Two weeks into February and Rock and Wild Man were in the back of Moose's playing pool, drinking Iron City, talking shit about going down to Daytona, which is what they did every year, talk shit that is, only they never did get around to going to Daytona. Well, not for the last five years. Something always came up, only this year, Wild Man wasn't letting Rock get away with it.
"You promised," he shouted over the ruckus of the juke box, over the clink of pool balls, over random laughter and the jingle of beer bottles. He had this little whine in his voice, a two-year-old pout that just about drove Rock fucking nuts.
"Yeah, so what?" Rock pranced around the pool table with his cue like a lion watching his pride. For years it had been a tradition, he and Wild, nothing but their backpacks and bikes. And they weren't the sissy types, sending their bikes ahead of them on a train, shipping them in some crate. Who ever did that and called themselves a biker? Who could do that and really live with themselves? Even if they lived in say West Virginia where in the last week of February it probably would be about thirty-two degrees and snowy if they were lucky, and hell to ride, but that was the type of weather Rock and Wild lived to tell their buddies about in May or June when they were jacked-up over at Sally's Saloon, when the sun set low over the Widow Hillson's creek, and after they were done talking about how much chrome and shit they had put on the bike, and how they took apart the engine over the winter, that's when they'd lean back order another shot and find anyone who'd listen and reminisce about Daytona. Then they'd all laugh at the newbies, the middle-aged guys who had never even been on a bike, but like some god-dang fool went and bought one of them fancy pants Dyna Glide models, 600 pound plus, and from their vantage in the bar, Rock and Wild would watch those newbies drop their bikes, and they'd howl as they finished off another Broiler.
Those god-dang newbies who didn't know one gear from another would never even think about giving up comfort and get on the back of a bike in late winter and head down to Daytona. Those god-dang son-of-a-guns thought owning a bike was about chroming her up. Wild and Rock would saunter out into the parking lot over at Sally's Saloon in the heat of summer to show who was who, to show the newbies just what a real biker looked like. And there, wouldn't you know it, some newbie would have some duct tape on his left turn signal, gone and dropped the mother, gone and tipped her over, not enough sense to hold her upright, not enough sense to balance the 600 pound bike, himself, and that chip-toting-old-lady of his who says she only weighs 110 -- yeah, right. Well, that was when it was time to draw the line between man and mouse.
This year Rock didn't think he could get away, although nothing, really, was holding him back, just something in his gut he couldn't explain.
"Old time's sake," Wild whispered in his ear.
"Get away from me you queer," Rock pushed Wild and because of his strength nearly knocked Wild to the ground although Rock was only playing.
There were times he and Wild would sit shit-faced and make bets about how much they could do Daytona for. "One hundred." "You out of your fuckin' mind or something?" "Forty." "Forty? You're on, brother." And they did just that. Forty bucks in their back pockets -- forty bucks each. They'd pitch a tent; they'd eat at people's houses; they'd eat bologna sandwiches, they'd eat day old bread; they'd get barroom bums to buy them drinks or good-looking chicks and so it went.
But this year it was different. Rock had him a steady chick. A year now, which was the longest he had ever stayed with any one woman. He didn't like to be tied down, that was only asking for it. It wasn't that Rock was the young man pick 'em up, screw 'em then leave 'em type anymore. Hell, Rock was nearly fifty. It wasn't that he was particularly allergic to commitment -- truth be told he had been married four times. But he'd already been there, done that, had the t-shirt to prove it. Hell, he liked female company; he liked the feel of their skin, the taste of their juices, all of that was quite pleasant really. And he could even tolerate the fact that they liked scented candles and shit like that, and when they came to his little place out in the woods, bought and paid for, thank-you very much, the first thing a chick wanted to do was decorate, hang-up curtains, hang a roll of toilet tissue. Okay, he could live with that if it didn't get too out of control.
But after he spent time in the slammer for dealing a gram, give or take, of heroin, after he was released, after rehab, make that four or six sessions, it wasn't that Rock was a slow learner or anything, after Wild let him have a job as a mechanic at his Harley Davidson Dealership, he decided he probably wasn't the marrying type sober, drunk, or any where in the middle. Then came Kelly. He hadn't meant this relationship to be serious. Kelly wasn't exactly your motorcycle chick. Wild kept reminding him of this. She hated being on the back of a bike, and when Rock bought her a leather jacket for Christmas, she scrunched up her nose as if a stray skunk had just sprayed beneath the bedroom window or some such shit, and Kelly being the good sport that she was, she put it on and twirled around trying hard to look happy, but Rock could tell, she was disappointed as crap.
When he went on runs in the summer to New York or Columbus, places where Harley Vendors had to travel to sale T-shirts and stuff, places he and Wild had to trek as part of their business, she had preferred to stay home, and this surprised Rock at first. Kelly just smiled and said, "Have fun, Rock. I know you won't have time to call or anything." That was all she said. She never asked what he did at these conventions. She never seemed to care. And the few times she went along to like a Thunder-in-the-Valley type thing where Harley sent these bikini clad babes as a promo to wash bikes, Kelly smiled and said, "Look all you want, Babe, go ahead and salivate, I'll go sit under that tree in the shade and read this book of poetry." For the life of him Rock didn't understand her. What he knew was that she sure as hell wasn't going to go to Daytona. Or at least she sure as hell wasn't going to ride from Weirton in the cold all the way to Daytona on the back of a bike in some freaking frigid weather. And although she wouldn't care if he went one way or the other, for some reason he didn't want to spend two weeks without her.
"Shit, man," Wild said as they sat at the bar deciding which kind of wings to get. It was the same old, same old ritual. Buffalo or Hot as Hell and although both of them knew they wouldn't appreciate it the next morning, and although both of them knew they would spend a sleepless night with Pepto-Bismol, they had to have the Hotter than Hell just to prove they were still king of the jungle.
"Go, just fucking go. Kel don't give a fuck, Rock."
"I know." Rock guzzled his beer then ordered another.
"Let's bet like the old days. What do you say? How much do you think we can do it on? Daytona this year? What do you think is reasonable?"
Rock shrugged. He was thinking about Kelly. She owned the beauty parlor over on Main, and although she was five or six years his junior, and although he never had any kids, she had one child, a girl, twenty-one with a six-month-old baby who lived with her above the parlor. "I don't know, Rock," she said one evening leaning into him. "You're the sexiest man I've ever met."
"I tend to have that affect on woman." He stroked her hair. Rock knew that Kelly's grandchild was preventing her from going back to college to become an English teacher. Something that her own daughter had prevented her from doing some twenty-two years ago, something she regretted and had hoped she could do now, but instead she was letting her daughter go to college, babysitting her grandbaby while she cut hair. But it was a small community, and the women in the shop all cooed and picked up and fed the baby so that Kelly could cut and color and style everyone's hair to make money to support herself, Melissa, the grandbaby, and put Melissa through college.
"I don't know why I'm so in love with you."
It was the first time the "L" word had ever been spoken by either of them. In another lifetime, Rock would have recognized this as the place where he had come into the movie, made his excuses, pardoned himself, left his bag of popcorn and exited the building. But for some reason he stayed on the couch, cuddling with Kelly, stroking her cheek, kissing her brow. "Come to Daytona with me, Kel. Please. Fly down, I know you don't like to ride. I'll pay for the ticket." That had been back in January long before Wild had ever mentioned anything.
"I can't, you know that. You go. Have a good time. Enjoy the bikini-clad babes. Get drunk. Look all you want, just don't touch."
Melissa was their unspoken, don't ever say anything, don't mention it secret. He hadn't meant to discover it. That night trying to convince Kel to go with him to Daytona he almost confronted her. He felt his mouth form the words. He had planned to wait until Melissa came home, high and strung out. He planned on having a little family intervention. (Something he felt qualified to do after all his trips in and out of rehab.) He had thought about all of that the moment months ago when he had stumbled into Melissa in that part of town, that part of town she had no business being in, a part of town that no matter the time of day was always grey, the part of town where everyone knew Rock by his first and last name and Rock didn't have to carry a gun, and he, Rock, was, well, known to have done his time in the penitentiary.
He had stared Melissa hard and down, and give the girl her due, she was as tough as nails as any chick wiggling her cute tight ass into a bathroom stall with a come-hither look, the look that said to a man with a pool cue, "Hey, dude, in exchange for a blow, I'll blow you."
But that January night he had been over Kel's whispering sweet nothings into her ears, trying to convince her to get on the back of his bike and head down to the sunny beaches of Daytona and Kel giving him that "you've got to be kidding, me in a bathing suit? In case you haven't noticed, I'm a bit over forty" he stopped for a moment and watched Kelly rock her granddaughter back and forth and suddenly he knew what he should have known all along. All of those moments of shaking came flooding back as he watched Kel in the homemade, hand carved, Amish rocker, he had found at a garage sale for her, and the moments he tried to erase came flooding back, the moments he'd rather not have remembered. He heard Kelly sing to her grandbaby. He thought about those times he watched Kelly in the beauty parlor whenever Melissa stumbled in, black circles under her eyes, opening up the cash register, as if nobody saw anything. If Melissa were a man, he'd take her outside and belt her for Kelly's sake.
Wild nudged Rock, "You gonna eat some of these wings or am I gonna suffer all by myself in the morning?"
Rock's hand lingered over the basket for a moment.
"Let's do it for a hundred. Let's go for one week. Wind in our hair. We'll pop a tent. Me and you. If we need more bread, we'll tattoo. We'll bring our equipment. All those co-eds. " Wild smacked his lips.
"All right. All right, all ready." Rock tapped his bottle to Wild's.
