Checker and the Derailleurs

by Lionel Shriver

  “Sometimes dogs try to get at the garbage,” she muttered, reluctantly coherent. “Bitch them off if you want.”

  Checker extricated himself from her limbs, now grown around him like a tenacious plant. As he gritted across the floor in his All Stars, his prick bounced back and forth against his thighs. He wondered if he should throw something on, but modesty seemed silly for dogs. He opened the door.

  The pack was gone, however, and the one that remained hunched on the doorstep playing with a piece of glass. The drummer didn’t shoo this one away, because it wasn’t a stray but a pet—Checker’s own.

  As the door creaked behind him, Rahim wheeled and stood up. They faced each other, Checker in only his shoes, his prick still lolling stupidly from thigh to thigh. When Rahim looked straight into Checker’s eyes, he must have wanted to seem vengeful, but he only looked hurt. I’ve done everything for you, and only asked for one thing, and you take it for yourself. How can you be so greedy? I would have given you anything but that. And you knew, too, I told you. It’s true you found her for me, and I was grateful, don’t think I wasn’t. But all the worse, then, to take her back. You have a phrase for that in this country, though it’s a joke, really—white-man giver would be so much more historically correct. Oh yes, I’ve picked up a lot here that I can’t say yet—Americans think if you can’t put it in English you don’t know it at all, but—well, never mind that. I just mean, the more I get the feel for this place, the more I’ve been routing for the darker side of your blood. And as for darkness, I’ve always suspected—well, never mind that either, why should I care about that now? I just want you to know that I’ve defended you for months; the things they’ve said behind your back—you heard some of them tonight, but there’s more, and I’ve never joined in, so now when I walk into Plato’s the conversation stops as completely as if you’d walked in yourself, and that’s made me proud. I’m Iraqi, and pride is important to us. You even said that about Rachel, how terrible it was to see her without pride in the hospital. Well, you might as well know that everyone saw you—they looked at my wife naked, doing that with my best friend, when I was the only one who kept saying how fine you were. They looked in the window like those booths in Times Square for a quarter. They’re laughing at me now. Even I am laughing, and when you laugh at yourself it’s all over. I’m only nineteen and I have no country and no family anymore. My brothers are dead and I will never see my mother. I like to splash in the pool and play sax in your band, but there’s a lot of sorrow in my life and I never complain, do I? Eaton Striker talks about sacrifice, but he doesn’t know what he’s talking about; I do. I’ve sacrificed almost everything I’ve ever had. It’s true that I’m resilient and I can keep moving. I ask for very little, but that doesn’t mean I ask for nothing. My needs are simple but clear, and you’ve always known them: a friend and my dignity and a woman. And in one night you have taken every single one of them away.

  Rahim’s lips trembled and he might have said some of this, but all his English had fled. Instead, he spit, once, and threw the cullet in his hand careening at a trash can. With its single accusatory clang, he ran away, leaving Checker silent and naked in the doorway, gazing down at his shoes. The glob of saliva had landed on the toe of his famous Converse All Stars, and Checker watched the spit drizzle down the rubber, looking deceptively harmless. Just water. Just your friend. Just his wife. Just disdain. What you are. Just your life. Funny. It would make a good song.

  Checker returned to the naked woman on the dirty sleeping bag before the fire, surrounded by broken glass and rumpled clothes. The scene suddenly seemed sordid, and his desire for Syria lost its exaltation. So you scored again, didn’t you? You just have to have everything, don’t you? You can’t let one woman go, let someone else have something you don’t. Syria says the others are jealous, but you’re the worst of the lot, aren’t you? You not only want everything, you go out and get it. You think you own the whole world—the bridges, the dryers, the pools, the full length of 125th. You’re a glutton; you stuff down your neighborhood, you eat people whole. You see this woman and she’s wicked sharp and you have to fuck her, don’t you? No matter what the consequences, whose she is, whom it hurts. You betray the one boy who was loyal to you, and wasn’t that part of the pleasure? Admit it: didn’t you like stealing her away?

  Checker slipped on his jeans and the remains of his T-shirt. He had to leave. With Syria still asleep and the night holding dark, he let himself out of Vesuvius, knowing full well that wanting to leave was a far cry from wanting to arrive somewhere else.

  Maybe it was the bicycle that did it. Zefal was gone. Checker ran frantically up and down the alley, calling as if she would answer, until he remembered that in his haste he’d only locked her to herself, not to a pole, as he usually did—one more betrayal. He’d traded her for a woman who wasn’t even his, for a fuck. How many times had he dreamed this at night, waking up sweating in the favorite shirts, Zefal lost or stolen or forgotten, the chases, the searches, the showdowns with vandals and thieves. She was innocent! He was suspect, he knew, an owner, a user, a taker, but Zefal did nothing but give and glide and accept punishment and wait patiently at parking signs for hours. He knew he didn’t grease her or repack her bearings often enough, but she bore up, a laborer, heedlessly loyal—Oh, you believe in loyalty, all right—other people’s loyalty to you.

  It was a ludicrously beautiful early morning. Gray tinged one horizon; otherwise the sky was a searing midnight blue, with stars, no moon. As Checker fled toward the river, images reached at him like hands; the wind picked at his clothes. Slow down. Stop, see, red. Single colors found him, pretty gray concrete, patches of sky. Checker walked faster, almost running. Still, the pictures were clear and finished, round, perfect. Overhead, spotlights swept wanly in the distance, five of them, arcing apart, joining together, circling like ghostly night birds. There, in the window, a ten-year-old girl was up in her bedroom, five in the morning, why? She was dark and concentrated, picking out the tune to “Eleanor Rigby” on a toy xylophone. The notes came at him like arrows. She looked up and straight into his eyes; he smiled, she didn’t, as if she knew something. She shook her head. Was he dreaming? She looked just the way he imagined Syria as a child—long, dark hair, underweight and overserious; easily hurt and quiet, except when you crossed her. Then she would bite and tear your hair. The girl went back to her xylophone, intent, making a mistake, trying the line again. She looked disappointed in him. All the lonely people—where do they all come from? All the lonely people—where do—Again.

  On, under the accessway to the bridge, four young men sang the Beach Boys, barbershop. They were good, and the archway amplified their voices. Plaintive, serenading him, sirens, tempting him to stay and listen. What is this? Astoria was conspiring. Pulling out all the stops. Checker lunged up the stairs, but not without thinking, uselessly, that “A Cappella in the Underpass” was a great title for a song.

  No good. It won’t work. Sly, the colors, and the girl, she was genius, Syria in disguise—that woman follows me, she’s a witch, I’ve known that from the beginning. She put something in that antiseptic the first night and uses it to track me. But I’m tired of magic, I won’t be magic or know yours. Leave me alone. Still, that song title, that was a nice touch. Even now I can admire you for trying.

  Up on the ramp the sound of traffic blotted out the Beach Boys, and Checker padded the slope softly. The bridge was asleep, her lights out, and he didn’t want to wake her—the Triborough was the worst, and she wouldn’t like this, not one bit. She’d call him a heretic, she’d tell him it was a travesty, but then the Triborough was naïve, an optimist, a child of the New Deal, broken in with F.D.R. cutting her ribbon, a liberal Democrat for a father. She flew flags on the Fourth of July and strung lights over the river nights as if it were always Christmas. A little much. And, he thought more softly, maybe she was too bouncy, not that bright; but he didn’t want to hurt her. Sssh. He didn’t want her to see.

  Mid-spa
n her main cables draped graciously low, as if leaning down to give him a leg up—she’d be so furious later for having helped him. The cable was a full foot or so in circumference, easy to walk; holding the smaller cables on either side, he ascended the first length simply, as he’d seen painters and repairmen mount her before. The sound of traffic muted. It was windy up here. Farther up, the span steepened, and Checker had to stoop and grasp the cables more tightly; two-thirds of the way up, he slipped on the dewy blue-gray paint. He crouched for a moment, panting, clutching at the bridge like a small boy at his mother’s skirt. Gosh, he almost fell! Checker shook his head and laughed, his eyes tearing in the wind. Man, whatever you may say of it, don’t tell me that life isn’t intrinsically ridiculous.

  He stopped just shy of the top, which was too close to the shore of Wards Island; he was disappointed not to finish at her very tip, at the red light, somehow more climactic. But Checker had discarded magic and allowed this to mean nothing. This is where the lights are out. Checker refused to acknowledge the sign.

  Still, he took a minute, standing as much as possible, breathing, because he liked to do that, certainly not because he needed to now. He’d never seen this view before. Manhattan’s lights were out, too, also disappointing—he’d have preferred that Citicorp be shafting its triangular spot and the Chrysler scalloping behind it, maybe the Empire State lit a sedate blue and white, and a helicopter or two? You are a trivial person, decorative. I don’t think you should be thinking about helicopters.

  Still, Checker turned to the other horizon, where the sun was just beginning to rise over Con Edison. Forgetting where he was and what he was doing, Checker surveyed down the park fondly: the strip quiet for once, the ginkgoes leafy and wafting, the pool a brilliant baby blue. Surprisingly, he thought he could make out the tiny squares of amps and the circles of his drum set still on the hillside—why hadn’t they taken the equipment to Plato’s? It could be stolen, and dew was bad for the finish of the Leedys, the shells were wood and the varnish might bubble—

  Your friends are objects.

  Weaving as the wind whipped the tatters of his T-shirt, Checker felt suddenly tired. He crumbled into the familiar exhaustion. Too Much Trouble. Everything. Quickly the tiredness swallowed the sunrise, the ginkgoes, the tugging of the traps below. His body went limp. And my bicycle is stolen. Well, that’s it, I’m through. Being “jacked” all the time, do you know how much energy that takes? I’ve tried and it’s too much. I’m not who you think at all. But that’s a very fine part, and I do hope you find someone up to the role.

  The cable foreshortened and his stomach churned. The red bulb just up from his perch blinked hypnotically, the kind of light that sets off epileptic fits. Though the sky was getting brighter, to Checker the vista grew increasingly dim. His thoughts fragmented and strayed, as if themselves trying to get away from him, rats fleeing a sinking ship. As the birds began to chirp maniacally in the park, Checker could hear only his heart pounding in his inner ear. Colors darkened. The river below was flat and inky, motionless, like tar. Earlier, Vesuvius had bleached to white; now one by one the objects around him, the Leedys, the trucks on the bridge, also disappeared, but this time the world contracted. Walls rose and closed around him, until he was in a tiny closet by himself that was finally getting too small for his own wide shoulders; as its corners collapsed into themselves Checker dove blindly forward, thinking, More greediness, because if you had to have everything, you had to have nothing, too.

  Zefal is actually one of the main characters

  22 / A Little Help from My Friends

  Propped by the river, Zefal squared her handlebars like shoulders, their tape palmed through from so many miles. Graying, with every reason to retire, she still put in a full day’s work. She was losing her teeth, and her tires were bald. Her brake shoes were worn like the heels of old boots, her cables were stretched, her finish was peeling. She was losing her bearings. So why did she seem so intimidating? Why did Caldwell stand a respectful three feet away, wanting to apologize for the rough trip over? She didn’t like being carried with the Kryptonite looped through her tire. It was like being handcuffed. And she wouldn’t talk to these people. Where was Checker? Who was that lady in the studio? Who are these boys?

  “It’s a piece of junk, actually,” said Caldwell, stalling. “I don’t understand why he’s so attached to it.”

  “But he is attached to it,” Eaton observed. “That’s all that matters.”

  “Right,” said Caldwell without enthusiasm. “Well, what do we do? Slash the tires and shit?”

  “Slash the tires? Why don’t we just send it to its room?”

  “It’s metal, Eat. I can’t twist it into pretzels with my bare hands.”

  “Come, boys,” Eaton chided, “let’s be a little resourceful.” Eaton leaned over the rail and scanned the rocks by the river: a grocery cart, a muffler, an old TV…There. “Just what the doctor ordered,” said Eaton, climbing down, to return dragging something behind him. “Give me a hand, J.K.”

  “A parking meter? What for?”

  “For a piggy bank, what do you think?”

  J.K. lifted the meter over the rail and hefted it up and down. It was heavy.

  Again they approached the bicycle, until Howard, who had been keeping his distance perched on the rail, slipped off and walked none too steadily to stand between the three of them and the bike. “Guys,” Howard quavered, “maybe this isn’t a good idea.”

  “You got a better one?”

  “Yeah, just—maybe we should take it back. I’ll take it back. You can finish packing up and take the equipment to Plato’s. And we could all get some sleep. I mean, let’s not be hasty.”

  Howard hadn’t quite understood what they were planning until he saw the meter. It was a big brutish thing, covered with mud. Its piping was four times as thick as Zefal’s—no contest. Howard could sense the bicycle shiver behind him. Howard and Charlie had been together only for a few months, so he had the same sober awe for Checker and Zefal’s relationship as for his grandparents’ marriage. Nine years!

  “You want to go beddy-bye, Howard, go ahead,” said Eaton. “As for hasty, I’d say this is positively overdue.”

  “Well, maybe this thing with Check and Syria isn’t the way it looks—”

  J.K. guffawed. “Right, he wasn’t really fucking her, it just seem that way.”

  “Well, Check may be guilty, but the bicycle never did anything!”

  “Getting a little off the beam, Howard,” said Caldwell. “Of course it’s never done anything. It’s a machine.”

  “It isn’t,” said Howard staunchly. “Check says—”

  “Spare me—”

  “—that anything you care about is alive.”

  “Better shut your eyes and put your hands over your ears, then,” said Eaton. “Its little screams and big sad eyes might be hard for you to take.”

  Howard backed up and spread his arms over the bike. “Go home.”

  “How, you’re overtired.”

  “You touch her over my dead body,” said Howard.

  Caldwell approached the manager and tentatively tried to pull him off the bike. Howard held fast. “The kid’s cracked his nut, Big J. Give me a hand, would you?”

  “Get away!” shouted Howard, but the two guitarists pried his fingers from the handlebars; J.K. held the frame and Caldwell pinned Howard’s arms behind his back, dragging him away from Zefal as he continued to struggle.

  Handing the meter over to Eaton, J.K. was working furiously to concoct a version of this scene that kept it in the realm of happy-go-lucky pranksterism. “Nobody’s put in a quarter, Eat,” he said boisterously. “This bike impounded.” They were just getting their kicks, boys being boys, sowing wild oats—J.K. slathered cliché on cliché like layers of plaster, trying desperately to shape this event into a practical joke. It was practical, all right; it just wasn’t a joke.

  With impressive exertion for someone so slim, Eaton lifted the meter o
ver his head and brought its shank lunging toward the main crossbar of Zefal’s frame.

  Howard’s scream echoed over the crunch of 5-3-1 tubing. Zefal crumpled to her knees, her crossbar V-shaped, the meter in its crotch. Copper paint flaked through the breeze.

  In a way, it was merciful. Howard went limp. Caldwell let him go. With an ache in his throat, Caldwell stood over the crippled machine. His eyes heated and reddened, and he was so angry, so disgusted by his own sentimentality, over an object and over a friend who thought he was so hot and was really an asshole, that he picked the meter up himself and came down with a vengeance on the handlebars until they pointed the wrong way, like elbows breaking backward. He attacked the front wheel, though it took work—the alloy rim had survived years of New York potholes, and after two good blows remained staunchly true.

  Finally he flipped the bike over to expose the derailleur, and brought the meter head down directly on the mechanism with unnecessary force. The derailleur is a delicate part of a bicycle, in need of very fine tuning, for even an eighth of an inch off and the derailleur will actually switch into the back spokes, to be mangled by the turning of the wheel. Yes, just a little out of adjustment a derailleur will self-destruct.

  “That enough, Sweets,” said J.K. quietly, not doing a good job at all of seeing this as boyish, as clichéd, as anything short of dreadful. Caldwell stood over the bike, panting. J.K. picked up Zefal’s carcass and heaved her over the rail to the rocks below. She clattered, and lay still.

  As J.K. picked up the stray nuts and bolts and the freewheel on the sidewalk and tossed them after the bike, Eaton suggested they return to their equipment over the hill. Leaving Howard sniveling on the rail, the three hiked to where Carl was still patiently standing guard. Caldwell and J.K. had assumed Eaton was anxious to get the amps and guitars back to Plato’s and away from dew, but it seems as far as Eaton Striker was concerned, the morning was new. If this was the time to stick it to the inanimates, a particular collection had it coming.