In the alley at two in the morning, my clothes steamed at first. It always made me feel like I was just touching down in this strange atmosphere, my alien fabric off-gassing, adjusting. It was just temperature differential, of course. It had been happening since I first started washing dishes, would clock out soaked from head to toe.
I usually wasn't this wet by the end of the night, had already paid those dues, but, because I was ready to be shut of the kitchen, and because the captain has to go down with the ship, I'd stepped in beside Manny, our dishwasher of nine months. You can't help getting sprayed, especially when you're dealing with a ladle. But we got it done in half the time, racked the wine glasses so they wouldn't spot, and then I saluted him off into the night, hung my apron on its hook, and rolled up my knives.
I should have been using them to cut up the day-old bread for croutons—a ten-minute job, with nobody tugging on my sleeve—but screw it. Sometimes you just have to walk away. Feed yourself first, right?
The bike lane away from the restaurant was as empty as I'd imagined.
I leaned back from the bars, planed my arms out to the side like I was twelve years old again.
What do people who lose that part of themselves do, I wonder?
When Doreen had accused me of not growing up, I'd felt parentheses kind of form around my eyes, the question right there in my mouth: And?
It's not some big social or emotional impediment to still be able to close your eyes, pretend to be an airplane.
Some people hold on to that with video games, some with books about space, some with basketball or tennis, if their knees hold together.
For me it was a bike. For me it was this.
Soon enough the path opened up just across the creek, inviting me to slalom down it one more time, but I stopped mid-bridge, still clipped in, my arms crossed on the rail on the uphill side.