someone left his bike at the foot of the staircase in my building for two days now.
it's the sort that label-conscious city spinners would never be caught dead huffing and puffing on it. a souped up, throwback, orange schwinn banana seat bicycle, its once luminous racing striped fenders now flapping like the limp canvas awning of a store that went belly up.
it's as ratty as the one i rode on to ms. mendoza's 1 pm science class. that bike, despite my conscientious oiling, would insist on shrieking once i start pedaling, sending sheik, my flighty, one-balled dog, into apoplexy.
a neighbor, who was collecting his mails the same time i was waiting for my sunday paper delivery, surmised that the bike must be that of the chinese delivery guy. and that a very satisfied customer - his words - must have invited the delivery boy to stay for the night. "a very generous tipper," he said.
today, the bike still loiters there, unmindful of its uselessness in this very harried monday. it stews there, although seemingly never sullen with the world. happy, almost.
happiness and unhappiness, this bike seems to be saying, are as diametrical an experience between that of a frequent flying ceo lying full stretched in a 180 degree lie-flat bed in first class and that of a jumpy immigrant careful enough not to let his knees graze the back of the seat in front of him in coach. both of them, however, are in the same plane.
