Carlos’s suicide was what had tipped them over the edge. They blamed him and they
were after him. And when they caught him, they’d—
What? They’d what?
Kill me, he thought, pedaling grimly on into the twilight. No need to be coy about it.
They catch up, they’ll kill me. I’m in the serious williwags now, not a town on that
whole damn plat map, not so much as a village. I could scream my head off and no one would hear me except Barry the Bear, Debby the Doe, and Rudy the Raccoon. So
if I see those headlights (or hear the motor, because Freddy might be running without
lights), I would do well to get the hell back to SoHo, alarm or no alarm. I’m crazy to
be here in the first place.
But he was having trouble getting back now. When the alarm went off the Raleigh
would remain a Raleigh for thirty seconds or more, the road ahead would remain a
road instead of reverting to blobs of color on cement, and the alarm itself sounded
distant and strangely mellow. He had an idea that eventually he would hear it as the
drone of a jet airplane high overhead, an American Airlines 767 out of Kennedy,
perhaps, headed over the North Pole to the far side of the world.
He would stop, squeeze his eyes shut, then pop them wide open again. That did the
trick, but he had an idea it might not work for long. Then what? A hungry night spent
in the woods, looking up at a full moon that looked like a bloodshot eye?
No, they’d catch up to him before then, he reckoned. The question was, did he intend
to let that happen? Incredibly, part of him wanted to do just that. Part of him was
angry at them. Part of him wanted to confront Berkowitz and the remaining members
of his crew, ask them What did you expect me to do, anyway? Just go on the way
things were, gobbling Krispy Kreme donuts, paying no attention to the washouts
when the culverts plugged up and overflowed? Is that what you wanted?
But there was another part of him that knew such a confrontation would be madness.
He was in tiptop shape, yes, but you were still talking three against one, and who was
to say Mrs. Carlos hadn’t loaned the boys her husband’s shotgun, told them yeah, go
get the bastard, and be sure to tell him the first one’s from me and my girls.
Sifkitz had had a friend who’d beaten a bad cocaine addiction in the eighties, and he
remembered this fellow saying the first thing you had to do was get it out of the house.
You could always buy more, sure, that shit was everywhere now, on every
streetcorner, but that was no excuse for keeping it where you could grab it any time
your will weakened. So he’d gathered it all up and flushed it down the toilet. And
once it was gone, he’d thrown his works out with the trash. That hadn’t been the end
of his problem, he’d said, but it had been the beginning of the end.
One night Sifkitz entered the alcove carrying a screwdriver. He had every intention of
dismantling the stationary bike, and never mind the fact that he’d set the alarm for six
P.M., as he always did, that was just habit. The alarm clock (like the oatmeal-raisin
cookies) was part of his works, he supposed; the hypnotic passes he made, the
machinery of his dream. And once he was done reducing the bike to unrideable
components, he’d put the alarm clock out with the rest of the trash, just as his friend
had done with his crack-pipe. He’d feel a pang, of course—the sturdy little
Brookstone certainly wasn’t to blame for the idiotic situation into which he’d gotten
himself—but he would do it. Cowboy up, they’d told each other as kids; quit whining
and just cowboy up.
He saw that the bike was comprised of four main sections, and that he’d also need an
adjustable wrench to dismantle the thing completely. That was all right, though; the
screwdriver would do for a start. He could use it to take off the pedals. Once that was