Wild Awake

Maybe there are secret cameras hidden in their clinking, clanking loads.
    “We can’t stay here,” says Skunk. “We have to get off the street. Can you ride on my handlebars?”
    Skunk’s bicycle is glowing like Christmas lights. It looks magical, sleek, like a time machine. It’s almost too beautiful to touch.
    “Can you do it?” pleads Skunk. “Here, put your hand on my shoulder.”
    He lifts me onto his handlebars and climbs on behind me. The metal is lightning-cool under my thighs. I lean back and Skunk puts his arms around me. He grabs the handlebars and pushes off with his foot. Soon we’re zigzagging through the streets in a convoluted route of Skunk’s own devising. We cut through alleys, roll across construction sites, and slip through the vast hollow silence of a parking garage. I understand without asking that what Skunk is doing is throwing the secret agents off our trail. Nobody could follow us in a car, not with the shortcuts he’s taking. They’d have to be on bicycles, and we haven’t seen another bicycle since we started.
    As we jag through the city, I have the unsettling sensation of being caught in a dream, an imaginary world Skunk and I have silently agreed to call real. The buildings and lampposts and street signs reel past in a seasick parade, and I’m not sure if we’re escaping something anymore or just clinging together while we drown.
    “Love-bison,” I say, but now it sounds desperate, like a thing you scream before you both burst into flames.
    When we roll to a stop outside a twenty-four-hour diner, Skunk’s T-shirt is soaked in sweat.
    “Wait here,” he pants, clutching the brakes while I jump off.
    He whips around the corner and reappears a minute later, on foot. His forehead is beaded with sweat, and his hands are shaking from squeezing the handlebars so tight.
    “I locked it up in front of an apartment building,” he says by way of explanation. “Come on. Let’s go inside.”
    We go into the diner and take the booth at very back, next to the bathrooms, far away from the door. We both squeeze into the same side of the booth. Skunk’s body is damp and hot like a rain forest. He scans the diner.
    “I think we’re okay here,” he says, but his eyes keep checking and checking.
    The waitress comes and slaps menus down on our table. Skunk’s too distracted to order. I sit up and take charge.
    “We need six grilled-cheese sandwiches and a gallon of coffee.”
    She blinks.
    “Coffee comes only in mugs this size. But you get a free refill.”
    I flutter my hand. “Do what you can.”
    When the waitress goes away, Skunk turns to me.
    “Kiri.”
    “Mm-hmm.”
    “Now that it’s safe to talk, you can tell me. Who was the man in the car?” His brown eyes are huge with concern. It occurs to me, suddenly, what a strange coincidence it is that Skunk was out for a bike ride at the same time I was swimming through the strange leather-and-glass aquarium of Motorcycle Man’s car. Our connection must run deeper than I ever imagined; Skunk must have sensed that something was afoot.
    This being said, my memory of the preceding hours is becoming more and more slippery. I peer into Skunk’s eyes, which are glowing like little planets.
    “I don’t remember.”
    Skunk’s smoking hand keeps moving to his cigarette pocket and back to the table, as if it keeps sneaking away on him and he has to constantly herd it back. His eyes strain into mine, as if he thinks if he looks hard enough he’ll be able to see the memories I can’t piece together. “Try, Kiri. Try. What did he say to you? What did he want?”
    Before I have the chance to answer, the waitress comes carrying six plates of grilled-cheese sandwiches and two cups of coffee, which she unloads onto the table. Each sandwich comes with a bright green pickle. I pick one up and eat it. Its firm, cool pickle bones snap in my mouth like a frog’s. My thoughts are woozy and colorful. It’s like being at a carnival. Each time Skunk asks a question, I cast my little plastic fishing rod and reel in a different prize. I sit up suddenly, remembering something.
    “Four thirty-three,” I say to Skunk. “That’s the message he gave me.”
    “Four thirty-three.”
    Our eyes both snap to the greasy white clock on the diner wall. It’s 4:32. Just when the minute hand slides forward, we hear the scream of police sirens on the street outside the diner. We hold our breath as the sound crescendos to a brain-cracking whine that