The Adventures of a Girl Called Bicycle

by Christina Uss

  “Yeah!” said Griffin, and Clunk dropped a screw on the ground.

  “O’ course,” said Jeremiah.

  “Mais oui,” said Chef Marie.

  I already thoroughly explained the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, blinked the Fortune. We will always be friends.

  “Count me in, too,” added Dr. Alvarado, walking up with a bit of mustard on his lip and the Monet-Grubbinks right behind him.

  “Then you aren’t going to lock me up in the Friendship Factory?” Bicycle asked Sister Wanda.

  “You said it yourself on that hill outside Calamity: you don’t need to get changed or fixed by the Friendship Factory,” Sister Wanda said, echoing Bicycle’s own words back to her. “You thought I didn’t listen, but I did. It just took a while to properly sink in. Besides, after some serious thinking, I doubt anyone can guarantee a friendship. I’m beginning to see that the whole process of making friends involves a lot of luck. Anyway, the Factory gave us a refund. We can use the money to buy plane tickets back home. Plus we can stay tonight in a nice hotel. And treat ourselves to a feast!”

  At the word “feast,” the Fortune 713-J ejected a napkin-wrapped Complete Nutrition pellet. Dr. Alvarado discreetly picked it up and threw it away.

  Bicycle gave Sister Wanda a big hug and said, “We could treat everybody to a feast! The Monet-Grubbinks, too.” Bicycle turned to Chef Marie. “Where’s the nearest SlowDown Café? You think they’ll be able to make room for us?”

  “I’ll lead the way,” Chef Marie said.

  * * *

  —

  The local SlowDown Café had a nice view of the bay below. The café’s long bike rack was almost full, but Bicycle wedged the Fortune into the last available slot. Chef Marie told them to save her a seat and she pushed her way into the kitchen, insisting she would help cook the evening’s meal for her honored guests. The others waited for a few minutes in line inside the warm, good-smelling café until a waiter came up and informed them that if they didn’t mind sharing a table with another customer, he could seat them right away.

  “We don’t mind a bit,” Sister Wanda said. The waiter showed the group to eight empty seats at a table in the back, where an unhappy-looking young man hunched, apparently drowning his sorrows in a huge bowl of chili. Jeremiah lowered Clunk’s kickstand and everyone sat down before Bicycle recognized the blond mustache of Zbig Sienkiewicz behind his chili spoon.

  “You!” she exclaimed.

  “You!” replied Zbig, seeming equally surprised. Surprised or not, though, he displayed fine manners. He stood up from his chair, clicked his heels together, and bowed to the group. “Gentlemen, ladies. A pleasure to have you at my table. My name is Zbigniew Sienkiewicz.”

  “Hi!” said Griffin.

  Zbig bowed again. “And welcome to your talking bicycle as well.”

  Sister Wanda was impressed in spite of herself. She’d made up her mind that afternoon that Zbig was a bigheaded celebrity who didn’t know how to behave well, yet here he was, bowing like a well-mannered schoolboy. “Charmed, I’m sure,” she said guardedly. “I am Sister Wanda, and you already know Bicycle.”

  He nodded at Bicycle and took his seat again. “Bicycle,” he repeated. “That is really your name?”

  She nodded.

  He said, “I think that is a tremendously good name. Perhaps the best name I have ever heard.” He spoke English with a thick accent, like he had peanut butter on the back of his throat.

  Bicycle couldn’t help smiling. Then she frowned. She was hurt and embarrassed by Zbig’s immediate rejection of her offer of friendship, and couldn’t understand why he was being so nice. Sister Wanda saw her discomfort and jumped in.

  “All right, Mister Mustache,” Sister Wanda said. “You were rather rude to my girl here at the Blessing of the Bicycles. Now you’re pretending nothing happened and we’re going to get along, just like that? You ought to explain yourself.”

  Zbig took another mouthful of chili, giving himself a moment to think. He chewed, swallowed, and shook his head. “I am sorry. I didn’t know I was being rude. All I remember is Bicycle here asking me if I wished to stick a zebra up my nose, and then—”

  Bicycle interrupted him. “I never!”

  Sister Wanda interrupted her. “You what?”

  Bicycle defended herself. “All I did was ask if he thought we might have a chance to be friends. I asked him in Polish. I’ve been practicing that question from my Polish-English dictionary since Nevada.”

  Sister Wanda raised an eyebrow. “Let’s hear it,” she invited.

  Clearly and distinctly, Bicycle said, “Czy nie chciałbyś włożyć zebrę do nosa?” (Or, for those of you who do not speak Polish, “Do you want to put a zebra up your nose?”)

  Sister Wanda covered her mouth with one hand, choking back laughter. Naturally, Sister Wanda, who knew nearly everything, spoke Polish.

  “What?” Bicycle asked defiantly.

  Sister Wanda gasped. “That…that was what you asked Mr. Sienkiewicz at the Blessing of the Bicycles?”

  Bicycle nodded.

  “Oh my, oh my.” Sister Wanda tried hard to remain serious. “Do you have your dictionary here? I need to see it right now.”

  Bicycle pulled her dictionary out of the pack at her feet and handed it over to Sister Wanda, pointing over her shoulder at the words she had looked up and practiced so carefully.

  Sister Wanda read and shook her head in disbelief. She used one fingernail to scratch at the word zebrę and a dried bit of paper flaked off, revealing the word przyjaciel underneath, which indeed means “friend” in Polish. “Was this dictionary soaked in a bathtub? These words are all stuck together. I’m surprised you didn’t end up saying something much more disturbing to Mr. Sienkiewicz than asking him to stick a large animal up his nose.”

  Bicycle took the dictionary and started scratching off more fragments of paper. “All my stuff got seriously rained on in Colorado. So jabłko means ‘apple,’ not ‘hairbrush’? And a kurczak is a chicken, not a kitten?”

  Sister Wanda said, “Mr. Sienkiewicz, it appears there was a major misunderstanding.”

  Zbig was looking at Bicycle. “So you were trying to ask if we could be friends, eh? No zebras? No noses?”

  Bicycle wanted to sink into her seat and disappear under the gaze of her hero. She dropped the dictionary into her lap. Luckily, Chef Marie brought over bowls of chili and plates of sourdough toast, which gave her something to stare at. She wished she hadn’t tried to speak to Zbig at all. Polish, she thought, might be one of those languages in which it is safer to be Mostly Silent, unless you are Polish. “Yes, sir,” she managed to mumble. “No zebras, no noses.”

  He roared with laughter, slapping his knee with one hand. Once he started, Sister Wanda couldn’t keep it in anymore and began to laugh as well. Jeremiah, Griffin, and Dr. Alvarado joined in, and even the Monet-Grubbinks smiled a bit. Bicycle wanted to disappear for a moment longer, but the laughter was contagious. She imagined what she would think if someone accidentally offered to put a zebra up her own nose, and then she started to laugh along with them.

  Sister Wanda controlled herself for a moment and inquired, “I’m almost afraid to ask, but what other Polish words have you been practicing?”

  “Oh,” Bicycle giggled, “Ordinary stuff, like ‘yes,’ ‘no,’ ‘maybe,’ ‘help,’ ‘now,’ ‘later,’ ‘sleep,’ and ‘sandwich.’ I also learned ‘Hello, how are you?’ and…” Here she said a complicated sentence in Polish that meant “There are no pickles at the egg library.”

  Zbig and Sister Wanda went off into another gale of laughter.

  Sister Wanda spluttered out, “That dictionary is a hazardous muddle of incomprehensibility. Unless you really wanted to talk to Mister Sienkiewicz about pickles and egg libraries.”

  Zbig wiped his eyes with a napkin. “Oh, this is what I love about Americans—you always make me laugh. And please, call me Zbig.” He signaled the waiter to bring more sourdough toast and some chocolat
e pudding to the table. “This cheers me up a lot. I was sitting here thinking about the eight-week ride I am about to take with a man in a rooster suit, and I was getting very depressed.”

  “You’re really gonna go on the ride with that rooster fella?” Jeremiah asked.

  Zbig gave a regretful shrug. “I called my manager, and it seems the rooster man is very excited about winning. At least, we think he is—he hasn’t said anything anyone understands yet except ‘cock-a-doodle-doo!’ Nonetheless, I said I would ride across the United States with the contest winner, and that is what I will do. I always keep my word.” He reached gloomily for a piece of toast. “I guess we should have put a clause in the contract forbidding anyone dressed like a barnyard animal to enter.” He chewed contemplatively for a while, then asked, “You know what the saddest part is?”

  “What?” asked Griffin.

  “We made up this contest so I could get to know the United States and learn about American bicycling. I was thinking of starting a bike-racing school somewhere out here, but I wanted to tour your country with a native, someone who knew the best, loveliest places for bicycling, before I made up my mind. Now I am going to spend eight weeks in an unfamiliar country with a rooster man. I don’t even know if he’s going to talk to me or crow and cackle the whole time.” He whuffed a sad puff of air through his blond mustache. “What bad luck.”

  What good luck! thought Bicycle. “I’ve just biked across the whole United States!” she exclaimed. “I can tell you about some great places to start up a bike-racing school. There’s the Continental Divide in Colorado, and fields of sunflowers in Kansas as far as the eye can see.”

  Zbig said, “Oh, sunflowers. That sounds marvelous. Maybe you can draw me a map and I can try to go visit the sunflower fields on my ride with the rooster man.” He looked as though it physically pained him to say that. He took another bite of sourdough. “Maybe it will not be all bad. Only mostly bad.”

  Bicycle immediately started riffling through her pack for her collection of maps. She got out her pencil to circle the best places to see. Griffin made her mark a big X on the town of Green Marsh. Chef Marie asked the waiter to bring over an oversized postcard of all the SlowDown Café locations. Sister Wanda assured Zbig, “You won’t regret taking this trip. Our country really is lovely. Across every state line, a new experience. Big cities, tiny towns. Rivers. Mountains.”

  “Fields,” said Miss Monet-Grubbink, spilling hot chili on her lap.

  “Deserts,” said Dr. Alvarado.

  “Farms,” said Chef Marie.

  “Kind people,” said Bicycle.

  “And fried pies,” said Jeremiah.

  The whole group chatted about beautiful places and bicycle adventures until the night grew long and they were yawning more than talking. Dr. Alvarado and the Monet-Grubbinks left for the airport to catch their red-eye flight to Molrania, and Chef Marie bid the rest of them a fond au revoir, recommending they get in touch to plan another slow feast soon. Zbig’s manager eventually came in to lead him to his hotel, reminding the famous racer that he had to be at the Golden Gate Bridge to begin his historic ride at seven in the morning.

  Zbig folded up the maps and the oversized postcard, tucked them into his pocket, clicked his heels together, and bowed once more to each person at the table. “Such a pleasure to have met you all. You have given me hope for my journey. Dobranoc. Good night.” He waved and left them to last of the pudding.

  After he had gone, Bicycle gazed around the table at Sister Wanda, Jeremiah, and Clunk (and Griffin). As she did, an idea began to form. Once the idea formed, it grew wheels and started rolling along fast in her mind.

  * * *

  —

  Bicycle arrived by herself at the Golden Gate Bridge bright and early the next day. Sister Wanda was taking her time and admiring the scenery. While Bicycle waited for her, the rooster man pedaled up. He had taken off his rooster mask and replaced it with an aerodynamic helmet that fit over his face with a shiny yellow beak and a red cock’s comb on top. He pulled up next to Bicycle, clucking to himself, bouncing up and down with excitement. Bicycle tried to avoid making eye contact, but she couldn’t help but stare. Even his very expensive, skinny racing bike had rooster feathers glued to it. She looked a little more closely at the racing bike. It seemed oddly familiar. Then she noticed that the feathers glued to it were actually crafted from small sponges, and she recognized the rider.

  “Mr. Spim!” she said.

  The flabby president of Spim’s Splendid Sponges was the man tucked tightly inside the rooster suit.

  “What are you doing here? And why on earth are you dressed as a rooster?”

  Mr. Spim said, “Hush now, mum’s the word, my intrepid young colleague! I’m here to set a new world’s record!” He glanced around and saw they were alone for the moment. “You see, when I met you on the path that fine spring day, you stirred my inspiration. My adventuring spirit reawakened as I pictured you biking to California. I said to myself, ‘Horatio Spim, what are you doing with your life? Selling sponges, is that all there is left for you?’ And I had a flash of insight. I may have set some records as an adventurer in my well-funded youth, but neither I nor anyone else has ever set a single record while dressed like a rooster!” He looked very pleased with himself and fluffed his feathers. “I got sponsorship money from the International Chicken Council.”

  Bicycle tried to understand. “So you’re going to bike across the country dressed like a rooster to set a new world’s record for biking across the country while dressed like a rooster?”

  He tapped his beak with a wing tip. “On the nose, my little egg. Quite right. But please, don’t tell anyone yet—if word gets out now, other people will start doing the same thing, swimming the English Channel dressed like a rooster, climbing Mount Everest dressed like a rooster, and so on. There won’t be quite so much sponsorship money to go around.” He clucked again.

  Bicycle was at a loss for words. Happily, she was relieved of the responsibility of saying anything when Sister Wanda rolled up, followed by Jeremiah’s van, followed by Zbig.

  “Dzień dobry! Good morning!” Zbig greeted them with a wide grin. “It is so nice to run into you once more. Are you leaving today on your next adventure, too?”

  “We certainly are, if you’ll have us,” said Bicycle.

  “Have you what?” Zbig cocked his head, not understanding.

  “I asked Sister Wanda last night if we have to get back to the Mostly Silent Monastery right away, but since Brother Otto’s in charge for now, we don’t have to get to D.C. until September,” Bicycle started to explain.

  Sister Wanda chimed in, “The Silence and Shushing Festival doesn’t begin until the end of the summer, so we are free to cycle home.”

  Jeremiah said, “Bicycle talked to me ’n’ Griffin about her idea last night, too, and we figgered we gotta get back to Green Marsh one way or another. I tell you what—this ol’ van ain’t much faster than a bicycle.”

  Clunk’s handlebars stuck out of the passenger-seat window and Griffin added, “This ol’ van might not even be as fast as a bicycle.”

  “So,” Bicycle said, “like I said, if you’ll have us…”

  “Oh!” Zbig’s face lit up like a lighthouse as he understood their offer. “You mean…you would…come with me? Show me the sights? Ride by my side? I would be honored and happy if you would join me.” He eyed the clucking man in the rooster suit. “Join, that is, us. You have no idea how much your company would mean. Shall we start?”

  Jeremiah carefully shifted his van into drive while the four cyclists started pedaling together across the soaring red bridge. Mr. Spim, despite his costume, rode rather well. Bicycle was happy for him. He had clearly been training since the last time she had seen him on the other side of the country. She thought he might actually have a chance to bike across the United States without turning into a puddle of sweat first.

  Zbig turned to Bicycle and said, “You know, I never did answer your ques
tion about whether we have a chance to be friends. Let me tell you about myself and maybe you can judge. I like biking, of course, and I prefer to be around relatively silent people who are good at listening. I love to eat pretty much everything. Also, I’ll tell you this: every friend I’ve ever made in my life, I made while we spent time together on the seats of our bicycles. Maybe it’s strange, but to be honest with you, I don’t know how to make friends any other way.”

  The Fortune blinked at Bicycle. Probability that Sister Wanda was right about the whole process of making friends involving a lot of luck: 99.973%.

  Sister Wanda rode up behind them, leaned over, and poked Zbig in the ribs. “First thing you should do, you should start teaching the girl how to speak proper Polish. Maybe you can start with some correct questions about friends or friendship. No more zebras going up anyone’s noses.”

  Zbig nodded seriously. He turned to Bicycle and whispered loudly, “Want to learn how to say in Polish, ‘Let’s stick a zebra up the rooster’s nose’?”

  Bicycle laughed. Sister Wanda sighed. The rooster cackled. The Fortune blinked. Jeremiah and Griffin started to sing. And the little band started east.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  Bicycle’s adventure includes many true-to-life details from my own 1996 bicycle trip from Washington, D.C., to San Francisco. I’ve done my best to faithfully describe the landscapes and state-line signs, and the way it feels to ride a bike across the United States. Some other details—like the ability of a girl with a bike to wander into Churchill Downs on the day of the Kentucky Derby without a ticket—well, I only wish those were true.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Writing a novel has much in common with cross-country bicycling. Both can be long, lonely slogs that leave you tremendously grateful for the kind people you meet along the way. (And both require lots and lots and lots of candy bars, cookies, and pie.)