and if I should fall along the way
I've been kissed by a rose
been kissed by a rose on the grey
Eve could have called someone to pick her up, but Carby would still be there in the rain. She waited it out. Minutes became many minutes. She started to wonder. A road ninja playground: that's what he called it. The rain was coming down like it was being sprayed on the earth with an astronomical garden hose. She wasn't going anywhere, and the library was still open. Why not induldge? She would try the cinematic microfiche investigation.
Eve hurried back inside, excited about what she might find. The library no longer had a microfiche section: budget cuts dwindling usage, internet, etc. Most newspapers were "on pdf" now, though. The helpful person at the desk directed her to the computer section. She spent ten, well, twenty minutes mindlessly surfing. Then she got down to business. Newspaper in the area? She started by finding newspapers near Brenda's house. What, should she write down a list? This was pretty boring. She looked outside. Lightning flashed.
Forty-five minutes later the rain had increased from heavy to torrential and she was looking at a weather radar website. The really dark patch was right on top of the library. She flipped back to the newspaper websites and the many windows of unsearchable pdf files. Not a single newspaper contained the phrase "road ninja," not in that time period. Wait, what time period? Well, he was not terribly far from her age. Was he?
Eve took a mental step back. It could have been a coincidence that Dave and Biff had both used the phrase road ninja. People were always making jokes about ninjas and pirates and zombies, right? Dave's reference had been in the third person, Biff's in the first. Eve kept looking. It was sincerely tough to find information about something that wasn't readily available via something like a web search. How did people ever find out about stuff?
On a hunch, Eve checked obituaries. There was nothing really special. What was one car accident compared to another? Then she found The Bucktown Tribune. Bucktown was an interesting place, barely a dot on the map. However, a high school, a 7-11, a radio station and a bicycle shop were all within the city--town--village? limits. No one lived in Bucktown, but thousands of people were from there.
The Bucktown Tribute told their story. It was not a real school newspaper, but a completely amateur, unsactioned one. It had "the dirt." It was mostly local gossip, a blur of faceless names: who was sleeping with who, he-said-she-said, "advice" from and to teenagers, a high school sports section, an attempt at fashion commentary, raunchy cartoons, and announcements for parties. Ah, and trash about teachers. "Mrs. B---- couldn't teach a shark to swim!" Stuff like that. Eve read some of the stories. A few were ridiculously funny. Many of the sections where chauvinistic: clearly written by a boy. Eve was briefly distracted but then she found it: a story about "the road ninja." The tribute was "published" weekly. Stories of "the road ninja's" exploits appeared, at most, every few issues, usually even farther apart. Eve began reading them, fascinated. She started noticing specific details, like "a fifteen car pileup." Quick checks revealed the newspapers corroborated those details. There was still no proof that Biff--well she didn't know it was Biff--had actually approached a large accident where first-responders were already involved, done a 540 degree spin from one side of the highway to another, leaned out of his window and handed an "ice cold" can of mountain dew to the female passenger of a white convertible whose boyfriend "flipped his shit," but there was proof of an accident on the highway on that date.
Some of the stories were unbelievable, especially regarding the level of details, especially details that only this "road ninja" would have known. Some of the stories were ridiculous. Some did not even make sense. Eve continued reading them, though, enthralled by the exploits of...whatever this person was. He wasn't really a vigilante, unless you counted speed limits as real laws. Eve did not. She found his name in one of the first few entries: Biff. Biff Becker. He hadn't lied, or, at least, he'd kept his story straight. She was good at this, maybe? It was so exciting. Maybe she could be a reporter. There was no picture of him, though. No way to know it was really him.
Biff was, in fact, a legend in this area. One of his friends had even made a "road ninja signal" just like the Batman signal in popular culture. It was a giant spotlight installed behind a shop called Wilson's Tire Garage, and it projected an R and a backwards N into the sky. There were no specific details about why the road ninja was ever summoned. Even stranger, The Road Ninja was never mentioned on a motorcycle, only a "black muscle car." A motorcyclist was mentioned. A girl motorcyclist. Eve found her name in what she would later discover was the penultimate road-ninja-related entry. It was about her death.
The library was closing. The rain had stopped a while ago. The desk clerk was asking her to leave. Embarrased, Eve quickly gathered up her things.
"You find what you're looking for?" the clerk asked.
"I found...something," Eve replied. Then she left.
The clerk watched her ride away in her pink jumpsuit.
Eve did not sleep well that night. She ended up on the floor, downstairs, sipping wine and looking at the bigass painting of Biff. She still hadn't really mentioned Biiff to Dave. Were either of them from Bucktown? Dave hadn't mentioned it. The stories about Biff never said anything about him having attended that high school. Eve looked at the painting and tried to imagine Biff in a car--a sports car--a black "muscle" car instead. She could kind of see it. Those were--were those different days?
Eve decided she had to check out these stories for herself.
No comments:
Post a Comment