And also something that seemed to tug at some strings of memory long left slack.
“We should hide your bike. Sheriff or a deputy might drive by and see it,” she said.
“Really? Don’t other people in town own motorcycles?”
She started down the steps, the wind tugging at her hair some more. I caught myself wondering how her hair smelled. Or how it might feel with its long strands sliding between my fingers.
“Of course. But none of them live here. That sort of thing might go unnoticed in the big city, but here it won’t. We can wheel it into the back onto the patio,” she said, nodding down at the concrete path that led around the side of house to the back yard.
It made sense, but I hesitated. It cemented my staying in town longer. I hadn’t stayed in any one town longer than a few hours in months. A hot blade of uneasiness ran up inside my stomach.
“So is it going to be like the fight? Going to make me do all the work myself?” Ellie said. She snapped me out of my daze and I frowned at her. She smiled at that, “Thought that might get your attention.”
She hopped on the bike and stood it up, then used her heel to push the stand up. All before I could do much more than lift my hands in protest. I hadn’t expected that. She seemed almost comfortable on the machine.
Still, it made me uncomfortable. No one had touched that bike but me. Not for servicing, not for gassing up.
Besides, she might dump it, I thought. Though watching her, I found that unlikely. Still, it gave me an excuse.
“I’ll do that,” I said. I strode over and grabbed the handlebar, putting my other hand on her shoulder. She tensed at my touch and then relaxed. “Because I’m remembering that fight differently from you.”
“Suit yourself,” she said. She shrugged away from my hand and then stepped off the bike.
I wheeled the machine along behind her while she led the way. There was an old concrete patio at the back of the house, a single white plastic lawn chair sat on it now.
There were a few lighter patches on that concrete where more furniture used to sit. I thought maybe a table, more chairs. Probably one of those things with the big umbrella.
It was a place that used to be happy and joyful but was now silent. Much like the town itself.
She shoved the chair to the side and I moved the bike into position, levering the kickstand back down and letting the bike’s weight settle on it.
“What’s the next step of your master plan?” I asked.
The tone of my voice surprised us both. Sarcasm. When was the last time I was sarcastic? I wondered. Ellie looked the same question at me.
She recovered quickly, though. “Next, I’m getting you out of those clothes.”
Now it was her turn to hear what she’d said and how she’d said it. I watched a line of flushed heat rise up her throat.
“I… I mean that you need to change. If Bobby or the other two see you, even at a distance, they’ll recognize you right away.”
Again there was that stirring inside me while we watched each other. Ellie tried hard to maintain eye contact, but kept glancing down.
I kept thinking about how lovely she looked with some color in her cheeks. Real color. Not the fake stuff the women back in New York applied every morning.
It went on too long. I couldn’t deal with this sort of thing, not now. Maybe not ever again, I thought. At least, not until I’d found what it was I was looking for.
Whatever that happened to be. Whatever it was, maybe it was here, in Pleasant. Something was keeping me here. Some invisible magnet which drew me back whenever I considered leaving.
“You’re right,” I said. My voice was a knife cut through the silence and tension. Ellie’s shoulders sagged when she relaxed.
“Of course I’m right,” she said. Then she reached up to the collar of her — my — shirt. “Will you, uh, be needing this…?”
I considered it, remembering going into her room. Maybe this time I could see a little more. But I couldn’t. It reminded too much of the man I’d left behind in New York. The man I’d been running from.
“Not yet. You can keep it for now. I have a few more things here…” I said. I knelt beside the bike, opened up the saddlebags and began digging through them.
I could feel Ellie behind me, desperately curious to lean over my shoulder and look at what I kept hidden.
I’d done my best to pack light. After all, how much could you really fit into a couple old saddlebags hanging off the back of a bike?
I’d also tried to leave as much of the old me behind as I could. No suits waited for my questing fingers in there. No ties and no glossy black loafers, either.
My fingers did find the pair of nicely broken-in blue jeans—some old Levis I couldn’t even remember buying—and a shirt almost the same as the one Ellie wore except it was a light, baby blue color.
I also had the presence of mind to grab some spare socks and boxers. “This change of clothes include a shower?” I asked over my shoulder.
I thought the open, windy air of the road kept me smelling okay, but if I’d learned one thing on the road it was this: don’t refuse a free shower.
Not much of a moral lesson, but it was about all I had to my name except the bike.
“Shower? Yeah, I guess. If you can make it a quick one,” she said while I stood up.
“Sure,” I said.
Twenty minutes later I sat in the passenger seat of Ellie’s Ranger while she guided the old truck down one of Pleasant’s many cracked and semi-deserted streets.
“How does it feel?” she asked, pulling up to a four-way stop, glancing each way, and pulling through with a grunt from the engine.
“How does what feel?” I replied.
“Not driving for once. From the way you looked, you’d been out there on the road a while. Nothing but you and the bike. I know it can get to a person.”
I didn’t answer right away. Instead, I watched the cracks in the sidewalk move by, sometimes in a blur when we picked up speed, sometimes so slowly I could pick out the individual blocks of concrete that made them up.
The sight was only occasionally punctuated by the sight of a car or, more often, a pickup parked at the curb or in a driveway.
“Strange,” I said finally.
“You’re not one for talking, are you?” Ellie said. It wasn’t really a question.
She didn’t say it to sting, but rather in that joking, sarcastic tone she seemed to take with everything and everyone.
It did feel a bit odd, sitting there without the bike’s saddle between my thighs. I found my body missed the steady thrum of the engine, and my ears noted the lack of the of the exhaust’s drone, so long my only companion.
I used to say so much more, I thought. Back when people hung from my every word. Once, Harvard Business School had paid me a disgusting sum to speak for ten minutes at a graduation ceremony. And they weren’t the only ones.
I can’t even remember what I said there. It had probably been something about hard work, perseverance, putting your career before everything. All that sounded like Greek to me inside Ellie’s Ranger.
Still, some desire tugged at me. Some little, insidious voice in the back of my mind whispered to me, You can have it all back. You want it all back.
I didn’t, though. Maybe not ever. I hardly thought now about how my company was doing without me. And so far I managed to resist the urge to check the stock on free library computers and the like.