Good Luck, Fatty

encounter today: Tom, Orv, Duncan and Marie, even the quartet of jerkwad ex-screws who tried to bully me into that junky old Dart (and probably some kind of sick four-on-one wet dream).
    “…if we have to,” Denise finishes saying as I tune back in.
    “Huh?”
    She wags a hand at me. “Oh, nothin’,” she says with a knowing smile. She squints into the crowd. “Isn’t that Tom over there?”
    I hope it’s not, but, then again, I hope it is. Because even though we’re “on a break,” I can’t help fantasizing that Tom is as distraught over our separation as I am. “I think so,” I say, aiming to come off as nonchalant, when all I want to do is fly over to Tom’s side and tackle him, claim his heart and his virginity right here, for all the world to see.
    “I should warm up,” I tell Denise, the starting gun a mere thirty minutes away.
    She gives me a double thumbs-up, cocks her head and winks. “Knock ‘em dead.”
    “If I win, I’m paying off the…car,” I say, still uncomfortable with the idea of naming the Royale’s successor. Getting too familiar with our new modus transportandi (excuse my rudimentary Latin) seems like a quiet betrayal of Gramp and all he stood for, in light of the buying-on-credit situation.
    “Put that right out of your mind,” Denise exhorts, suddenly serious. “Any money you come by is yours. You ain’t in charge of takin’ care of Orv and me, got it?”
    I study the stream of bodies floating by for an opening, then step into the fray. When I’m a few feet away, I call back at Denise, “We’ll see.”
     

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    It takes every bit of willpower I have to steer clear of Tom as the clock ticks down to race time, but I figure the effort is worthwhile. If we were to have a fight, my concentration would be shot for the rest of the day. And as every athlete knows, the mental game is half the battle.
    I retrieve the Schwinn from The Pit, which is now the hub of media activity and Lex Arlington fandom. “Excuse me!” I bark at a truckload of middle-aged ladies jammed around the entryway, salivating over the prospect of a celebrity snapshot or autograph.
    Nobody moves, even an inch.
    “Coming through!” I try yelling.
    Utter inertia.
    I don’t want to do it; I really don’t, but…
    With due care, I bump the Schwinn’s newly inflated front tire against a lady’s stick-figure leg, and she steps aside.
    I bump again, this time into a blue-haired grandma, and—bingo (!)—a path begins to clear. But when I reach the sidewalk, the going doesn’t get much easier, so I bang a right onto a less crowded side street and, finally, mount the Schwinn. It feels good to have the wind at my back, the morning sun gently warming my face, and the feeling that, even if it’s just for today, anything is possible.
    I do a couple of practice loops in and around the back lot of the liquor emporium, dodging entire families encamped with their collapsible chairs and portable grills, some of which (the grills, not the families) are already fired up and oozing the most heavenly charred-flesh smells. (What I wouldn’t give for a slab of beef or half a chicken right now.)
    Which reminds me…
    There’s a nifty little spot just ahead, adjacent to a coned-off fire hydrant and shaded by a mighty oak, where I pull over and unzip the admittedly dorky pouch under the Schwinn’s seat, then tug out an energy bar. As I’m scarfing the thing down, my heart stops and my eyes, quite literally, bug out.
    This. Can’t. Be. Happening.
    Enter Duncan Cotton, a.k.a. my father, whizzing down the street, not riding a bike but piloting some psychotic bird-machine contraption (from those blueprints he was so eager to conceal?) that looks like it crawled out of the rubble of a nineteenth-century circus (seriously, it has wings…and do I see feathers?!). Even worse, my father is sporting a top hat and tails.
    If I had an ice pick, I would gouge my eyes out. Instead, I force them to flap shut and then open again. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.
    The spectacle Duncan is making of himself isn’t the worst of it, though, because as I stare in muted horror, I realize my father is being trailed by a handful of starry-eyed groupies who are feverishly pedaling along behind him like ducklings after a mother duck.
    Unlike Duncan, the members of his entourage don’t appear to be freaks; they more resemble normal folks (children, mostly) who’ve taken leave of their roly-poly marbles.
    “Cotton!” a male voice