direction. I don't know why I refused her; she's left, now, and won't be coming back. They've written me out of the entire Chronicles-- Mary doesn't forget a grudge. Her baby's born, I hear, and growing fast. He's doing quite well in school. Occasionally I get rumors of miraculous doings in the city. But I live alone here, deep in the forest, and you know how information shifts over distance.


Never trust a door-to-door salesman, no matter what he's selling: vacuum cleaners or picnic baskets or a bevy of used bicycles. That's what Harold's mother told him. But what if the salesman is a woman, and she's wearing a large chicken suit, and she's trying not to sell something but to give it you to for free? And what if that thing is advice at the game of poker? And you don't even play poker? Well then what you do is try to push her back out the door, squawking, and when she's gone and only a few feathers are scattered on the floor to remind you, you lean against the wall and breathe out and think, why, why are the gods doing this to me? After the elephant last week with backgammon tips and the gazelle who wanted to correct my tennis swing. There's some sort of cosmic message in this all but dammed if I can figure it. Then you go back into the kitchen and make yourself some coffee. These are troubling times.


I fell in love with a man on a bicycle. It wasn't swift, a quick passion falling over me when he tooted his horn and winked; but rather the gradual realization that I was lingering at the same corner every day at the same time for a reason. I thrill, now, to see the flash of his yellow bicycle and pea green jacket, the steady pumping of his legs uphill. I followed him once, to see where he was going every day at noon, and found the deli he liked to order lunch from. Ah, tuna salad on thin white bread! He always throws out the tomatoes. Someday I'll buy a little pink bike and learn how to ride, and we'll cycle off together into the sunset.


Outside the phone booth cars whizzed by and a lone bicyclist pushed his way up the hill. Inside Janie leaned against the door, held the receiver against the side of her face. "Come on, Amanda," she said aloud. "Pick up, pick up the stupid phone." The soft ringing of the phone buzzed inside her ear once, twice, three times. After seventeen rings she hung the phone back up and stepped out of the booth. It was too late; far away she could hear the insistent sound of the drumming beginning.

You know, Tom asked me for a bicycle this morning. I said, no sweetie you're not near big enough to ride it. We could get you a trike, though-- three wheels is even better than two! Wouldn't you like that? He frowned and burrowed his face into his sleeve. Personally I think it's sibling rivalry. We just had Molly's first birthday party and my goodness you should have seen the presents. Mostly from Aunt Clarice, who practically said outright that she's glad we finally had a girl. I think she's getting dotty in her old age. But, sure, Tom was used to being the baby of the family. He doesn't want to share anything. He's gotten so fussy, I sometimes feel like hiring someone to feed him his breakfast. Just too much for me! His eggs must be on this blue plate and not the red and not the green, his juice only in the sippy cup with the cracked lid. And me, I guess I'm almost as bad. I get the strongest cravings for pickles and-- get this-- pickles and chocolate milk. There, I saw you shudder! And it has to be chocolate milk made from the mix, not the syrup. So silly. It's like being pregnant again. But I'm not pregnant, I'm sure of that-- I can't be pregnant. It has to be some bizarre reaction to stress. At least I don't require someone to feed me.


There it was, the bicycle. Nicola stepped further into the garage and waited for her eyes to become accustomed to the dark. The bicycle was over in the farthest corner and Nicola had to pull out of the way several old bookshelves that her parents should have gotten rid of at their last yard sale before she could reach it. In the cool, dusty garage the only light came from one cobwebby window. Nicola, suddenly so tired, stood looking at the red bicycle. How small it seemed, she thought. How delicate, how fragile. How different from when I used to ride it. She wrapped one hand around the handlebars as if to pick it up, but remained standing there, her breath caught somewhere in her throat, skin illuminated by the pale blue sunlight, alone in the garage of an empty house at the end of the street.

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