to before—blocks and blocks of buildings like monoliths or ancient tombs, so quiet that speaking feels forbidden even though it isn’t; even though it can’t be. I bike on the left side of the street, ready to swoop back over the line if a car comes, but none do. How silly to have a line there at all, I think, delighted, pedaling faster and faster. The city at night is a playground, and we are a pack of kids riding its swings upside down.
As the warehouses give way to residential streets, I cut through the fleet of cyclists to the front of the pack. Red BMX and Purple Mongoose and I keep pace with one another, our bikes humming beneath us like generators. I’ve lost track of Skunk again, but it hardly matters. At this speed, there’s no way we could talk, no way to do anything but watch the houses and trees and bus stops flash past like frames in a stop-motion movie. The Granville Street Bridge is a roller-coaster. We fly over it in a blur of metal and blinking lights and veer left as a single body.
Guys in tight jeans wave and whoop for us as we thunder down the hill toward English Bay. Music pounds inside the nightclubs on Davie Street, and the smell of beer and salt water makes even the air seem drunk. On the water, I can see Sukey’s ships, dark cities of their own. They are objects I will never touch, places I will never stand, sleeping giants that would not be disturbed even if all the shimmering lights and pretty buildings on land crumbled and fell down. Maybe we all need ships to hold our dreams, to be bigger and steadier than we ever could be, and to guard the mystery when we cannot, to keep it safe even when we have lost everything.
I keep my eyes on them as long as I can, falling behind the others as we cruise along the sea wall to the dark, forested path that borders Stanley Park. I startle when Skunk rides up beside me. I’d fallen so deep in thought I’d practically forgotten he was here.
“How’s the bike feel?”
“Oh. You know. Like a total death trap.”
I smile at him so he knows I’m kidding.
“I ant to ear oo ay um time,” shouts Skunk, scraps of his words torn away by the wind. I angle my bike closer to him.
“WHAT?”
“I want to hear you play sometime.”
I nod to show I’ve understood him.
“Make you a deal,” I shout.
“Another one?”
“Uh-huh.”
“I want to hear you too.”
He opens his mouth to protest, but I curl over my handlebars and scream, “Race you!”
Before he can answer, I’ve shot ten feet ahead of him, the bike path melting into mercury beneath my tires. Up ahead where the seawall curves, a bronze sculpture shines brightly in the moonlight. I blast toward it.
When I’m halfway there, a huge black shape streaks past me.
It’s Skunk. Cutting through the night like a sailboat. Flying down the path as if he weighed nothing at all.
I tip my face into the wind and charge after him, leaving the ships far behind. I know they will be there, waiting. But as my bicycle carries me deeper into the forest, it feels like I’m carrying them with me too.
chapter twenty-three
It starts raining after we cross the Lions Gate Bridge back into Stanley Park. Soon, it’s a full-on downpour. The pack dwindles as people peel off in various directions to ride home. Red BMX and Purple Mongoose evaporate into the night somewhere around Denman Street, and by the time we hit Granville, it’s just me and Skunk. The nightclubs have emptied out and the heat lamps have been pulled inside. Granville Street is empty except for cop cars and the leftover drunks and homeless people shouting at each other on the sidewalk. My clothes are soaking wet and suctioned to my skin, and my tires are slick. We bike slowly, floating over the shining pavement.
“You headed home?” says Skunk.
“I guess I should.”
The rain’s soft music has lulled me into a trance, and I hadn’t even realized we’d drifted past Burrard Street, where I should have turned off for the bridge.
“You left your shopping bags in the shed this afternoon,” he says.
“Perfect. I’ll come get them.”
As we coast through the deepening puddles, listening to the muffled sound our tires make slashing through the water, I take another shot at digging for clams.
“So why don’t you smoke pot?” I ask.
Skunk wipes