Spokes (5 page)

"Your stroke has power from three o'clock to six o'clock in the circle. Very little from twelve o'clock to three
o'clock, you miss needed part of cycle." Luca had unclipped both feet from his pedals to stand astride the bike; now he pedaled one leg
in the air to demonstrate. "From twelve to three you need more quad." He patted the top of his thigh. "And from five to eight
o'clock you need the scraping."

That term had popped up more than once in Christopher's reading but he still didn't know how to translate it to movement.
"How?

"Like getting mud off shoes." Luca's quick foot drag gave sudden illumination to words Christopher had read without
understanding. "Adds power to upper part of circle too. You try."

One circuit of the parking lot made a believer out of Christopher, though trying to keep both legs synched with extra flex and scrape felt like the
training wheels had just come off. "Again!" Luca urged, and the movements started to make sense. "Again! Is
better!" Christopher's simple bike computer agreed--he was getting another two mph over his usual with this gear and rpm. The
discovery fixed his other problem as well.

"That's going to take some practice," Christopher admitted when he returned to Luca.

"It does. We work on it every winter, hours on the rollers and the diagnostic machine. Have to break old muscle habits. But--"
Luca reached over to give Christopher's thigh a light slap. "--makes big difference, gets higher wattage."

"Sure does." Christopher thought of showing Stu what Luca had just shared. "Can I quote you on this?"

Luca nodded, his spring curls dancing lightly. "Yes. You practice it on way home."

On his way home--! A quick glance at his watch showed Luca was absolutely right. They'd spent all the time he had in this parking lot.
"Yeah, I better go." Though he'd much rather practice his new skill with Luca ahead or behind him on the road.

"Don't be late for work." Luca swung aboard his own bike.

"Right. Hey!" His crusty look was probably diluted to uselessness behind his own dark glasses."How do you know? And how did
you get my number, anyway?"

"Very helpful boss at shop." That grin was pure cat-got-the-cream. "Happy to know Antano-Clark riders get great
service." Luca clipped one shoe into the pedal.

If Christopher were late and explained why, Brendan would probably look the other way. Still best not to press it. "Okay. And thanks.
You're headed back?"

"Not yet. I ride an easy hour, then home and pack. Team goes to Snow Mountain Ranch for high altitude training. Roads are clear, no snow
forecast. Go for three days."

That would give them another three thousand feet of elevation, even on the relative flats from Winter Park to Granby. Christopher had to admire the
training that would give them the sort of boost others had to resort to banned drugs to get. Altitude or EPO? When riders could prove they were at
ski-resort altitudes to explain their performance, no one should ask them for blood samples twice. "Great. Wear a lot of sunscreen, the snow will
focus the sun on you and you'll fry." Christopher recalled what Luca had bought at the store.

"I will. I need another tube when I return. Maybe..." Luca paused. "We ride again after?"

Again! Hell yes! But-- "Your teammates may not be happy with that." Having no illusions about his performance or his luck on
catching Luca on recovery ride days, Christopher also didn't want a charity ride. Luca would ride with him and then go train for real.

"Then maybe... we go to dinner without team?" Why did Luca look braced for a "no"?

Maybe because the shock kept words stuck in Christopher's throat. "Yeah. Sure," he finally managed to stammer out.
"Love to."

"I call you." Luca pushed off from a standing start, gaining speed across the parking lot in a way that could have almost been fleeing.

On his way back to town, Christopher thought half about his pedaling and half about the promised evening with Luca. Their first date. It was a date, right?
Luca did have people to hang out with if that's all he wanted, didn't he? As Christopher surged down the road with his new technique,
he had to correct himself. Dinner would be their second date.

Chapter 5

"Did you eat the batteries or the whole damned rabbit?" Stu draped over his handlebars, head bowed and chest heaving. The bike looked
like the only thing keeping him from toppling over. They rested on the shoulder of Highway 93, where Christopher couldn't decide which view was
prettier: Coal Creek Peak or Stu gasping for air. Christopher wasn't even breathing hard.

"Fricasseed with a side of carrots." The last three days of riding had been spent practicing Luca's instructions; Christopher
had made endless back and forth passes on a relatively flat and very deserted country road east of town. Concentrating on technique left him without a
brain cell to spare on traffic, so he'd made sure there was none to be wary of. Starting slowly, as his second recommended day of recovery
riding, he'd picked up speed almost without realizing it. The additional power he could give the bike made his first choice of gear too
easy--in order to keep the rpms down, he had to gear up. And up. After three days on the flats, Christopher could turn over the same rpms in a
substantially higher gear, with a corresponding increase in speed.

Out on the road today, he'd still needed to adjust technique constantly to make sure he hadn't reverted to his old patterns. No wonder
Luca said they spent hours practicing.

"Seriously, what did you do, pop some steroids?" Stu looked like he might stand up straight again any minute.

"Nothing that easy for you to duplicate. I got some coaching. Still working on being consistent. Here's what he told
me..." Christopher explained; the satisfaction of whupping Stu once was sufficient.

"Obviously it works." Stu was back in the upright and interested position. "So the effort to your leg changes so the power to
the pedal doesn't, okay... This makes more sense than what we were reading. You should write this up for one of your articles. Your
coach would probably love to have his name in
CycloWorld
."

"He did say it was okay to quote him." Christopher had asked; Luca had agreed.

"Who?"

"You have to buy a copy of
CycloWorld
to find out." Christopher smiled, enigmatically, he hoped, and crossed over to the other
side of the highway--the junction with Highway 72 had a light. Stu shouldn't have more "out" when he'd
only have trouble with the "back." "This is a good turnaround."

Stu followed; so did his questions. "I'll just find out when I proofread for you!"

Gearing up by one sprocket gave Christopher an easy spin but made Stu quit asking. He hadn't decided how much to mention--if his ride
with Luca was a date, Stu wasn't entitled to know. But riding technique wasn't anything personal, it wasn't like telling the
world that Luca had asked him out. And Luca had given him permission.

He led the way back to Boulder, letting his friend draft as compensation for tiring him. Then Stu got another rest break--Christopher pulled over
when his cell phone rang.

Luca's voice floated through, warm and inviting. "
Ciao
, Christopher."

Entirely too aware of Stu parked behind him, Christopher tried to keep his pleasure from hijacking his voice completely. "Heya, Luca. How are the
mountains?"

"Cold. Very little oxygen here--every blood cell has to work thrice. We leave for Boulder soon."

Imagining that Luca had called before getting into the team van, he tried to estimate their arrival. Two hours, maybe. Enough time to finish the ride and
clean up, plus some. "But good training?"

"Yes, I tell you about it at dinner, okay?"

"Sure. Did you have a place in mind?"

The answer was almost lost in the
whoosh
of a passing VW Bug. "--Italian place on Pearl Street, close to bike shop, okay?
Casual."

That only narrowed it down slightly; Christopher could think of three eateries that matched that description. "Fine. It probably won't
taste like your mother's cooking."

Luca laughed. "Nothing tastes like my mother's cooking. I pick you up at seven, okay?"

"Great. See you then." Christopher gave his street address and directions, only stumbling over a couple of words. Luca, framed in his
front door, ready to come in... The time was going to crawl along.

"Hot date?" Stu snapped him out of his reverie.

"None of your business." Clipping back into his pedals, Christopher wished that Stu didn't take such a lively interest in his
social life.

"Aaaaand... you aren't discussing who coached you, and it's 'Heya, Luca,' all husky,
aaaaaand--"

Christopher took off, interrupting the unwelcome perceptions from behind, but Stu found enough energy to stay on his tail and continue snooping.
"And Luca Biondi lives in Boulder now!" Stu shouted, making himself heard even over the wind and a pick-up truck passing.
"You have a date with Luca Biondi, don't you!"

Christopher shifted, going three gears higher than he'd been riding four days ago, and left Stu in the dust. Luca hadn't said one
single thing about being out.

***

Finally convinced he'd shaved closely enough to remove whiskers that hadn't planned to grow until sometime next week, Christopher
managed to dress himself in a freshly pressed blue button-down shirt, black jeans with a sharp crease, and hang the tie back in the closet. Even with the
knot pulled down to his breastbone like he'd seen in a magazine, this was still Boulder; a tie wasn't casual. He glared at the clock
for not fast forwarding to seven. It gave him enough time to brush his teeth again. He'd already cleaned the kitchen, remade the futon so that
its linens looked like upholstery, locking that untrustworthy furniture into couch position, and vacuumed all four hundred square feet of the basement
apartment in the old divided house on College Hill. Luca might come in later.

Three sharp raps on his garden level door at two minutes to seven made him jump. Luca, with a tentative grin, stood in the stairwell, a bike at his side.
Christopher only noticed that after he'd stumbled through a greeting and tried to shut the door behind them.

"Oh." He looked at Luca's ride. "A mountain bike?"

"My 'go around town' bike."

That made sense; Luca wouldn't leave his racing machine outside the grocery store. Christopher went back for his own worn-out Trek road bike,
which hadn't run more than errands since he'd bought his pride and joy, freshly rinsed from the day's ride with Stu.
Adjusting his expectations and wearing a heavier jacket, Christopher followed Luca down the hill toward Pearl Street, pulling up at a brick-fronted
restaurant a block from the bike store.

"It is a nice night for a ride," he commented, securing his bike to Luca's and the railing around the outdoor eating area at
the restaurant, empty now.

"No car," Luca replied, following a server to a table for two in the corner. "No need."

His springy brown curls, lightly tousled from the ride, framed his face and tried to brush his shoulders. Christopher had never seen Luca when he
wasn't kitted up or mussed from his helmet, and the view was niiiiice. How long would one of those curls stretch? Would Luca laugh or be
irritated if he let it bounce back, maybe after a kiss... "I suppose not, but isn't it tricky to do the grocery
shopping?"

"Why would it? That's what everyone did at home. With baskets or backpack, easy." Luca hadn't picked up his menu
yet, his eyes locked on Christopher.

Under that intent gaze, Christopher wondered if that one unruly lock of hair was standing up like a dark brunet exclamation point at the back of his head
again. He resisted the impulse to smooth it down. "Where is home?"

With a sigh, Luca picked up the menu. "Where the team is. I grew up in little town in the Veneto. You wouldn't know name, but about
fifty kilometers from Venice, at foot of hills."

There was a map on the menu; Christopher offered his to Luca. "Show me?"

Tracing a semicircle on the eastern side where the "boot" of Italy flared out at the top, Luca told him, "The Veneto is
region, has states. Venice, here on the coast. Po Valley is flat from sea to here, then hills, growing to mountains."

"The Dolomites?" Christopher hazarded, not wanting to sound provincial. He'd looked up Luca's
palmares
, his racing record, not his home town.

"Yes, and Alps. Region reaches up to touch Austria. My town is here." "Here" could have been one of
several--the map was small compared to Luca's fingertip. A waiter stood by, absorbing the geography.

Christopher hadn't even looked at the menu. "Dishes to share," he read, but Luca was there ahead of him.

"May I order for us?" he asked, and at Christopher's nod, made several choices. "We get more if we're
still hungry after these."

The plates appeared in a whirl of words Christopher barely registered:
gnocchi di zucca, carpacchio, tortelloni.
"Looks like
belly-buttons, no?" Luca popped a folded pasta into his mouth.

Pull up your shirt, we'll compare.
Damn, don't let the suaveness slip.

Polenta di funghi.
A bite of that put a smile on Christopher's face and sheer bliss on Luca's. "I am true
mangiapolenta,
Christopher.
Northern Italian."

"So it tastes like home?" Christopher wanted another mouthful of the polenta. Did Luca? The morsel on his fork wavered--he
could offer it to his companion.... Too soon. Too intimate. He savored the bite for Luca, rolling it over his tongue with
mmm...
rumbling in his throat.

"Almost like home." Another forkful disappeared between Luca's lips--Christopher never thought he could be jealous
of a mushroom.

"What do they do in your town?" He'd eaten the edge of hunger away, and could talk again, though each bite needed to be
savored.

"Bicycles!" At Christopher's double-take, he laughed, sun-crinkles showing at the corners of his blue eyes. "The
entire Veneto is crazy for bicycles. Racing. Touring. Lots of tourists."