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| (Pink bike, by wirelizard via Flickr) |
Paul met Rhonda on one of those early spring mornings when we took our bikes down to the Mounds for a thrill. He and I went to the Mounds because, if you went to the top of the biggest hill, you could gain enough speed coming down to get a fair bit of air at the top of the next. That’s what we were doing when she rode by on her pink monstrosity, put together as a puzzle, stately as you please.
Paul, who could get fascinated enough by one glance at a pretty girl to lose his senses for an entire day, was of course instantly enthralled. “Deacon,” he said, leaning over his bike handles, “I’ve never seen her before. Have you?”
“No,” I said. I was watching her ride away, too, skirt flapping and chrome rims flashing in the early sunlight, but unlike Paul I didn’t think the sight required hanging all over my bike to get a better view.
“You sure?”
“I’m positive. Never seen her before in my life.”
Paul was still watching her. “You should go chase her down. See if she wants to join us.”
“Hmmm,” I said. I wasn’t paying attention, being too busy worrying about what trouble Paul was going to cause
this time. Having responsibility for Paul, I dealt with all the fallout from his wild plans. Catching air at the Mounds was relatively restrained; he’d done plenty of other things, both with and without me behind him complaining that he was always getting us both into trouble I always got blamed for. Like when we “accidentally” stole some guy’s car that looked like Paul’s from the parking lot at Walmart because it was white and expensive. Or like that time he acted just off enough for an entire year that I was starting to worry about drugs or something, but turns out he'd just made amends with the owner of the car (who looked suspiciously like him, down to his lying, entitled, richy-rich inner core) and they’d swapped lives for funsies.
So I should clarify: by “Paul
met Rhonda” I mean “Paul
chased Rhonda,” and by “
Paul chased Rhonda” I really mean “Paul made
me chase Rhonda.” Because things always worked out like that.
“I’m serious, Deacon,” Paul was saying. “I might die if I don’t get to know her. She looks like the kind of person who’s just…
Deacon. Do you want her to get away? Do you want me to live with an eternally shattered heart?”
I almost replied that it was impossible to shatter a heart, even a one as weak as his. But he didn’t like to talk about his health problems when we were out pretending that we were normal people and it wasn’t important that he live to inherit his father’s business empire sometime in the future, so long practice ensured that I didn’t. “Fine,” I said instead. “I’m going. Say thank you.”
We were halfway up the biggest mound. I took off down the slope expecting to catch her in less than two minutes: she wasn’t going that fast, and thanks to Paul’s inability to sit still and not risk his life and limb I could keep up a pretty good pace.
An hour later, I was still following her. Not because I was slacking—I was panting like a Golden Retriever—but because, despite her apparent slowness, she had been pulling ahead of me for the past half an hour. Now she was only a faraway smudge on the horizon ahead, and my head was aching from thirst and the mid-morning heat and all I wanted was to cuss Paul out until he thought deeply about how the words “want” and “need” never appear together in a thesaurus entry.
I gave up. Paul sat up straight when he saw me coming back, but slouched back down again when he saw I was alone. “We’ll come back tomorrow,” he said.
“I’ll bring my fast bike, then.”
And the next morning I did bring my fast bike, one of the models with the skinny wheels that can go several kajillion miles per hour. Paul’s dad had spontaneously gifted it to me right after Paul discovered that biking was his new nirvana. I was afraid to know how much it had cost.
When she rode by, I climbed on and sped down the hill. I followed her for two hours, then—and every moment she pulled a little farther out in front of me. So, once again, I went back to Paul: this time with further complaints.
“You owe me big time,” I said. “I got thrown by a pebble in the road and ended up in a thistle bush.”
Paul pursed his lips. He was bad at most emotions besides manic obsession, sympathy included. “Poor Deacon. I’ll go tomorrow. You rest up.”
I almost argued. Instead, I told myself that Paul could deal with the outcome of his decisions for himself for once. So the next morning, as Rhonda pedaled past us, he was the one who took off.
He was gone for four hours. I was ready to call the hospital. But he did return, eventually, Rhonda riding slightly ahead of him, and when I’d given him the most comprehensive and threatening earful of his life he grinned at me and introduced us. “Deacon, this is Rhonda,” he said. “She says you’re very persistent. Rhonda, this is Deacon—he’s my babysitter, but I prefer to call him my right-hand man.”
“I'm your right
ventricle man,” I said, "and you make my job impossible. How on earth did you catch her?”
Paul’s smile was incandescent. He looked at Rhonda. “We negotiated terms of stopping.”
Rhonda smiled back at him. She seemed fond of Paul for some reason--maybe insanity called to insanity. “Oh yes,” she said. “It’s amazing, really, what happens when you call out to a person when you want them to stop.”
***
Author's Note: this story is based off of the story "Pwyll and the Wondrous Lady" from the Mabinogion. In the story, the king Pwyll goes out to the mounds one night after dinner after being promised that men who go there either see horrible things or a marvelous sight. As he's sitting on the mound with one of his men, he sees a lady ride by on a horse and falls instantly in love. He orders his servant to catch her, but the servant can't catch up with the lady despite the fact that she doesn't seem to be going too fast. So the next day the servant brings a faster horse, but he still can't catch her. But on the third day Pwyll goes after the lady himself, and actually thinks to call out to her to stop--after which she promptly stops, turns around, and tells him that she's been riding to the mounds every day specifically so that he could see her.
What I wanted to do was take this story--which I found fairly hilarious while reading--and bring it into the present day. Thus bikes instead of horses, and Paul (sounds kind of how Pwyll looks like?) is a business guru's son with heart troubles so he needs a minder, and Rhonda being awesome and totally opinionated (which she definitely is in the Mabinogion)...
Source: "Pwyll and the Wondrous Lady."
The Mabinogion, translated by Lady Charlotte Guest (1877).
