October 05, 2005

It all started with a simple suggestion on a morning gorged with kisses, sleep, and arguments. “How about you inflate your bike tires, Laura?” Those words once spoken expanded outwards until they were finally swallowed up by other words as life dissolved in routine: we walked through the city talking of libraries and school, and got home at noon to meditate on the goodness of chicken strips and sweat.

But a few hours later my suggestion lead to the spontaneous obliteration of her rear bike tire. “I just inflated it and then, boom, it exploded,” she said when she came home late in the evening with her bike by her side and tears in the corners of her eyes. “This is my only means of transportation.”

Because I was wearing my bright shirt that makes the whole world happy, I offered to fix it for her. Ten minutes later I stole Sherry’s bike and rushed down narrow sidewalks like an orange particle of joy. Sherry’s bike was too tiny for me, and my shirt fluttered madly in the wind, but I somehow managed to make my way to the edge of London to find a tire tube.

Back in Laura’s yard an hour later, I tried removing the wheel just to realize that the screws were fused into the bike body and refused to come off even when both of us heaved together. For two hours we struggled with that ungodly thing, breaking three screwdrivers and other tools of torture.

“I’ll never inflate my tires again,” she said. Then we had more chicken strips and more bike fixing. Late in the night, I finally set the whole shit on fire. I used candles and hammers to pry the wheel away from the bike (heat makes metals expand in satisfying ways), and then I collapsed happily and nakedly in Laura’s bed and we talked about demons and photographs.

With all that biking around London looking for a tire tube and all that hammering in the dark, it only took four hours to fix a goddamn wheel. Next time I’ll be more careful before I offer suggestions.