Jay rode up to the school on a stark white bicycle. He was wearing white pants. Were it not for the oily, gray bicycle chain and his red sneakers he might have ridden through a deep puddle of bleach on his way to work.
“New bike?” asked Gabe, but he knew better.
“I just bought it. Used. I bought it from a guy on Craigslist,” Jay said.
“No you didn’t,” I said.
“What are you talking about?” Jay asked, almost as if he really didn’t know.
“You stole that bike, Jay,” said Gabe. “Where’d you get that, Houston? Delancy?”
“I told you, I got it from a guy online.”
“The West Side Highway?” I asked. “Near the ferry over by the Lincoln Tunnel?”
Jay was caught. “How could you possibly know that? Were you following me?”
“That’s a ghost bike, Jay. Somebody died there and you stole their memorial and by the looks of it you probably stole somebody else’s chain.”
He had, finding the white-painted chain unusable, and he had ignored the sign on the pole above where the bike was locked that indicated for whom it memorialized.
“Well, it’s not like he was going to be using it anytime soon, then, was he?”
Gabe and I stood in shock.
“You’d better bring that back,” said Gabe. “You can send an e-mail to the ghost bike people saying you saw that it was vandalized.”
“I can’t bring it back now, I have class in fifteen minutes,” Jay whined. “Fine.”
Jay took off. I assumed he would ditch the bike on an empty side street, returning in a few minutes with a coffee in his hand.
This was not an isolated incident. In fact, Jay has a long history of tactlessness.
Gabe and I had been watching Cash Cab – Gabe doesn’t own a television, which incidentally does not affect his ability to watch TV, it means we spend a lot of time at my place – so Gabe and I were watching Cash Cab on Discovery and whose face should appear but Jay’s, along with some chippie, as my mother would say, whom neither Gabe nor I recognized and we easily identified her as not Jay’s wife.
The girl gets in the van and Jay follows and they’re already kissy-face and Jay tells Ben Bailey, the host/driver, to take them to Serendipity, which is a really touristy place in midtown. Ben Bailey says something like “Getting some frozen hot chocolate, ay?” in a really thick Italian accent – frozen hot chocolate is something Serendipity is known for, whatever it is. And then the lights flash, Bailey turns around and says his line, “You guys are in the Cash Cab, a TV game show that takes place right here in my taxi. So what do you say, you want to play?” Far be it from Jay to refuse a chance at free money, even if his infidelity will eventually be broadcast on cable television, so they go for it.
Jay’s answering all the questions, sometimes pretending to consult with the girl, but she’s no help. During the Red Light Challenge he was even able to name five of the six Nobel Prize categories, adding 250 bucks to the pot. To top it all off, he doubled their money at the end of the ride for a total of 1600 dollars by identifying the highest peak in South America.
I couldn’t help but think how ironic it would be if Jay died on his way to return the ghost bike, tragically hit by a Mack truck riding the flat-tired bike he stole from the dead. But he didn’t. He came back in time for first period. Coffee in hand. Should I e-mail the ghost bike foundation? Surely someone else will notice.
