Archive for May, 2014

Last night was Wednesday, the night before Speed Street. Streets were blocked and crews of vendors were setting up booths and food trucks. It was close to the end of the shift and I was getting back from a delivery when I saw a tall, light-haired woman on a yellow bike ride up to the sidewalk in front of our store. She was tall and fit, in her late twenties. She wore black leggings and knit fingerless gloves. Her bike had some small points of rainbow color, as did her outfit. I admired a long feather tattooed on her left forearm. We exchanged some words and she smiled. She had smiling narrow eyes, reddish hair and fair skin.

I angled to make small talk, delighted to be suddenly face-to-face with an attractive girl, and that on a bike. I mostly stared. The girl started to lock her bike to the already-full bike rack. She knocked over Trey’s bike. “Heh, you wouldn’t believe how many times a day I do that,” I said. Trey walked up as she fumbled with his bike and while clutching hers. “You trying to steal my bike?” he chuckled, and we exchanged giddy smirks. I stood holding open the door to the store with one foot while the girl took uncomfortably long clasping her U-lock. She walked inside, hesitated and turned around as if forgetting something. She disappeared, her bike still locked, as I left on another delivery. Both girl and bike were gone when I returned. “Well that was fun,” I thought as I made for the night’s last delivery.

I raced to deliver the order and then pumped back uphill. Then I sat back and cruised no handed, sweating and catching my breath. I leaned over, rounding a wide left, and took in the landscape of tents being erected for the oncoming event. Then I saw the girl again. She was on the sidewalk just a block from the store, her bike upside down, surrounded by tools and objects.

“Got a flat?” I asked. “Yeah,” she said. “Got everything you need?” I said, riding up. “Yeah I got it,” she said. She was both confident and friendly. I said okay and turned around, but I looped back again. “What’s your name?” I asked. “Vonna.” I rode close and shook her hand. “Chris. Nice to meet you. Swing by if you need anything.”

Later, after we had closed the store, I put on a podcast and drove homeward on Central Avenue, my mind wandering. “Vonna…I wonder what her story is?” And just like that I saw her, walking her bike on the sidewalk to my left. I smiled, waved, not sure what else to do. She returned a smile. She’s got it, I thought. Then I thought, No way, how could I pass her with a flat again?

I pulled off and dug a tube out of my bag. I looped back, wondering whether Vonna had gone off a side street. And then I saw her walking up the sidewalk toward me. I pulled into a parking lot and hopped out as she approached. “You sure you don’t want a tube?” I smiled. “It’s you! That’s perfect,” she laughed. “Can you not fit two bikes on there?” She glanced at my bike rack. “Oh yeah, sure, you want a ride? Where are you going?” She lived just a mile and a half up the road.

I learned that Vonna had been teaching a yoga class at a bike shop on the other side of town. She had changed her tube but the new one popped too–maybe a piece of glass in the tire. “Don’t you get tired riding there and working out and riding back?” I asked, impressed. “Not really, I mean I’m just a commuter,” she said. We talked about bikes for a mile, and then she invited me to a bike event in June. She offered to walk home from a nearby intersection, but I kept driving her direction. She guided me through a Plaza Midwood neighborhood. “Stop here!” said suddenly. “Perfect.”

She thanked me for the ride, noting the good fortune. “I didn’t have to walk, and you got to be a good Samaritan.” It was like she looked right through me. Was I that obvious? “I’m sure we’ll run into each other soon. Have a good night, Vonna,” I said as she loosed her bike behind my car. “It’s Fauna, with an F,” she corrected me. “Like flora and fauna.” She spoke crouching by my passenger window. She gave me driving directions I didn’t hear, and we exchanged more smiles and awkward goodbyes before she trotted away with her bike. “Fauna,” I repeated, and drove onward.

My roommate Michael and I had just finished our shifts today. Howie came out of the store and asked us if we wanted to run a delivery to an address just outside the delivery zone. I said sure, eager for an adventure, and took the call. I explained to the man on the other end of the line that I’d just gotten off but would pay for his pickup order and bring it to him if he made it worth my while, which I said would be $4, though I wished I’d asked more.

As Michael and I rode out to the address we imagined all the ways this could go wrong. “This is probably the sketchiest thing I’ve done at work,” I said. We decided to try to find the guy and his companions at their pool instead of calling and waiting to meet. We rode up a ramp to a pool at our destination, but didn’t find our man. Someone there suggested trying the other pool, which was raised one story off the ground a stone’s throw away. “Well, you could climb it,” Michael said as we rolled up. “Yeah, right here,” I said, spotting a brick ledge with a grate in the wall. I mounted, set the sandwich bag on top of the wall and pulled myself up.

I collected the bag and swung myself over the railing, climbing down right next to a woman sun bathing. Her expression mingled confusion and disapproval, but she said nothing. I called out, “Sandwiches!” and soaked up the growing reaction of the pool goers. Someone called out the name of our store in gleeful exclamation. “He just climbed over the fence!” I heard someone say. “We’re just freaky like that,” I said back. I caught sight of my customers, fit young men in shades and board shorts. “Whoa, check out that service,” one of them said as a smattering of applause broke out.

They handed me the sum, including an extra dollar, and then one called back and fished a wad of 3 crumpled ones out of a bag, “This is for climbing all the way up here!” he said. I was beaming as I walked back to the ledge. “We don’t normally deliver here,” I clarified to the crowd of onlookers. “You’re a badass!” someone shouted. The woman sunbathing warned me to be careful as I climbed back down. “How’d he get up here?” “He just climbed that like Spider Man!” the chatter continued.

Michael was smiling just as widely as me when I landed. “That was so worth it.”