Fixie

A swirl of dust and pollen swept across the tarmac. Gathering friends from the gutter it swelled into a vortex that rose angrily from the road. The cyclist closed his eyes and sucked in his nostrils and waited for the inevitable stinging slap across the face. He countered his balance as the gust nudged him towards the path of the passing van. He clicked the palate at the back of his throat in a futile attempt to clear the accumulated pollen blown in from out of town from his sinuses. Mucus draining through his nostrils dried into a crust that scratched the membranes as he puckered his nose. A sneeze threatened, withdrew.

He slowed towards the lights and squeezed between the two lanes of idling cars. The lights incanted their spell and he ground to a near stop before the curse was lifted. He stomped heavily on the pedals to regain momentum, leaning around the corner and into the shrieking gale funneling down the road. Specks of dust pricked his skin and water sluiced from his eyes. He stood up on his cleats, fighting the wind to regain his cadence. It was in moments like these that he questioned his decision to ride a fixie.

He spat what felt like a thick wad of mud out onto the curb. A gritty texture lingered. He turned onto a side street and yawed his bike up the hill and over the speed bumps to the main street. After chaining his steed to a street sign he clacked along the concrete and into the pharmacy. Before him stood a cardboard display that the staff, so finely attuned to the sensitivities of its clients, had erected just inside the doorway. He sniffed aggressively at the mucus threatening to drip from his nose and picked up a pack of antihistamines. The sales assistant gave him a knowing smile as he presented the box across the counter.

That’ll be fourteen dollars ninety eight.

He mumbled something unintelligible as he unzipped his wallet and withdrew a twenty. They exchanged notes and nodded and grimaced curtly. The urge to ram his fingers up his nostrils and scratch the itch from his sinuses was overwhelming. He caught a glimpse of his face in the window, his eyes bulged red.

He pulled the helmet back on top of his quiff and tugged at its strap as he caught the hairs of his beard in the clasp. Punk music swelled and subsided as a battered old EH Commodore crept slowly past. He watched it advance and retreat, then swung his leg over the bar and clipped his foot back in as he vibrated over the tram tracks and into the gap between the right hand lane and the cars parked in the left. A car ahead stopped and shifted into reverse to pull into a space. He threw a cursory glance over his shoulder and jumped the bike across the tracks into the very middle of the road to skirt around the protruding nose of the car. The lights of an oncoming car flashed him a warning and the driver shouted something derogatory into the glass of his window as he passed.

The lights on Johnston changed to yellow, red, and he slowed to a stop once more. He tried to remain cleated through a balance of rocking forwards and backwards and turning the handlebars, but gravity won. He snatched his foot from out of its bind and caught the fall with his leg. He looked down as if pondering the very ground beneath him, avoiding the eyes of the people waiting at the tram stop.

A girl waiting to cross smirked and turned her head away. Her bag hung heavily from her shoulder. A gust wind tussled her hair and billowed the black dress that draped over her slim frame from the bones of her shoulders like the sail of a tall ship, flashing a tattoo of a cartoon sailor to the wind. She wiped a strand of hair that had come loose from her bun from the corner of her mouth back behind her ear with her ringed finger.

The light pole clicked into life and the little green man heralded the girl across the road. The cyclist stood back on his pedals and teetered while he waited for her to pass in front before he turned the corner and pumped on down the hill into Fitzroy.

Her sandals slapped the pavement as she walked. Her mouth held a faint smile as though they held an important secret. Teenage boys swinging plastic adidas bags quietened and watched purposefully as she passed, then nudged and winked at each other as they followed her silhouette down the street with their hot eyes. She rolled her eyes as she passed, but continued unabashed, poised and confident. She veered into a side street away from the outlets and the hordes of colour-coded and name-tagged shoppers bused in from interstate and the outer suburbs. The noise of the street dissipated to be replaced by the rustle of leaves and laughter through the window of an apartment in the warehouse above.

The hand of a familiar smiling face waved as it sailed by on its bike, the rusting chain squeaked against its cogs like a clamor of parrots. She returned the wave too late, but yelled out a greeting over her shoulder. A hand raised its receipt.

She turned again, into a street shaded by chestnuts, and dropped her bag to the pavement as she perched herself on the edge of a padded milk crate and leant her forearms on the slatted wood of the table. A pair of half-dreaming eyes placed an old gin bottle filled with water, and an empty jam jar in front of her.

Coffee?

She ordered a long macchiato without lifting her eyes, and leant to draw a paperback from the front pocket of her bag. She opened it to the dog-eared page and held it in her right hand while her head leant and dreamed on her left. An empty coke can clattered as it rolled down the footpath in spun into the gutter under the nose of a car. A speck of dust landed in the corner of her eye and she blinked and contorted her face to loosen it before wiping it out with her finger.

An awaited friend roosted on a crate across the table. She glanced up and smiled, finished the paragraph and dog-eared the page. She smoothed the cover down reverentially and leant her hands on its cover as she smiled across at her friend, lipstick firing.

Ugh. That wind’s destroyed my hair.

Same. How are you?

Eh, you know? Sick of looking for a new place to live.

The pirate crossed the road to their right, resplendent as always draped in black leather and silver studs, hat feathered and beard pinched into a point. He threw a wave in their direction and continued on his smiling way, brown paper bag swinging in his hand.

A woman approached, bright blue duffel bag slung over her shoulder. The pirate paused and opened his arms to her. She grinned and returned the embrace.

Take care.

She waved the pirate goodbye and sauntered down the street, wiping a graying wisp of hair that had loosened from her ponytail back over her head.  She pinched her ear and rubbed the vacant hole in her lobe, lost in a track of whimsical thought. She wiped the side of her face where the fronds of an exploded flower loosened by the wind sprinkled into it. She breathed in the essence of cafe as she drifted past the doorway of the café. Half-heard snippets of conversation wormed into her ear. She readjusted the lie of her bag across her shoulder and carried on, lost in the gentle swishing of the rumpled fabric against the cotton of her shirt.

A gust of wind dragged a broken gum branch through the grass of the park. On the other side a child threw a ball for a terrier while his parents sat on the bench staring at their phones. She put her head down into the wind and emerged on the street. She walked up the stairs and into the lobby, swiped her member’s card on the scanner and pushed through the turnstile with her thighs.

She dumped her bag on the bench in the change room and stripped down to her swimsuit. She folded her clothes into her bag neatly and placed it in a locker and fastened it with her padlock. Her thongs clacked on the concrete around the edge of the pool. She watched the languid strokes of her fellow swimmers, taking account of who else was there, before stowing her towel behind the block marked ‘Medium’. She crouched and sat on the edge with her feet and shins adapting to the sharp coldness of the rippling water. She slipped into the pool slowly and silently, as though observing some spiritual ritual.

She settled into her laps, arms rotating in their sockets in their own slow rhythm as if moving beyond the will of their owner. Her mind drifts with her wake.