Wild Awake

next to the house with a few bedraggled clumps of those pink and purple flowers they sell outside the hardware store for ninety-nine cents—pansies or posies or something like that. It looks like an animal’s been digging them up.
    Perhaps, I think to myself, a skunk.
    Instead of going up the stairs and through the front door, Skunk goes down a concrete walkway along the side of the house. A motion-sensitive light comes on a few seconds later, and I see old cigarette butts in the gravel on the side of the path. I’m half expecting to see three or four more Skunk lookalikes hanging out in the backyard, drinking Jack Daniels while their pet pit bulls growl and strain against their chains.
    We come around to the back of the house, where there’s a small concrete courtyard with a couple of rusting chairs, a toolshed, and some potted plants. There are no pit bulls—at least, none outside. His meathead friends must all be at the Pax Satanica show. The house backs out onto a gravel alleyway with chain-link fences smothered in blackberry canes. There’s an old brown van parked behind the house, next to the garbage and recycle bins. Skunk takes out his keys and unlocks a sliding glass door. I’m all set to refuse to come into his creepy rape-hole, but he doesn’t invite me in.
    “I’ll be right out.”
    He slides the door open and goes inside, coming out a moment later with a cardboard box. He puts the box on the ground.
    “Can I see your bike?”
    I hand over my bicycle. He flips it over as if it weighs nothing and pulls up the lever to release the back tire. I watch incredulously. Skunk’s hands look like they were made to demolish buildings, not disassemble delicate bicycle parts with the grace and fluidity of a heart surgeon.
    “You a bike mechanic?”
    “Nah.”
    He roots around in the cardboard box, pulls out a little plastic hook, and pries the tire off the metal rim. It’s unnerving and a little gruesome, like watching someone skin a rabbit. I wince when he reaches under the tire and pulls out the rubber tube like a long black piece of intestine. He holds it out to me.
    “You want to take this home and patch it?”
    “Uh, sure.” I take the tube.
    “It’s not a big tear. Should patch up just fine.”
    “Yeah.”
    Now I’m the one being monosyllabic. I stuff the damaged tube into my pocket.
    He reaches into his box again and pulls out a new tube. He uncoils it and sticks the plastic stem through the stem-hole in the tire, then wraps the tube the rest of the way around the rim. He picks up the plastic hook again and starts forcing the edge of the tire back onto the rim with the new tube nesting inside it. His motions are so quick and smooth you can tell he doesn’t need to think about it at all. He looks like one of those Japanese chefs you can watch making sushi rolls through the glass window at Miyako on West Fourth, who pat down the rice, lay down avocado and crabmeat, roll it into a cylinder, and chop all in one seamless motion.
    In ten seconds Skunk has the tire back on the wheel and is filling it with air from a wheezing hand pump. He pops the wheel back onto the bike, locks down the lever, flips the bike upright, and hands it to me without saying a word.
    “Thanks for the fix,” I say.
    He nods.
    A breeze blows through the courtyard, and I shiver. Time to be going home. But just when I’m about to say so, Bicycle Boy talks to me.
    “Where’s your helmet?”
    I can’t help it. I am an Eyebrow Person from a tribe of Eyebrow People; I raise my eyebrows. “You smoke cigarettes and you’re asking me where my helmet is?”
    He shrugs. “People drive like jerks.”
    “I’ll be fine.”
    I squeeze the brake levers on my bike and glance toward the walkway. Suddenly it feels very, very late.
    “I should get home. Thanks for helping.”
    He nods again. I stand there for a second to see if he has anything else to say. He doesn’t.
    “All right. Peace, man.”
    I turn my bike around and wheel it toward the side alley. The tires feel firm and healthy. My bike feels whole and reassuring, back to its old reliable self. Even though I’m worn out, I’m kinda looking forward to the ride home.
    “Hey.”
    I stop and turn my head. For a second, I think he’s going to ask for my number, but instead he takes something out of the cardboard box and tosses it to me. I catch it. It’s a little blinker light. When I press the button, its white LEDs start to flash on and off.
    “Thanks.”
    I snap