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.
“Hand me that tire iron,” Oscar said.
And Ferd worried even about other people’s minor concerns. Like the time the couple came in with the tandem and the baby basket on it. Free air was all they took; then the woman decided to change the diaper and one of the safety pins broke.
“Why are there never any safety pins?” the woman fretted, rummaging here and rummaging there. “There are never any safety pins.”
Ferd made sympathetic noises, went to see if he had any; but, though he was sure there’d been some in the office, he couldn’t find them. So they drove off with one side of the diaper tied in a clumsy knot.
At lunch, Ferd said it was too bad about the safety pins. Oscar dug his teeth into a sandwich, tugged, tore, chewed, swallowed.