Youre crazy, he murmured to himself, and slipped the tip of the driver back into the notch of the screw. Do it and be done.
He actually turned the screwdriver once (and it was easy; whoever had put this together in the back room of The Fitness Boys obviously hadnt had his heart in it), but when he did, the oatmeal-raisin cookies shifted a little in his pocket and he thought how good they always tasted when you were riding along. You just took your right hand off the handlebar, dipped it into your pocket, had a couple of bites, then chased it with a swallow of iced tea. It was the perfect combination. It just felt so good to be speeding along, having a little picnic as you went, and those sons of bitches wanted to take it away from him.
A dozen turns of the screw, maybe even less, and the pedal would drop off onto the concrete floorclunk. Then he could move on to the other one, and then he could move on with his life.
This is not fair, he thought.
One more ride, just for old times sake, he thought.
And, swinging his leg over the fork and settling his ass (firmer and harder by far than it had been on the day of the red cholesterol number) onto the seat, he thought: This is the way stories like this always go, isnt it? The way they always end, with the poor schmuck saying this is the last time, Ill never do this again.
Absolutely true, he thought, but Ill bet in real life, people get away with it. I bet they get away with it all the time.
Part of him was murmuring that real life had never been like this, what he was doing (and what he was experiencing) bore absolutely no resemblance whatever to real life as he understood it. He pushed the voice away, closed his ears to it.
It was a beautiful evening for a ride in the woods.
VI. Not Quite the Ending Everyone Expected
And still, he got one more chance.
That was the night he heard the revving engine behind him clearly for the first time, and just before the alarm clock went off, the Raleigh he was riding suddenly grew an elongated shadow on the road ahead of himthe sort of shadow that could only have been created by headlights.
Then the alarm did go off, not a bray but a distant purring sound that was almost melodic.
The truck was closing in. He didnt need to turn his head to see it (nor does one ever want to turn and see the frightful fiend that close behind him treads, Sifkitz supposed later that night, lying awake in his bed and still wrapped in the cold-yet-hot sensation of disaster avoided by mere inches or seconds). He could see the shadow, growing longer and darker.
Hurry up, please, gentlemen, its time, he thought, and squeezed his eyes closed. He could still hear the alarm, but it was still no more than that almost soothing purr, it was certainly no louder; what was louder was the engine, the one inside Freddys truck. It was almost on him, and suppose they didnt want to waste so much as a New York minute in conversation? Suppose the one currently behind the wheel just mashed the pedal to the metal and ran him down? Turned him into roadkill?
He didnt bother to open his eyes, didnt waste time confirming that it was still the deserted road instead of the basement alcove. Instead he squeezed them even more tightly shut, focused all his attention on the sound of the alarm, and this time turned the polite voice of the barman into an impatient bellow:
HURRY UP PLEASE GENTLEMEN ITS TIME!
And suddenly, thankfully, it was the sound of the engine that was fading and the sound of the Brookstone alarm that was swelling, taking on its old familiar rough get-up-get-up-get-up bray. And this time when he opened his eyes, he saw the projection of the road instead of the road itself.
But now the sky was black, its organic redness hidden by nightfall. The road was brilliantly lit, the shadow of the bikea Raleigha clear black on the leaf-littered hardpack. He could tell himself he had dismounted the stationary bike and painted those changes while in his nightly trance, but he knew better, and not only because there was no paint on his hands.
This is my last chance, he thought. My last chance to avoid the ending everyone expects in stories like this.
But he was simply too tired, too shaky, to take care of the stationary bike now. He would take care of it tomorrow. Tomorrow morning, in fact, first thing. Right now all he wanted was to get out of this awful place where reality had worn so thin. And with that firmly in mind, Sifkitz staggered to the Pomona crate beside the doorway (rubber-legged, covered with a thin slime of sweatthe smelly kind that comes from fear rather than exertion) and shut the alarm off. Then he went upstairs and lay down on his bed. Some very long time later, sleep came.
The next morning he went down the cellar stairs, eschewing the elevator and walking firmly, with his head up and his lips pressed tightly together, A Man On A Mission. He went directly to the stationary bike, ignoring the alarm clock on the crate, dropped to one knee, picked up the screwdriver. He slipped it once more into the slot of a screw, one of the four that held the left-hand pedal
and the next thing he knew, he was speeding giddily along the road again, with the headlights brightening around him until he felt like a man on a stage thats dark save for one single spotlight. The trucks engine was too loud (something wrong with the muffler or the exhaust system), and it was out of tune, as well. He doubted if old Freddy had bothered with the last maintenance go-round. No, not with house-payments to make, groceries to buy, the kiddies still needing braces, and no weekly paycheck coming in.
He thought: I had my chance. I had my chance last night and I didnt take it.
He thought: Why did I do this? Why, when I knew better?
He thought: Because they made me, somehow. They made me.
He thought: Theyre going to run me down and Ill die in the woods.
But the truck did not run him down. It hurtled past him on the right instead, left-side wheels rumbling in the leaf-choked ditch, and then it swung across the road in front of him, blocking the way.
Panicked, Sifkitz forgot the first thing his father had taught him when he brought the three-speed home: When you stop, Richie, reverse the pedals. Brake the bikes rear wheel at the same time you squeeze the handbrake that controls the front wheel. Otherwise
This was otherwise. In his panic he turned both hands into fists, squeezing the handbrake on the left, locking the front wheel. The bike bucked him off and sent him flying at the truck with LIPID COMPANY printed on the drivers-side door. He threw his hands out and they struck the top of the trucks bed hard enough to numb them. Then he collapsed in a heap, wondering how many bones were broken.
The doors opened above him and he heard the crackle of leaves as men in workboots got out. He didnt look up. He waited for them to grab him and make him get up, but no one did. The smell of the leaves was like old dry cinnamon. The footsteps passed him on either side, and then the crackle abruptly stopped.
Sifkitz sat up and looked at his hands. The palm of the right one was bleeding and the wrist of the left one was already swelling, but he didnt think it was broken. He looked around and the first thing he sawred in the glow of the Dodges taillightswas his Raleigh. It had been beautiful when his Dad brought it home from the bike-shop, but it wasnt beautiful any longer. The front wheel was warped out of true, and the rear tire had come partly off the rim. For the first time he felt something other than fear. This new emotion was anger.
He got shakily to his feet. Beyond the Raleigh, back the way hed come, was a hole in reality. It was strangely organic, as if he were looking through the hole at the end of some duct in his own body. The edges wavered and bulged and flexed. Beyond it, three men were standing around the stationary bike in the basement alcove, standing in postures he recognized from every work-crew hed ever seen in his life. These were men with a job to do. They were deciding how to do it.
And suddenly he knew why hed named them as he had. It was really idiotically simple. The one in the Lipid cap, Berkowitz, was David Berkowitz, the so-called Son of Sam and a New York Post staple the year Sifkitz had come to Manhattan. Freddy was Freddy Albemarle, this kid hed known in high schooltheyd been in a band together, and had become friends for a simple enough reason: they both hated school. And Whelan? An artist hed met at a conference somewhere. Michael Whelan? Mitchell Whelan? Sifkitz couldnt quite remember, but he knew the guy specialized in fantasy art, dragons and such. They had spent a night in the hotel bar, telling stories about the comic-horrible world of movie-poster art.