Haygood’s shirt was off, his jeans zipper not done up all the way. His lips looked swollen. He peered suspiciously at Gilla. “Why?” he asked Roger. “What’s she doing?”
Patricia was still wriggling her dress down over her hips. Her hair was a mess. “Yeah,” she said to Roger, “what’s the big problem? You didn’t hurt her, did you?” She turned to Gilla, put a hand on her scaly left foreshoulder. “You okay, girl?”
What in the world was going on? Why weren’t they scared? “Uh,” replied Gilla. “I dunno. How do I look?”
Patricia frowned. “Same as ever,” she said, just as Kashy and Foster burst into the room.
“We heard yelling,” Kashy said, panting. “What’s up? Roger, you been bugging Gilla again?”
Foster took Gilla’s paw. “Did he trick you into the closet with him?”
“Why’s everyone tripping?” Roger was nearly screeching. “Can’t you see? She’s some kind of dragon, or something!”
That was the last straw. Gilla started to laugh. Great belly laughs that started from her middle and came guffawing through her snout. Good thing there was no fire this time, cause Gilla didn’t know if she could have stopped it. She laughed so hard that the cherry pit she’d swallowed came back up. “Urp,” she said, spitting it into her hand. Her hand. She was back to normal now.
She grinned at Roger. He goggled. “How’d you do that?” he demanded.
Gilla ignored him. Her schoolmates had started coming into the room from all over the house to see what the racket was. “Yeah, he tricked me,” Gilla said, so they could all hear. “Roger tricked me into the closet, and then he stuck his hand down my bra.”
“What a creep,” muttered Clarissa’s boyfriend Jim.
Foster stepped up to Roger, glaring. “What is your problem, man?” Roger stuck his chest out and tried to glare back, but he couldn’t meet Foster’s eyes. He kept sneaking nervous peeks around Foster at Gilla.
Clarissa snickered at Gilla. “So what’s the big deal? You do it with him all the time, anyway.”
Oh, enough of this ill-favoured chit. Weirdly, the voice felt like it was coming from Gilla’s palm now. The hand where she held the cherry pit. But it still sounded and felt like her own thoughts. Gilla stalked over to Clarissa. “You don’t believe that Roger attacked me?”
Clarissa made a face of disgust. “I believe that you’re so fat and ugly that you’ll go with anybody, ’cause nobody would have you.”
“That’s dumb,” said Kashy. “How could she go with anybody, if nobody would have her?”
“I’ll have her,” said Foster. He looked shyly at Gilla. Then his face flushed. “I mean, I’d like, I mean…” No one could hear the end of the sentence, because they were laughing so hard. Except Roger, Karl and Haygood.
Gilla put her arms around Foster, afraid still that she’d misunderstood. But he hugged back, hard. Gilla felt all warm. Foster was such a goof. “Clarissa,” said Gilla, “if something bad ever happens to you and nobody will believe your side of the story, you can talk to me. Because I know what it’s like.”
Clarissa reddened. Roger swore and stomped out of the room. Haygood and Karl followed him.
Gilla regarded the cherry pit in the palm of her hand. Considered. Then she put it in her mouth again and swallowed it down.
“Why’d you do that?” Foster asked.
“Just felt like it.”
“A tree’ll grow inside you,” he teased.
Gilla chuckled. “I wish. Hey, I never did get a real Postman message.” She nodded towards the closet. “D’you wanna?”
Foster ducked his head, took her hand. “Yeah.”
Gilla led the way, grinning.
They came back from the ride
With the lady inside,
And a smile on the face of the tiger.
15
Of course, bicycles aren’t unnatural creatures. And nor are paper clips. So what, in this story by master short-story writer AVRAM DAVIDSON, do two bike-shop owners have to be afraid of?
WHEN THE MAN CAME IN TO THE F & O BIKE SHOP, Oscar greeted him with a hearty “Hi, there!” Then, as he looked closer at the middle-aged visitor with the eyeglasses and business suit, his forehead creased and he began to snap his thick fingers.
“Oh, say, I know you,” he muttered. “Mr.—um—name’s on the tip of my tongue, doggone it…” Oscar was a barrel-chested fellow. He had orange hair.
“Why, sure you do,” the man said. There was a Lion’s emblem in his lapel. “Remember, you sold me a girl’s bicycle with gears, for my daughter? We got to talking about that red French racing bike your partner was working on—”
Oscar slapped his big hand down on the cash register. He raised his head and rolled his eyes up. “Mr. Whatney!” Mr. Whatney beamed. “Oh, sure. Gee, how could I forget? And we went across the street afterward and had a couple a’ beers. Well, how you been, Mr. Whatney? I guess the bike—it was an English model, wasn’t it? Yeah. It must of given satisfaction or you would of been back, huh?”
Mr. Whatney said the bicycle was fine, just fine. Then he said, “I understand there’s been a change, though. You’re all by yourself now. Your partner…”
Oscar looked down, pushed his lower lip out, nodded. “You heard, huh? Ee-up. I’m all by myself now. Over three months now.”
The partnership had come to an end three months ago, but it had been faltering long before then. Ferd liked books, long-playing records, and high-level conversation. Oscar liked beer, bowling, and women. Any women. Anytime.
The shop was located near the park; it did a big trade in renting bicycles to picnickers. If a woman was barely old enough to be called a woman, and not quite old enough to be called an old woman, or if she was anywhere in between, and if she was alone, Oscar would ask, “How does that machine feel to you? All right?”
“Why…I guess so.”
Taking another bicycle, Oscar would say, “Well, I’ll just ride along a little bit with you, to make sure. Be right back, Ferd.” Ferd always nodded gloomily. He knew that Oscar would not be right back. Later, Oscar would say, “Hope you made out in the shop as good as I did in the park.”
“Leaving me all alone here all that time,” Ferd grumbled.
And Oscar usually flared up. “Okay, then, next time you go and leave me stay here. See if I begrudge you a little fun.” But he knew, of course, that Ferd—tall, thin, pop-eyed Ferd—would never go. “Do you good,” Oscar said, slapping his sternum. “Put hair on your chest.”
Ferd muttered that he had all the hair on his chest that he needed. He would glance down covertly at his lower arms; they were thick with long black hair, though his upper arms were slick and white. It was already like that when he was in high school, and some of the others would laugh at him—call him “Ferdie the Birdie.” They knew it bothered him, but they did it anyway. How was it possible—he wondered then; he still did now—for people deliberately to hurt someone else who hadn’t hurt them? How was it possible?
He worried over other things. All the time.
“The Communists—” He shook his head over the newspaper. Oscar offered an advice about the Communists in two short words. Or it might be capital punishment. “Oh, what a terrible thing if an innocent man was to be executed,” Ferd moaned. Oscar said that was the guy’s tough luck.