there must be some kind of way out of here
said the joker to the thief
there's too much confusion
I can't get no relief
Spit was getting annoyed. He was working the counter at the small motorcycle dealership in Trench City, he had a line of customers all waiting to buy shit and some dumb bitch on the phone with her panties in a knot about a wrecked 250.
"I'm saying if we fix this, its gunna end up costing more than the value of the bike. I'm saying it would be cheaper to just buy another bike. You can get the same exact bike, and it will be cheaper."
"I don't care." Evelyn was getting exasperated. She was used to men thinking they could talk down to her but when they weren't listening on top of that, that was too much. "It was my boyfriends bike. He died last week and I want to keep it." She didn't like lying, but Spit deserved it.
"Alright. Fine. Call again next week and see if we're done with it."
"I can pay when I pick it up, right?" Evelyn didn't notice her tone gave away her monetary problems.
Spit facepalmed. "Yes, you have to pay in full when you pick up, and if you don't, there's a storage fee...are you sure you don't want to scrap it?"
"I'm sure."
Spit slammed the phone down. "Bitch."
Carby was not well. The tumble over the guardrail was nearly as disastrous for him as it was for his late rider, may he rest in peace. Carby clung to the edge of existence, scared and saddened. Though he did not see it, he somehow felt that Carl was no longer with him. He was a bike without a rider, a horse without a master. It was his first crash.
Carby had not seen Evelyn, even though she was with him at the dump site they called a "lot," and with him in the flat bed, and dropping him off at the bike shop. He did not see her until, weeks later, he was being rolled out into the sunlight after being fully repaired. He saw the quiet kid that did most of the work but most importantly really like listening to Taylor Swift hand the keys to Evelyn, and that was the first time Carby saw her.
Helloooooo nurse, Carby thought. Then, oh this is a way better situation.
Evelyn mounted the bike, to Carby's delight, and looked at the small panel under the windshield. The spedo was on the right, and the numbers surprisingly did not go that much higher than the last car she drove. It was the tach, on the left side, that surprised her. She had driven a manual before--her mom's car--so she was familiar with the extra gauge that said "RPM" in big white letters. However, in her mom's car, the red line started a "5." On this motorcycle, the numbers went into double digits before going into the red. Evelyn took a second or two to ponder how a machine could spin around fourteen thousand times a minute without exploding, unaware that she was salivating slightly. Evelyn continued on down to the handle bars and the rest of the bike. Having driven a manual car and ridden a bicycle, she had assumed this would be a simple merger. However, each hand grip had its own lever, and there were two more down next to the tiny little pegs where her feet were probably supposed to go.
This wasn't going to happen.
Evelyn got back off the bike. Had she been a guy like Carl, the embarassment would have killed her, but she was Evelyn, and she didn't care.
"I need do have this towed somewhere."
"What?"
"I don't know how to ride a motorcycle. I need to have it towed home."
The tech took her back inside, to talk to Spit. Evelyn recognized Spit's voice immediately. Spit was far more generous when he saw what she looked like in person, and arranged to tow the bike at a discount, gave her a ride, and offered to "show her the ropes" three times. Evelyn slightly regretted the fact that Spit would now know where she lived, but there was nothing to be done about that, and her currently living arrangements were a temporary situation.
Spit took extra care to show her how to secure Carby to a tree on the sidewalk with the giant chain lock he insisted she buy. Then he helped her put a cover on, and then he was out of her hair.
Paying for the equivalent is a brand new motorcycle is typically an unwise purchase for someone lacking a steady job and savings and who is forced to share a one bedroom apartment with a sleezy girl who was not shy about fooling around with boys while Evelyn pretended to sleep and whose cat had went out of its way to show its hostility.
Evelyn had attempted to get welfare, or unemployment, or whatever it was that was available to her. She found herself in a smelly waiting room with a ticket in her hand, sitting next to a girl who was gushing over the new phone she had just been able to purchase with the cash freed up when she received extra food stamps for having a baby. Evelyn had left the office disgusted and empty handed.
Evelyn had intended to learn how to ride from professionals. After some research, the best option was some class call "The Basic Rider's Course." That class was extremely popular; the spots normally filled up months ahead of time. Also, Evelyn was only able to support herself because there was a coffee shop that needed a barista and a sports bar that was not hiring but nonetheless happened to need a waitress once the owner got a good look at her. The money flowed when the patrons were drunk and she smiled just right, but she was exhausted. Thus Evelyn found herself pushing it off again and again, week after week.
Like many other first times, her first ride was quite unlike what she expected. She had been asleep one saturday night, blissfully unaware of yet another of her roomates nearly-anonymous liaisons, when she was awoken from the shoulder. The first thing she saw after opening her eyes was a giant, hairy and disgusting potbelly inches from her face. She screamed and fell away, onto the floor.
"Hey..." The owner of the voice had man tits and the glassy eyes of a drunk. "You wanna have a threesome?"
Evelyn, in shock, looked at her roomate. Her roomate, who was lying along the bed wearing nothing but her bra, returned her gaze with a shrug.
"No. No. Absolutely not. I'm...going...out."
"You know its like two in the morning," said the fat guest. Evelyn cringed suddenly when she glanced at him, blushed, and then looked down and found her jeans. Out of distress, she put them on over top of her pajama bottoms, which she would later realize was actually a good idea.
"I'm...going to go for a ride." She hadn't afforded a motorcycle jacket yet, so instead pulled her winter coat out of the closet. She didn't overhear everything they said, but she did hear the word "bitch" and her roomate telling her date that Evelyn hadn't touched the motorcycle since bringing it home. Technically, it was not sure, since she had been warming up the engine for 5 minutes every few days to keep the gas in the carburetor from going stale, but the comment still hit home.
Evelyn ripped the cover off angrily and hung it from the door handle to the aparment. Let fatbag trip on it on'is way out. She swung her leg over the seat and turned the key violently. Carby took a few tries to wake up, but eventually his engine caught and stayed running. This was most definitely not where Evelyn wanted to be at this moment.
Evelyn wanted to be in a loft apartment with large, slanted windows that gave a healthy dose of sun or moon light down onto a shiny and new hardwood floor underneath. Marble counter tops, a decent sized kitchen, and a tall dark and handsome boy who would share a bottle of wine with her, whisk her around the room to a Frank Sinatra (or maybe Nightwish) song, and then fell onto the bed without tipping their wine glasses. And TallDarkAndHandsome had a day job, just like her.
No where, in that dream, was she out in the cold on a motorcycle with literally no where to go. That's where she was, though. Evelyn looked at the controls. Felt them. They did feel good. There was something about this...something right. One hand lever traveled much farther than the other, but she had no idea which did what. She turned the engine back off, imagining her roomate laughing at her while she was pummeled full of STDs, and unlocked the the seat so she could take it off and get at the storage area.
The storage area of the bike was a joke. It had enough room for the manual, a bag of tools packed so tight that it had exploded when she first opened it, and room for maybe a small purse. Evelyn took out the manual and started reading it.
Half an hour later, her jacket was zipped up as far as it could go, and the rain hood was up, and she had it someone figured out: left hand lever was the clutch; right hand was the front brake. Right grip was the throttle. Right pedal was the rear brake, and the knobby pedal for her left foot shifted the gears. Down all the way got her to first gear. Halfway up was neutral, and then up to all the other gears. Someday, she hoped, she would understand why they would make it like that.
Evelyn managed to get it into neutral and rocked the bike back and forth, testing out the brakes. Easy enough. With the bike still off, she shifted into first. Suddenly the wheels locked up and stopped rocking. Baby steps. She shifted back into neutral and started the bike up. She gave the throttle a little twist. The bike roared loudly and the needle on the tach shot into the red zone. Evelyn let go and drew her hand back in fright. She let the bike idle for a few seconds, apologizing in her mind.
Damn girl, thought Carby, take it easy on me I'm not a young bike anymore. Carby had no concept of the average lifespan of a motorcycle.
Evelyn tried again. This time she turned the throttle a lot less. The engine roared again and the tach shot up to 6,000 rpm. She tried turning the throttle as little as possible. The engine purred this time and the tach rose smoothly to 2,000 rpm, which looked and felt kinda right.
Ok.
Now to put it in gear. Evelyn held the clutch pedal in and kicked the shifter down into first. It landed with a satisfying click, although she would later discover that because of that first crash Carby's shifter would be a little finicky about first gear, and occasionally pop out into neutral if your foot bumped the shifter. Evelyn began letting the clutch pedal out, waiting to give it some gas just as she felt it start to catch. She was reminded of her first driving lesson, and thought again of her mother. What happened next, she was not prepared for. She thought she was letting the clutch lever out slowly, but the engine was fully engaged before she even felt it catch. The bike leapt forward, got caught on the chain that Evelyn had (fortunately) forgotten to take off, and then stalled. All of this happened before Evelyn even thought to twist the throttle. Then Carby began to tip over.
Whoooaaaaaaaaa catch me catch me catch me catch me!
Evelyn turned the engine off, unlocked the bike, locked the chain around the tree, and then rolled the bike off the curb and onto the street. Thankfully, the street was mostly deserted. She turned the engine on and tried again. Another stall. She tried yet again. This time, she managed to give it a little gas and pull the clutch pedal as it lurched forward, just in time to avoid a stall. Some amount of time later, Evelyn had reached the end of her block, and was confident that she could shift into first gear.
Then her next problem presented inself: balance. Evelyn tried to do a u-turn to the left, but suddenly discovered she was could not balance a turn to the left and instead swerved to the right, into the cross street, jamming the brakes and skidding to a stop just before rear-ending a rusty old hatchback. Evelyn backed up and continued practicing with the clutch, and now the balance, and rode all of the way around her block at somewhere around 10 miles an hour, making right turns until she arrived in front of her apartment. Evelyn was cold, and tired, and needed to get some sleep because she had the morning shift at the coffee shop. She rode another circuit around her block. She had no helmet nor eye protection, but these speeds were low enough that she didn't feel the wind tearing her eyes out.
When she came back inside, it was late. Scary late. The kind of late where she had to look at the clock multiple times, because her brain refused to accept what her eyes saw, and promptly discarded the information.
"Oh well," she thought to herself. "I've gone to work after worse." Indeed, she had. It was a simple routine: a quick shower while she was still wired, then set her cell phone alarm and leave no time for a morning routine. And leave a bagel in a baggie next to her bed for breakfast.
The sexual deviants were asleep, thankfully, when Evelyn crashed into bed. They remained asleep when her alarm woke her for work.
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