Ride Fast, Roll Easy

By Navy One

Illustration by James Acklin, dribbble.com/jamesacklin

Death made me a man.

I’ll never admit it, not now, not rolling Broadway on my bike, my single-gear. But s’true. Losing my parents last year forced me to grow up. To hunt their killer. The man with the tattooed knuckles. I got nothing on him but those fists and they clobber me, always in my thoughts, my dreams.

Riding Broadway, New York’s Mississippi, I catch green after green. I’m 18 and don’t expect anything less. Life’s forever green, no? John races right behind me. On rollerblades way too fast for him. Which is where I come in.

He reaches and grabs the rattly rack on my fender to slow down, dragging his back brake. Like some bladers, he never learned to stop. Quick-like. No hockey-T, no side edge. Never. We got us all greens, he yells to me. We have this conversation every day. An old married couple, we are. ‘Cept for the old part. And the married, couple thing.

Yup, I shout. A car cuts in front of me, and I let loose. Look sharp, I bellow at the taxi. The driver flicks his bored eyes at me, in his side mirror, and we meet. For a second. Before he riffles them away. Taxis. Me and them do not get along. Me and them. Do not. I got stories.

You going all the way downtown?

To Houston, John replies, letting go of the rack and standing upright. He pronounces it Houston, like the Texas town. Us, who are all City all the time, call it House-ton. But he’s a Texan. And you can always tell a Texan. You just can’t tell ‘em much.

Knuckles, I say to John. He has heard this conversation too. Me and knuckles. And he humors me. I give him his Houstons, he gives me my knuckles.

Any luck? He asks.

That tattoo girl down on Bleecker drew a picture of the letters. She gave it a name, something Gothic. I turn silent and let the wind, from a side street, wash us all over before continuing. Hate and Love.

Hate and Love?

What the guy’s knuckles said, I say. I no longer have any emotion. I’m a machine. The man who took my father and mother had gothic lettering across his knuckles. Well, the first inch of his fingers, but s’easier to say knuckles. Love and Hate. Love on the right and Hate on the left. I know ‘cuz he was a lefty and he pushed the barrel of his 45 (slide slid all the way back) into my chest. No bullets, thus the slid slide.

You working a full shift? I ask him.

Yup. Four new movies.

I nod. It is Friday and new movies, of course, pop on Fridays. But you can’t tell him nothing. Remember that there Texas thing?

My walkie scratches static from my bag’s strap, sashed across my chest like a Frenchie officer, and I squawk it.

Two going downtown, I tell my dispatcher.

Can you pull into Hell’s Kitchen? She rasps back. No one calls it Hell’s ‘cept her. I’m texting you the address. Westside, way over. 4th floor.

Got it, I say into the mic. Got to let you go, I tell John.

He is silent. He has a good, bad sixty blocks to blade downtown. And no one to help him stop.

Still, he says nothing and we separate at the circle, the one with the big gold dude on horses.

I cut west. At the next red (surprise, a red) I dig into my biker shorts and find that slip of sweaty notebook