The Orphan (20 page)

The Cinelli was still hidden in the shop’s attic/storage loft. He’d moved it there last night, when he could no longer look at it without feeling as though he were staring at someone’s headstone. He had intended to lead Patrick directly to it, to provoke a response, an explanation, if there was to be one. But moments after entering the shop, he forgot about the Cinelli. He was captivated by the boy.

If Patrick maintained the capacity for speech over the next ten minutes, he chose not to exercise it. He entered cautiously but soon walked ahead of Darren, gazing in all directions, pausing every few steps to adjust to the space, then standing motionless. He gazed down the rows of restored bikes as if he had walked into a funhouse optical illusion, mutely mesmerized by candy-colored alloys and castles of gleaming chrome. He seemed very small now, vulnerable, no longer the rambunctious kid who’d pulled a tabletop across the road, but a fragile boy with lint in his pockets suddenly thrust into a Willy Wonka world of bicycle cool.

Darren had been prepared to give Patrick a whole spiel, a deluxe guided tour, but almost immediately decided it would be better to let Patrick absorb it on his own. If Patrick was really Adam, then he recognized most of this stuff, from the BMX magazines he had salivated over from the top of his American flag bedspread, dreaming of each gooseneck and seat clamp while his broken bones healed.

Then something changed. Without asking or even looking back, as if he had tunneled into some other realm where Darren did not exist, Patrick began to touch the bikes. He moved with intent, placing a hand on a grip here, a wheel there, squeezing as if taking its measure, then moved ahead to the next bike. When he reached the red, white and blue 1982 Robinson R Gusset, he flinched.

Robinson bike
, Darren thought.
Patrick Robinson
.

Of course. I asked his name and he had to make up one quickly, and what he came up with was a bike. This isn’t mere curiosity, admiration. Seeing all this stuff is wounding him, probably on a physical level.
 

But something else was happening here. Patrick moved faster, cupping a tangle of brake cables in a bin, tapping a file of number plates, racing his fingers down the cardboard display panel of finned Mathauser brake pads the way a one-time pianist traces the keys at a cocktail party…

I’m not like other kids. I touch things and I can tell things about the people who owned them. Something’s wrong with me, and I think that’s part of why they’re after me. They want to use it, use me, or kill me so I don’t find out.
 

If this was true, then what could Patrick be taking from the bikes now? Was he reading their histories, or Darren’s? Whatever the purpose of all this touching might be – and Darren was sure it was no longer browsing – it was making Darren dizzy.

When he finally stopped and looked across the showroom at Darren, his face had reddened, he was panting, and his eyes had narrowed, darkened somehow.

‘You okay?’ Darren asked.

‘You have all the bikes,’ Patrick said in a soft voice. ‘You got them all.’

Darren leaned against the workbench, where the roll of duct tape and a wad of paper towels with some of his blood on them still sat in disarray.

‘I guess I did.’

‘Why? How? How does someone do this?’

What could Darren say to help him understand? How could he explain to a kid who had not lived forty years that it was about reclaiming that spark, the spark you got from seeing a new bike come into the bike shop, some new part you’d seen in the magazines but had never held. The way the supple leather of Haro racing gloves felt better now than it had then, the way you were transported by the smell of injection-molded grips and your mom’s hairspray you used to mount them on your chrome Hutch bars, how a set of mint-condition Bullseye cranks were more appealing to this man of forty-three than art or pornography or bank-fresh $100 bills.

What would Patrick/Adam know about the hunt, the seeking of the next rare find? We are hard-wired for hunting, seeking, sorting, and in this regard collecting vintage goods in the internet age is like serving cocaine to tired rats in a cage. The late-night web browser searches triggering endorphins in his brain as he jumps from thread to thread, because you never knew when some dude in Mountain View, California, or Seattle or Houston or Huntsville or Scranton or Malaysia or Sydney might roll his grail out of his bedroom. The car needs repairing, his wife is pissed, and now he has to sell his dream bike – the one he kept for thirty years or spent six grand assembling just last year – for $4,000. Except not too many of these collectors had four grand to drop on a bike with six hours’ notice, so the bikes usually got parted out, and you didn’t want the whole thing anyway, but you’ve been looking for that perfect pair of Bob Reedy pedals for four years because you had them on your first Torker and now here they are. Back in the day they retailed for sixty bucks, not cheap in 1978 dollars, but now you are more than happy to drop $700 on a show-quality pair, you call DIBS on the forum, Paypal automated, sold, and they’re in your mailbox four days later.

How could he explain what this has become?

What he has become?

And that is when he understands for the first time, Darren does, that he has become a monster. He is addicted to the high of collecting, the
find
, and he is always jonesing for more. He’s worked hard to earn his security, but this does not change the simple fact that he is a taker, a keeper, a rich man who has never given back to those who have made possible his ascent to paterfamilias and CEO apparel mogul. He has never atoned for the things he did to this boy, and to who knows how many others, and it’s too late now, the kid is here, in a bad way, and words are meaningless.

‘Because I could,’ Darren said at last. ‘Because something in me needed it, or thought I did. I can’t really remember.’

Patrick scoffed.

‘Yes.’ Darren walked down the row, gesturing. ‘Any one you want, Patrick. Take your pick. Any bike in here, it’s yours.’

Patrick glared. ‘You know that’s not my name.’

Darren nodded.

‘Say it, then.’

Even now Darren was unable to say the name. In front of this kid. To do so would be a form of consent, agreement to participate in insanity.

‘Are you afraid?’

‘Maybe.’

‘Of me, or what you’ll find out?’

‘The touching,’ Darren said. ‘What did you get from the bikes?’

‘They’re not bikes. Not for you, are they?’

‘No? What are they?’

‘Memories.’ The boy looked to the bikes. ‘Must be nice. Having so many good ones.’

‘Wait here.’

Darren walked to the back of the shop, to a crude, uncarpeted stairway made of plywood. He climbed it to the attic, which was really more of a short, open, unfinished loft. He used it mainly to store extra boxes, a few of the uglier bikes he hadn’t gotten to yet, goods he was intending to sell. He had the strangest feeling as he neared the top of the stairs that the Cinelli would be gone, now that the boy was here, as if one was real and the other was not and the two could not exist on the same plane of reality.

But it was there, balanced on the small center stand where he had set it after cleaning off the blood. He lifted it, marveling once more at its light weight and sleek design. Was he really going to give this kid the Cinelli? He didn’t want to. He wanted to keep it for himself, even if he never looked at it again. But he knew that he must give it to the boy, or at least offer it. He didn’t know what it would change or how it would help, but deep down he felt that if he did not make this offering – to this boy who could not exist in the present day, in the state he was in, age eleven – more bad things would happen, like they had happened to the Kavanaughs, only this time it would happen to him, to Beth and Raya. And as disturbed as he was about what was transpiring, as afraid as he was to learn the truth, he would not risk his wife and daughter’s lives over this bike.

He carried it down the stairs, careful to avoid bumping it against the wall or railing. He had been tasked with delivering it in perfect shape and he intended to fulfill this mission.

When Darren returned, Patrick was staring into the Zaxxon arcade machine. Maybe they would plug some quarters in later and play a few games. He carried the Cinelli to the bike stand, almost locked it in, and instead decided to leave it on the floor, one end of the handlebars leaning against the workbench so that the kid could approach it at his level. Not as a holy artifact but as a bike.

Patrick turned and glanced at Darren for a second before his eyes flew to the bright spot of color between them. The red CMX-1 in all its Italian glory, red and gold and Campagnolo blue. Bicycle candy. The boy stood immobile, his teeth and lips locked in a grimace of pain. His shoulders began to tremble, one of his knees went limp, but he managed to keep himself upright. Eventually he approached the Cinelli with his hands balled together at his belly, taking small furtive steps, and gradually the rictus relaxed into pure, beatific awe.

Darren crossed his arms and waited.

The boy reached out and touched the frame’s top tube with his index finger, drawing it back along the bike’s flank, to the built-in seat-post clamp, the winged letter C molded into the brake bridge, and up to the suede buffalo hide Unicanitor saddle. He sunk to the floor, crossing his legs and closing his eyes as he leaned into the bike, pressing his forehead against the seat tube. His right hand found the front tire, a mint-condition, never ridden Mitsuboshi Comp II Silver Star skinwall, arguably the rarest tire in the BMX world, gummy blue and still dusted with white release powder. Tears rolled down his cheeks in perfect silence. The Cinelli shone, and the boy wept silently and as intensely as anyone Darren had ever seen.

He felt like an intruder. He should not be here. No more than a stranger should be in the delivery room when the doctor hands the father his stillborn son.

After a time he looked up, his small brown eyes gleaming.

‘This is the one.’

Darren nodded. ‘I thought it must be.’

‘It can’t be,’ the boy said. ‘It’s too perfect.’

‘It’s a collector’s item, the best I’ve ever seen. Worth over six thousand dollars, I would guess. Maybe more. But, you know, it’s also just a bicycle. It’s never been ridden, not by anyone. Maybe it was waiting for you.’

‘I don’t understand,’ the boy said.

‘That’s your bike now, Adam —’ He stopped, realizing what he had said.

Adam blinked. ‘I wondered if you could admit it. Do you know the rest?’

What did it matter now? ‘Adam Burkett.’

‘Yes. Adam Burkett and Darren Lynwood. Old friends.’

Something in Darren protested. To admit it seemed like another irrevocable step down a bad path. His mind felt like it was melting. ‘No.’

‘No, we’re not friends?’

‘No, I mean, we could be. Could have been. But this isn’t possible. Someone must have put you up to this. Who was it? Why are you doing this?’

Adam smiled again. ‘I told you, I don’t know. Maybe you?’

Darren shook his head. ‘But you’re real. How can that be?’

‘You’re real, aren’t you?’

‘But I’m old. Grown up. You’re still…’

‘A boy.’

‘Yes.’

Adam turned his attention back to the Cinelli. Maybe, Darren thought again, if I can get him to accept it, he will leave us in peace.

‘I want you to have it,’ Darren said. ‘It belongs to you. I think it has always belonged to you.’

But the boy was shaking his head.

‘Why not?’

‘I didn’t remember until I saw it, but I’m sure. This was the bike I dreamed about for a whole year. The man at the store held it for me. He had a big bushy mustache. We had a contract. But when I went to the store… it was the last day of school, I remember that now. Someone didn’t want me to have it. I never made it that day. Later I went back, but someone else had stolen it.’

Darren was frowning. ‘I don’t understand. Someone else stole it, or bought it?’

‘The man, the manager…’

‘Arnie?’ Darren said. ‘Arnie was the manager at Dick’s bike shop. He would never sell someone else’s bike, not if he’d signed the hold slip. You must be mistaken.’

Adam kept shaking his head. ‘Someone got to it. This bike was my life. It was going to change everything. I went through hell for it and… and it was just gone. Was it you? Or one of the other guys? Was it Tommy? Or Ryan? Who took it from me? Who did this?’ He stared at Darren, pleading for an explanation.

‘I honestly don’t know,’ Darren said. ‘I don’t even know how it got here. Someone sent it to me five weeks ago, no paperwork. Nothing.’

Adam’s eyes widened, peering through Darren, beyond him, far away from here, back in time. ‘I walked home. I should have been on my new bike, but I had to walk. That’s when it happened. When it ended.’

‘When what ended?’

Adam stood and faced him, the Cinelli no longer of interest. His eyes darkened and his mouth set itself into a hateful seam. Darren caught himself taking a step back, then another. He could not hold the boy’s penetrating gaze much longer.

‘Whoever took this bike from me is the one who did it,’ Adam said. His eyes seemed to darken and recede inside their small sockets. ‘Don’t you get it? It was never just a bike. It was murder.’

Darren only stared at the boy, unable to speak. Guilt hardened inside him, filling his joints, leaving a taste of rust and decay in the back of his mouth.

Something chirped, breaking the silence building between them. Vibration inside of Darren’s pants pocket.

Adam scowled, suddenly on edge.

Darren removed his cellphone from his pocket. ‘It’s just my phone. My wife, Beth.’

Adam retreated several steps, looking around in slow building panic.

‘I was supposed to check in with her,’ Darren said. The phone continued to chirp. ‘I’ll be just a minute.’

‘I can’t stay here,’ Adam said. He ran to the workbench and took up his backpack. ‘They’ll come for me. They’ll kill your family.’

Darren thumbed the screen and held the phone to his ear. ‘Beth? Hold on a second, would you?’