Every morning on the bus I see him. He has small, close-set eyes, plump hands, thinning black hair combed over his scalp like a lattice, and a regulation tan overcoat belted tight in all weather. Worry lines like ladders climb his forehead while he hunches into a thick paperback called:
COLLECTIBLE BICYCLES
Below the title is a drawing of a 60s-style kids' bike, the kind that used to thunder down sidewalks like tanks. I wonder what he sees while he studies the scarcity and valuation of old bicycles. Does he imagine himself as a boy, replicated hundreds of times on mint-condition collectible bikes, wheeling down a summer country morning, all of them belting out, say, "Allouette"? Or is it a room in his basement, its walls lined with racks on hinges, each with a bicycle bolted to it like an etherized butterfly?