The Courier's New Bicycle (2 page)

The dual LEDs on my helmet and handlebars rattle forth a shaky light as I ride slowly over sheening cobbles, the gelid air glittering on lampposts and downpipes. I shiver, despite my windstop jacket and thermal layers. Those few still out are chins in scarves and hurrying to be somewhere else. No one wants to be seen in this part of town when they should be tucked up in their homes observing the strictures of a Sabbath morning.

Cutters Lane doglegs, too narrow for cars, deep inside the enclave. Keeping track of the numbers glinting on the doors, I round the final corner — and nearly pedal into a group gathered in the middle of the alley, their features hidden beneath sackcloth penance shawls.

Heads turn, invisible faces look. Sucking in my breath, I bite my lip and taste the sting of blood. So much for knock & drop.

Cursing, I veer down the nearest passage then haul on the handlebars as a cat streaks across my path. The bike slips on damp stone, nearly low-siding me, and my left pedal comes loose from its post, wrenching my ankle. I slew to a stop, my breath puffing through my balaclava in fast little clouds.

What's a prayer group doing here of all places, and at this time of night?

I'm examining the damaged pedal when two cowled figures appear behind me in the passageway, advancing deliberately. I yank it free and stuff it in my bag. Foot on
the bare post, I ride on fast. Ahead, the passage rejoins Cutters Lane. I scoot out — and meet three more of them hurrying up.

A firecracker burst of adrenaline triggers in every muscle. I drop into racing position. No way am I going to be mobbed in the middle of the night by a bunch of hessian-wearing fanatics.

The leader makes a grab for my handlebars. I swing my elbow up hard under the cowl. It connects with bone and I hear the grunt. The others reverse-step, suddenly reticent. Speeding away along the lane, I cast a quick look behind. The five have already melted into the shadows.

Several alleys of overflowing bins and unlit entrances later, I'm back on Madams Row, and stop astride the bike to press the phonelink hooked in my ear. My conversation with Gail is a casual shorthand, in case Neighbourly Watch Central is listening down the line.

‘Did you visit the rellies?' she asks.

‘They were in the middle of a prayer meeting.'

Silence. ‘How nice for them.'

‘I can drop in on them again when I get back from my fishing trip.'

‘Visit me after that.'

I press again to disconnect the link, then scan the street for movement, the sweat in my armpits chilling beneath the layers. I've never failed to make a delivery before. Parcel still in my bag, I exit the Red Quarter for the wide deserted avenues of the sleeping city.

The Glory Hole speakeasy is a door in a wall down Wickerslack Alley in the capillary-like heart of the city. The eye at the peephole withdraws and the lock snicks back. Rosie, the doorkeeper, complete with leather vest, two armfuls of tatts and a nose ring suitable for a bullock, secures my bike in the room behind her guard stool and drawls, ‘When ya gonna get a
real
one, Sal?'

She's the proud owner of a shiny electric speedster — a Harley replica — parked out in the alley.

‘When I win at church bingo,' I say, too polite to mention that Rosie's ecotech ‘real bike' sounds more like a sewing machine than a Harley.

After a speedy detour home to stash the undelivered package, the adrenaline is still running like a train through me. I wait for my breath to slow and senses to adjust, then hand over my helmet and cycling jacket to the cloakroom attendant, a busty glamour puss with eyelashes to die for.
Marlene takes my stuff by her finger ends as if it pongs. It probably does.

Downstairs, the air is laced with an aromatic smoke — the GM kind that doesn't give you cancer … or so its distributors claim. The room is large and the lighting dim; beneath the smoke I smell sweat and alcohol and kit. Ahead of me, broad-backed couches are grouped in protective huddles around the empty dance floor. It's too early yet for the abandon that will put its cluster of silver poles to inventive use.

This is my stamping ground, and Gail's. A smorgasbord of contraband is traded and variety of services swapped in its subterranean spaces, the entrepreneurial spirit flourishing among its denizens. Operating below the radar of Neighbourly Watch and outside the Morality provisions, it's also a neutral territory where the B2N laws hold no sway and all judgement over what constitutes as natural, gender-wise, has been permanently suspended. Meanwhile, people elsewhere feel they've lost their raison d'être with their fertility, and are busy shoring up their masculinity and femininity as if to force an uncrossable distance between two non-intersecting camps. Having always manifested the indicators of both and felt like I belonged to neither, where does that leave me? A lean and lanky girlboy, a polymorphous mix: unsettling to some, and downright blasphemous to the Nation Firsts.

As I make for the bar, someone lunges across it at Trin Li, the bartender, who steps adroitly back.

‘What's up with Verne?' a voice asks beside me and I jump.

‘Oestro flux,' another replies from the cushioned depths of a couch.

The lunger is persuaded back to her table, but Trin has seen it all before. Shirtsleeves up and muscles flexing, he begins to polish glasses, mesmerising those seated in front of him.

I mouth
Inez?
and he nods me to the curtained alcoves at the far edge of the room.

I move along the alcoves, peering past thick brocade to tasselled lamps and socialising groups or coupling bodies, my mumbled apologies hardly noticed.

The fourth curtain nets success. I'm pulled in, greeted by an arm around my waist and three fingers on my lips. Then my new girlfriend is teasing my mouth open with her tongue while her companions look on, amused.

My pulse jerks into allegro.

‘You've had a shot of Friend,' she murmurs.

The unmistakeable musk of her begins a slow cascade in me. I pull back, and regard grey almond eyes that reflect the lamplight. I may present to others as confusingly androgynous, but Inez is unmistakeably ‘femme rising': skin dusted cinnamon, her scented curves and hollows a subtle Koori-Irish mix.

‘Staying long?' she asks.

‘Long enough to make sure I didn't imagine last night,' I say self-consciously, aware the others are listening.

‘And then?' She takes her fingers from where they've been playing with the zip on my jersey front.

‘More,' I breathe, the shimmy of pleasure vibrating in my bones.

We leave the alcove and head across the room of reclining figures, couples bent close over candlelit tables, a raucous trio at the bar. Marlene sees me coming and holds out my cycling jacket as if its presence has befouled her racks. I take the offending item, then my cycle helmet, reminded to attach some new reflector strips.

‘You'd think Gail could afford to supply her favourite messenger with some new equipment every once in a while,' she says disapprovingly, her lashes sparkling, heavy with sequins.

A haughty cisgender hetero, Marlene can out-drag the drag artists. I smile weakly and follow my girlfriend to the door.

 

Inez is eyes closed, curled beside me in my bed. I reach out a hand to caress. She murmurs, half in dream. I cup a breast and kiss, and she brings her arms around me to tuck closer. The flame of last night's lovemaking rekindles. She lifts her hips to me and sighs. I turn her over, sliding one hand into her from behind, then hold her as her body gives to my fingers. Her surrender is in slow waves, skin slick on skin, both of us dragged along the rip together. Tumbled to shore, she smiles deliciously.

It's late morning, and the sky through my bedroom
window has turned wren-blue between scudding clouds, only a slight coolness left in the air from the zero-degree night. Plummeting temperatures have brought autumnal tinges to the city's trees, but this afternoon there'll be enough bite in the sun to remind of summer. I pull on a pair of baggy cycle shorts and a tee, then murmur to Inez snoozing in my bed like a voluptuous Lord Leighton
Iphigenia
, and go organise some supplies for my bike pack. The failed delivery sits in the fridge compartment labelled
FISH
. Tonight I hope to get it to its destination.

My bike leans in the hallway, its broken pedal gaffered on. I open the front door and wheel it out. The honeyeaters are busy in the wattle tree, but beyond that the street is Sunday calm in the enforced tradition of a Nation First Sabbath.

I could pick up a van from Cute'n'Cuddly for the snoop trip to Fishermans Bend, but decide to ride by my friend Albee's all-terrain bike shop instead and prevail upon his generosity.

 

Bike Heaven's unassuming single-storey building is tucked between SEC — solar–electric conversion — car yards in the shadow of the South Melbourne freeway. Albee, his broad tanned face lit by a smile, unlocks the security screen at the side.

‘Salisbury!'

He's one of the few apart from Gail to call me by my full name. For most people it's too long, or too perplexing, to
say. For them it's Sal, but at school it had been Sally — Sally Forth: my parents' travel-inspired creativity paid for by me many times.

I wheel my bike inside and lean it against the big front counter that extends the width of the service area. Behind it, several aisles of floor-to-ceiling shelves lead to a workshop space and a back door out to a pocket-sized concrete yard. Few know about the other door down the far left aisle, beyond which is the tiny studio space that my bicycle-mad friend calls home.

Albee ignores the Sabbath, and never has a rest day. His relaxed air comes from the contentment of doing what he loves best and is extremely good at, which is fixing bikes or bargain hunting for their various parts. We've known each other thirteen years, and met at a youth refuge when both of us were sixteen and scared as hell, living in a community that considered itself tolerant to difference but taunted us as perverts and spat at us in the street.

Albee, short, broad and very strong, opted for gender realignment surgery on his twenty-first birthday. I asked him if it had always been in his heart to do. He'd taken a while to reply, then said that for him it was less about the ‘equipment' than the place to rest in. The hate had got to him — that, and the constant vigilance it took to stay safe. People call it sex change, but for Albee it was simply confirmation of what he already knew: he hadn't become male, he'd always been male.

Compared to that, the way for me has always been
muddy. Growing up I confused everyone, including myself. I was ostracised, blamed for not looking or behaving as clearly girl or boy. How could I explain that it felt like I was elements of both, inextricably mixed? I ran from the questions, but more waited around every corner. When people began to express their confusion as anger, I learned to run fast. For some, this seeming indecision between parts is a thing to fix. Over time I've come to view it as a freedom, albeit a dangerous one, there being no place for who I am in my own society.

Albee draws me along an aisle, its metal shelves cluttered with bits of bike and unlabelled boxes. Try as I might, I can see no pattern to the arrangement.

‘I know I've got one of those SP-55s here somewhere,' he muses, shifting bits. Out comes a red plastic tray full of pedals. He grins. ‘There's hope yet for that old treadly of yours.'

I follow him to the workshop space.

‘Got time for coffee?' he asks.

‘Afterwards, maybe. I'm on a mission for Gail.'

He nods, knowing better than to ask.

I lean against his workbench. ‘Actually, I was hoping to borrow some alternative transport for the afternoon.'

‘The panel van, or one of these?' He lays a loving hand on the knobbly-tyred BMX bike clamped to the bench, a row like it on ceiling hooks at the back wall.

The other option is parked outside. Albee collects his finds in a compliance-converted 1970s Holden Sandman — a ‘shaggin' wagon', complete with lurid airbrushed pictures
on the side. He did the artwork himself, and is inordinately proud of the lifelike detail of the peleton speeding past what looks to be an erupting volcano. It's the last thing I could go snooping in.

‘Think I'll take a two-wheeled favourite.'

‘Excellent choice,' he says, lifting one off its hook.

He puts the replacement pedal on the workbench along with a few other items picked up in the aisles, including a spick-looking mini pump and some reflector strips. ‘I'll sort out your racer while you're gone,' he tells me. ‘We can transfer your strap-ons to the mountain bike.'

He begins to detach the material and Velcro toeholds from my pedals: snug for maximum pulling power, and easy to get in and out of, no need for cleats or impossible-to-walk-in shoes.

‘How much do I owe you?' I ask.

He treats me to a guileless look. ‘What's the latest and greatest from Gail?' Albee is partial to my Courier's Friend mixes.

‘Some tried'n'true, and a new recipe if you're game.'

He laughs. ‘Shop's always too quiet on a Sunday. I could do with a diversion.'

I hand over a yellow-striped capsule still in its foil blister. ‘It carries a warning,' I say, and Albee's eyes crinkle handsomely.

‘You know I like those the best.'

Knobbly tread whirring, I ride through Port Melbourne to the tunnel under the freeway and into the Fishermans Bend industrial area. I'm no happier today than yesterday about snooping here, and at the top of Reserve Road near the abandoned karting complex, Albee's custom-built bike seems to brake of its own accord.

Broken glass glitters in the bitumen; a burnt-out truck sits on its wheel hubs in a vacant lot. I wait uneasily, watching for movement in the street ahead, but even the roving scavengers in their overladen jalopies are doing something else this afternoon.

Fishermans Bend is an urban wasteland hugged to the south bank of the Yarra as it sweeps towards the sea. Its messy conglomeration of defunct business parks and industrial estates had been marked for a makeover, but with the crisis of confidence that accompanied the flu pandemic many of the companies went bust. Now the wide streets are lined with tilting warehouses that have run out of the energy to stand up straight but aren't yet bothered to lie down flat. These days, people come here for one of three reasons: to scavenge, drag race, or trade sex for kit.

The day is much warmer now, and still. The nose-wrinkling smells of old industry taint the air. To my left, the grasslands of the nature park are a heat-flattened ecru, no autumn rains yet to coax them back to life. The picnic area consists of a commemorative plaque, a picnic table and a bashed-in tidy bin. I take the loop path through it and cycle past the Ponds: two noxious-smelling artificial lakes
growing bacteria like giant petri dishes. Scattered about them are the park benches and picnic nooks used by the cruisers and bruisers in their nightly swapping of sex and suss kit. The Ponds are also the place for payback, which is why they're dredged every once in a while by the police forensic squads.

Further along, the track meanders in yet more unpleasant terrain — sand and scrub mixed with the stink of effluent — before arriving beneath the rising span of the Angels Gate Bridge, the most recent casualty of Melbourne City Council's renaming spree in the push for a more pious-sounding city. A cable-stayed girder design, its single concrete arm stretches eight hundred and fifty metres across the water in a feat of engineering that lost lives and broke hearts to complete. I ride into its shadow and between pylons, then out to where the cycle path meets the west-most end of Barrow Road. Here, set back from the cul-de-sac, are the pillaged buildings of the Ethical Hormones group, or EHg: Gail's feeder company. Next up the road is what's left of NatureCure, and further, BioSyn Solutions, each currently operating out of better-hidden premises.