But look, the light was green and the cars were moving and the bikers were off like shrapnel. Timber eased off the curb and, wobbling slightly, made his way forward. He was halfway to work. The morning sun shone down palely from above. A few magpies went flapping across the sky.
What would Neil be doing, right now, at school? Acing a test. Or gazing out the window of his classroom and thinking suddenly and for reasons beyond him, cosmic reasons, of his dad. Timber figured he would call Neil from wherever he ended up the following evening, the first stop on the Tour for the Cure — Quebec, maybe, if he could make it that far — and surprise him. Neil would get off the phone and tell his mother, Dad's biking across the country! And The Ex-Wife, in the den of Barry Parker's yuppie condominium, everything monochrome and sterile, would look at Neil radiating pride and affection, and all The Ex-Wife could say would be, Wow. Lost in this fantasy, Timber went pedalling through a yellow light, and a car turning left had to swerve not to hit him. Timber waved: Wopes!
Safely on the other side of the intersection, Timber thought again of Janet, shut away in an office just like his, alone at her computer. Even before knowing about the Tour for the Cure, before Timber had sent her a PDF downloaded from MapQuest with his route plotted out and a spreadsheet of potential sponsors, she had commended him as a real hero — but Janet threw that word around a tad too liberally. She said that the snares of Operation Stoplight were all heroes. He wanted to believe her. They were in this together, this business of busting sickos, and also maybe Timber was in love with Janet a little bit.
Was Timber a coward? He had been a single man for only eight months. Dating so early would be a mistake, said the advice column in the local paper, "Ask a Woman," which The Ex-Wife herself penned and had been the reason they'd met in the first place, ten years prior, after Timber had emailed her asking why no one dates good guys any more and she had — perhaps rather unprofessionally, in hindsight — written back to suggest going for coffee, claiming to be tired of dating bad boys and wanting to settle down. Coffee!
Timber had not been able to drink coffee since the divorce, but he had emailed "Ask a Woman" from a phony address, and "Ask a Woman" had published the letter with the suggestion of waiting a bit longer before jumping back into the throes of courtship. But hadn't The Ex-Wife moved on even more quickly, bonking Mr. Barry Parker while still married? Her moving on had been pre-emptive. If computers could reduce everything to zeros and ones, why wasn't life so easy? Zero, zero, one, zero, one, one: plug something in, get something out, an answer, simple. Timber slowed at a Stop sign, sat there contemplating this while a pickup went by in front of him, the goateed driver inexplicably giving him the finger.
Well, thought Timber as he pushed off, maybe when he came back, victorious, he could track Janet down — like, physically. He'd find her lP address somehow and locate her with a blip on a GPS that meant: Janet. He would go to where the blip was and fling the door to her office open and announce, I'm back! Oh, god, she would say and she would be beautiful, not too thin, healthy, with her T-shirt bulging slightly where her bra strap carved a channel through the skin of her back, and she would tell him, I've been watching you on TV. Timber would shrug: It was nothing for a father who loved his son. Janet would say, Now everyone knows what a hero you are, and Timber would shrug again. They would lock eyes and Timber would take Janet in his arms and hold her close: Hello, Janet, at last. Or, better: Move into my duplex with me, Janet, let's make a life together, I love you.
Or maybe he could just call her sometime. Either way.
Regardless, here Timber felt a longing to be — what? Someone else. Someone who shone beyond the Internet, in the real world. Who was that famous hero-slash-romantic, that Spaniard? Don Quixote? Yes, no, but Don Quixote was someone else entirely, wasn't he, and goddammit wasn't Timber always getting these things wrong, people, history, facts, idioms, things that every other human being in the universe seemed to know innately and which time and time again caused him to hang his head in shame. Timber pedalled faster, harder, pumping his legs and whizzing through the rush-hour streets at a speed that seemed breakneck.
He should have called her before, sometime — Janet. There had been a chance once, when she had hinted at wanting to hear his voice and messenged him her cell number. But Timber said maybe that wasn't such a good idea. Something about professionalism or something. Oh, but wasn't that just his way, Timber thought as he signalled and made the turnoff toward Frog Hill, tiptoeing through life. When Neil had been sick The Ex-Wife had remained a pillar of strength, rational, while Timber trembled and wept nightly in the kitchen, collected Neil's hair in Ziplocs as it fell out in clumps around the house.
Ahead loomed Frog Hill, steep. By now Timber's legs were pumping, the wheels turned, the bike creaked and rattled, the sky was blue, the sun shone down. He wasn't pedalling: he was stomping his feet. Starting tomorrow, he was going to ride his bike across the country. TV stations would get word of his plan and follow him along and at the end of every day they'd ask, Wow, how do you keep going? and Timber would look right into the camera, imagine all those people at home waiting for him to give their lives meaning or direction or something, anything — and Neil, held captive in the condominium of Mr. Barry Parker, his curly little head silhouetted against the glow of Parker's hi-def Tv, knowing that his dad was looking at him, that this was all for him — and Timber would shake his head slowly. Keep going? he would scoff and tell the world about Neil, about what a trooper his son had been, how he was the real hero. Not Timber. Timber was just doing what any good, loving dad would do.
As he crested the hill Timber wanted Neil to know that everything was for him: the magpie helmet, the cycling, the purging of sickos, maybe bringing lovely, sweet, smart, generous and voluptuous Janet into the family but not as a replacement mother, regardless of how vastly superior she was to the original in every way. Even so, Janet would be good about it. She would be like a nice aunt whom Neil would grow to love and she and Timber would only bonk when Neil was at his mom's — kids don't need to hear that — and their bonking would be tender and soft and Janet would be kind even if Timber sploodged early on her tummy. And he'd never look at Barely Legals again.
There had been nothing Timber could do while Neil shuttled bravely in and out of the hospital; he could only watch as every week the doctors pumped his son full of chemicals to burn away the black dregs of cancer in his body. But that was then! Here he was sailing down Frog Hill with the breeze blasting his face, hair rippling, on his way to what he knew would be one last, final question typed and sent to Ted Givens, a question that suddenly struck him as delightfully ironic after the number of times he had answered it himself: What are you wearing today? And then he would forward this information to the office of Operation Stoplight, who would inform their squad to look out for a middle-aged man in a black turtleneck and Dockers, or whatever, and when the fellow came sauntering into the Mr. Submarine they would nab him, pin him down at gunpoint, and just like that the world would be a better place.
And tomorrow! Tomorrow would be the beginning of something special — a man and his bicycle, nothing flashy, just pure love and honour and dedication. Timber would even wear a Lance Armstrong bracelet. The Neil Kentridge XCanada Tour for the Cure, Operation Stoplight, Janet, they all became a harmonized hum in his brain, and thinking of these three very good things Timber spun his pedals backwards so something down there made that whizzing noise he enjoyed so much, and the pavement of Frog Hill zoomed by smooth and grey-black below, and gravity pulled him down, down, now at the bottom and the road starting to even out, flattening, and the sky above was a blue sheet slung arcing across the heavens.