by Melinda Minx
1
Eric
The limo stops, again, and I nearly spill my whiskey.
“Sometimes I think we should take the subway,” Dmitri says, sipping at his drink.
“Two billionaires sweating through our suits on the F train,” I say, shaking my head.
Then I look outside at the endless line of brake lights in front of us. Maybe he’s right.
“I was joking,” Dmitri says.
“It might actually help my image problem,” I say.
“Eric,” he says, “come on, you’re imagining it.”
“I’m not,” I say, gulping down the rest of my whiskey. “People think I’m a total asshole—”
“You’re not—”
“I am,” I say, grinning. “I had to be a dick get where I am. Now that I’m there though, I need to actually work my image. If you wait too long to do it, they’ll make a movie about you like that Facebook asshole.”
“Zuckerberg,” Dmitri says. “Dude is going to run for president, so maybe he’s got a point.”
Dmitri wouldn’t try to improve his image at any cost. He loves being seen as an asshole.
“Your image is good with the ladies,” Dmitri says, grinning.
I sigh. Good for one-night stands, bad for the long-term. I’m known as something as a serial “dater,” with the term “dating” being stretched to its loosest definition. Is two drinks and a fuck really a date?
“There’s this new thing,” I say, “New York’s best couple…”
Dmitri laughs. “Imagine the asshole couple who will win that.”
“What if I won it?” I ask.
Dmitri gives me a sidelong glance. “Eric, you need an actual girlfriend to win that thing. You’d have to date the same woman for at least a month, more likely two or three.”
“It would be worth it,” I say, “for the image boost.”
“Charity costs more,” Dmitri says, “but it’s way less of a sacrifice.”
“Charity is old news. Every asshole billionaire throws a few million here and there at some causes, and everyone still thinks they don’t really care. You know what, Dmitri? I think I can win this best couple thing. What do people love more than a bad guy getting tamed by a good girl?”
“Where are you going to find a good girl?” Dmitri asks, unconvinced.
I shrug. It’s a good question. The girls that are drawn to me are not the type you’d bring home to your mother, and certainly not the kind that could win “New York’s Best Couple.”
“When I turn on the charm,” I say with confidence. “I bet you I could get any woman to win with me.”
“Any woman?” Dmitri asks. “Is this a real bet?”
He gives me an eager look. Dmitri loves a good wager, and his eyes look hungry. I know it’s stupid to commit to this. Dmitri is notorious for holding people to bets. He once ran a man’s career into the ground for trying to back out of a bet.
Still, I know I can win, and I’m a man of my word, so there’s no risk in needing to back out.
“Sure,” I say. “You pick the woman, and I’ll date her up and make her win best couple with me.”
“Any woman?” he asks.
I nod. It’s a big risk, but I need to change my image and fucking my way through models isn’t going to get me there.
I look outside again. We’ve moved about fifty feet.
“I could walk home faster than this,” I hiss.
Then I see a bike shop outside: “The Fixed Gear.” I used to bike to work before I hit it big. That was ten years ago, but shit, anything is better than this traffic. We’re driving from a meeting in the financial district back to our office uptown; it’s a route we often have to take and traffic is always an issue.
I hit a button and roll down the window separating Dmitri and me from the driver. “Ernesto, go ahead without us, we’re getting out.”
“We are?” Dmitri asks.
I shrug. “I’m going to buy a bike, you can get Ernesto to take you back to the office if you want.”
“Nah,” Dmitri says, “I’ll go get a drink or something, then call my driver out to get me when the traffic’s cleared.”
We get out of the car. We’re near the Brooklyn Bridge—just south of Chinatown. The bike shop looks a bit like hipster spillover from Brooklyn. There’s a lot of road bikes locked in front of the building.
“This place looks fucking grimy,” Dmitri says, walking up to the door right behind me.
“I thought you were going to go get a drink?” I ask.
He shrugs. “Maybe I’ll get a bike too.”
I give him a skeptical look. He’s in good shape, but he’s famous for only exercising in the privacy of his air-conditioned private gym. I can’t imagine him sweating outside on a bike.
I open the door, and we both step inside.
We see two guys with gauged ears working on a bike that is upside down on a rack. One has a dirty, greasy rag in his hand, and the other is smoking a vaporizer while he strokes his scraggly beard and watches.
“I know a place uptown,” Dmitri says, “That is more... clean.”
“This is fine,” I say. “I don’t need a Tour De France bike to commute.”
The ‘guy’ with the dirty rag turns around and greets us, and we realize that it’s actually a girl. She’s wearing cut-off jeans and has short hair.
“Any girl…” Dmitri whispers to me.
I look at the bike girl and grin. I whisper back to Dmitri, “She has to be straight though. I’m good, but I can’t turn a lesbian.”
“If she is straight…” Dmitri says.
“Then she’s fair game,” I say.
There’s another woman helping another customer at the counter. She’s got an undercut on one side, and her clothes look like they were torn up by an angry dog, but her bone structure is good, and she’s got an athletic figure. Nice tits too.
“She’d work,” I say, leaning my head in her direction so as not to draw too much attention.
Dmitri scoffs. “Way too easy, bro. Fix her horrible haircut and put a dress on her, and she’d be fucking hot. You said you could get any girl to work, so I really want to test you. These hipster bike chicks are just hot girls with unfortunate style choices, put them in the right environment and they’ll be model girlfriends. What I need to find is someone who is completely hopeless, someone with no sense of fashion or taste.
2
Ruth
Darnit! I’m late again.
I pedal faster, but I have to get all the way over to the right-most lane, and no cars are making space for me.
I do a proper right-turn hand signal; A lot of cyclists will just point right with their right hand, but it’s dangerous to remove your dominant hand from the handlebars while trying to turn.
I hold the signal up for three seconds, and it looks like the car behind me is making just enough space, so I turn.
I hear an engine roar behind me, and then a loud honk.
I feel the back tire jostle and skid out, and then I hear brakes slamming. I struggle to keep the bike upright, but the back tire loses traction, and I crash to the ground.
I feel my helmet hit the pavement, and while my jeans protect my legs, my forearm rubs raw against the road. My glasses slide across the pavement.
I grab the glasses first, and I sigh relief that the frames got scratched up rather than the lenses. These are expensive, custom prescription lenses. I put the glasses back on so that I can see, and I get up, thankful that the scratches on my arm seem like the worst of the injuries, but the guy behind me is out of his car now.
“What the Christ?” He says, “Sorry I hit you, lady, but you said you was gonna turn left!”
I sigh. My arm is bleeding, but I’m tired of having to explain to motorists the proper signaling on a bike. “You’re not supposed to remove your right hand from the handlebar—the signal I gave—”
“Lady,” he interrupts, “are you okay? If you’re gonna turn right, just point right. I
don’t speak sign language.”
All the cars behind us are honking, and cars are cutting dangerously around us now.
“I’m fine,” I say. “Just please educate yourself on bike safety. We have to share the road. The Fixed Gear does bike safety lectures on Saturday, I teach them actually—”
“Alright, lady,” he says. “Sorry you pulled in front of me and got hit by my car.”
A total non-apology. Asshole.
I shake my head and get back on the bike. My arm is tingling, and my jeans are covered in dirt on the right side.
“You ain’t gonna sue me or nothing, right?” He asks.
Now I’m really late for work.
3
Eric
“Service here kind of sucks,” Dmitri says.
I’m looking at the bikes on my own, but I don’t really know my way around a bike anymore. You’d think that a bike would stay a bike, but just ten years have changed the designs a lot, and I don’t really know what I’m looking for anymore.
“They’re busy,” I say. “With customers who got here before us.”
“Those customers aren’t as rich as us,” Dmitri says.
“Flaunting my money won’t help my image problem, will it? Just wait patiently.”
“Where’s Ruth?” The lesbian-looking lady shouts to the hot one.
“Late again,” the hot one responds.
The hot one is going over some kind of paperwork with two customers, but she grins at me. “Sir, I’ll be right with you as soon as I can. We’re understaffed right now.”
I don’t give her a full smile—just a half-smirk, but I can see her cheeks redden at that. She’s totally the kind of chick I could get into bed with almost no effort. Maybe I can do it one last time before Dmitri saddles me with whoever it is he picks out.
I pull a bike off one of the racks and squeeze the brakes. I watch as something that looks like a miniature car rim squeezes onto the center portion of the wheel.
“Those are disc brakes,” a woman’s voice behind me says.
Dmitri and I turn around and look up. There’s a woman behind us with a bike helmet in her hand. Her hair style could best be described as... unfortunate. Her dark-brown bangs are totally straight and cut just above her eyebrows, and then the rest of the hair is longer, but not long enough to avoid looking like a helmet, or maybe a bowl.
She’s tall—lanky—and her arm is bleeding. Her jeans are covered in dirt and totally mangled—not in a fashionable, hipster way.
And she’s wearing big, thick glasses that make her eyes look smaller than they are. It’s like trying to make eye contact with someone through a beer bottle. She’s panting, as if she just ran a marathon to get here.
Dmitri looks her up and down with his mouth hanging open, and he elbows me. “She’s perfect,” he whispers.
“Excuse me?” the woman asks.
“Uh,” Dmitri says. “The bike I mean.”
She smiles at the bike, and despite all the other unfortunate things about her, her smile is really warm and genuine. Her cheeks form dimples, and I notice she’s got some freckles on her nose. I never cared for freckles, but they look right on this woman.
“Oh, yeah,” she says excitedly. “This is a great value!”
Then she looks Dmitri and me over, noticing we’re wearing expensive suits. Or does she know our suits are expensive? Does a woman wearing torn and dirty clothes know a suit from the mall from a custom-tailored one?
She pushes her glasses up her nose and licks her lips. “I mean, usually you can’t get disc brakes for under six hundred dollars.”
I try to ignore the glowing look in Dmitri’s eyes, and I try to ignore how bad the hole I dug myself is. It looks like I’m going to have to date this girl, and I’ve got my work cut out for me. Still, it could be worst, couldn’t it? I did like her smile.
“So,” I say, “I haven’t had a bike for over a decade. What is the advantage of disc brakes?”
“Let me show you,” she says.
She goes to another bike on the rack and bends over.
Dmitri points to her and whispers to me, “She’s got a nice ass at least.”
I elbow him. “Shut up.”
He goes tight-lipped, but his dumb smirk doesn’t disappear.
“What’s your name?” Dmitri asks.
“Ruth,” she says, pulling the bike out for us.
Dmitri looks at me wide-eyed and mouths her name to me, snickering.
Ruth pulls the bikes side by side. “Okay, so this bike has rim brakes. This is probably what you’re used to, right?”
She squeezes the brakes, and I see little rectangular things tighten against the rim, just like my old bike had.
“Yeah, that’s what my old bike had.”
“Remember how they worked in the rain?” She asks. “Or didn’t work. Rim brakes have to squeegee all the water off before they can get sufficient friction to slow the wheels.” She pushes her glasses up, looks down at her torn jeans, and says, “It’s really dangerous.”
“So,” I say, “Uh, disc brakes don’t have that issue I assume?”
“Nope,” she says, “They push against the center of motion here, and water doesn’t affect them at all. The only loss of friction you’ll have is between asphalt and tire.”
She smiles up at me. When she smiles, I can almost ignore her bad haircut and nearly hidden eyes. I bet if I got those glasses off her, her eyes would really shine when she smiles.
“I didn’t ask your budget,” she says, “Mr.—”
“Eric,” I say. “Just call me Eric.”
I end up taking the bike. I don’t want to let her know that I’m a billionaire and scare her off. A girl like this probably has self-esteem issues. I realize it’s a bit assholish of me to assume that, but seriously, she must have self-esteem issues. How else would she have that haircut? I have to make myself seem as average-Joe as I can to even have a chance.
When Ruth disappears to go get the paperwork, Dmitri looks at me and cracks up.
“Perfect! She’s absolutely perfect. With those beer bottle glasses, there’s no way she can even wear contacts. Good luck, man,” he gloats.
“You’re sure? I think you’re underestimating her.”
“You kidding?” He asks. “You’ve basically lost the bet already, man.” Then he gets a very serious, menacing look in his eyes. “Not that I’d let you back out, of course.”
“I’m confident,” I say. “I can make it work with her. The main challenge will be getting her to date me at all.”
He laughs. “She’s going to be suspicious…I mean look at her. Why would a man like you ever ask a girl like her out?”
“I’m going to take it slow. I’ll suddenly be very interested in my bike, it’s a great excuse to come here.”
“This is too good,” he says, still grinning ear to ear. The only time Dmitri smiles is when he’s feeding off other people's’ misery and suffering.
What have I gotten myself into?
4
Ruth
“I can finish up with him,” Maya says, smiling.
“It’s my sale…” I say.
I need to work on defending myself. In high school—okay, even in college—women like Maya always walked all over me. They knew they were cooler than me, and they played nice while taking advantage of me. But we’re adults now, and no one is ‘cool.’ Standing up for myself is the ‘cool’ thing to do.
“You can clean up,” Maya says, “And I’ll log you in as making the sale.”
I look down at my arm and jeans.
“You crash or something?” Maya asks.
“Hit by a car,” I say.
“Jesus,” Maya says, nearly prying the paperwork out of my hands.
I grip it tighter and pull back. “It’s my sale,” I say more forcefully. “I’ll close it.”
I didn’t want to admit it to Maya, because it’s incredibly stupid and pathetic of me, but I really like the way Eric looks. I like the way
his voice sounds, and I especially like how he smiles at me. It’s not even a smile really, more like a cocky smirk. I usually hate that kind of thing, but something about Eric’s…
I see Maya looking over at him, and then she looks at me and scowls for a brief moment before flashing her fake smile again.
Oh, she wants to get to Eric. She doesn’t want to steal my sale. She wants to steal the guy from me.
Ugh, I’m acting like I have even the remotest chance in hell with a guy like that. He’s wearing a suit. And his friend’s wearing a suit too. It’s not like I can tell how expensive a suit is, but they don’t look cheap. Then again, Eric is buying a budget bike, so he can’t be rich.
I’m overthinking it. He’s going to fill out the paperwork and ride out of here, and I’ll never see him again. Then Maya is going to resent me for vagina-blocking her. She’d have an actual chance with Eric, and I am denying her that chance.
I grip the papers tighter. I need to stop having such a self-defeating attitude. I’m going to invite him to my bike safety lecture, and I will see him again. Maya be damned.
“Weird that you have to fill out paperwork just to buy a bike,” Eric’s friend remarks as Eric initials the purchase agreement.
“It’s a liability thing,” I say. “State law. Most shops just kind of hand-wave it, but I’d recommend you actually read everything you’re signing, it asks you to thoroughly read the bike’s manual and familiarize yourself with all the safety features—”
Eric’s friend looks at me and winks three times. “Sure we will.”
“I’ll read it,” Eric says, taking the manual. “Better safe than sorry.”
He gives me that cocky smirk, and I have to do everything in my power to not grin like a big stupid idiot. I feel my cheeks burning red though, and I look down to stop myself from blushing even more.
“I, uh…” I mutter. “I teach a course on bike safety here, on Saturdays.”
Eric and his friend look at me, then at each other.