The Last Rush

The windows of the buildings looked like pools of glowing magma in the tepid blue light of dawn. White light descended onto the work bench, and in it, were suspended flecks of golden dust.

With its damp odor of acetone and dirt, among the glinting metal of exposed threads, bent rims, and wrenches black with grease, the shop was quiet, as uneasy customers gathered outside.

As a bicycle mechanic in New York City, I lived this thousands of times, but this was no ordinary day. It was my first birthday in the city, and a blizzard was forecast.

“I don’t get paid enough,” said Luis, already busy with repairs, when suddenly, a strut slapped his hand and a bolt flashed across the shop.

“OUCH!”

“You okay?”

“You tell them it doesn’t work. It’s not safe.”

“Start with one side, then the other.”

“Tranquilo. It’s not going to work.”

By afternoon, the sky turned white as the snowflakes started to fall in globs, forming big, fragile piles.

Hunkering figures emerged from doorways. Soon, we heard the sound of the scraping shovels, pausing only when the figures looked up into the storm.

The city stopped, but the door kept opening with the freezing gusts of air. In came doctors, teachers, artists, people whose lives I dreamed of having, as we beat our hands on the cold metal.

In the evening, the sky turned purple and dark, and wind shook the flakes loose from the building faces, filling the air with white, twinkling dust.

Silhouettes lined up outside. Behind them, the black streets, streaked with red light, were reduced to rivers of mud.

“What is going on out there?” I said to Luis.

“Delivery bikers,” he said, “It’s the last rush.”

I locked eyes with one of the bikers. He was trying to pull the chain back onto his rear wheel, with a bleeding hand. I stepped out into the cold to help.

They came from every corner of the world. Each spoke a different language. Now, being immigrants, they are hunted.

Anyone who has spilled their blood on a bicycle chain is family to me. That doesn’t mean I like you, but that don’t mean I don’t love you.

We were the spokes of a wheel, traveling apart from each other with time. But at the center will always be the shop, where we lived and bled by the wrench.