On the Wing (29 page)

I snapped my head up. I think I heard a deep rumble of hearty laughter from the guys in the gang.

“—and sees a dog in the road in front of him.”

“Crossing street zif he owns it,” I contributed.

“What does he do? Does he calmly slow the bike down and nimbly avoid the obstacle? He does not. He overreacts. He slams on the brakes and wrenches the wheel sharply.”

“Not his fault, though,” I asserted. “Dog—”

That was my final contribution to the discussion.

*   *   *

I WOKE UP ON A POOL TABLE, another first for me. You will probably not be surprised that I didn't know where I was when I woke. I felt the felt beneath me, and when I rolled over I occasioned a clattering of balls. I sat up, thought better of it, stretched out again, and slept some more. When I awoke fully, some time later, the pool hall was full of the light of midday, pouring through the storefront windows. I climbed down from the table, staggered to the door, and let myself out.

I had to find my way to Big Bob's on my own, but it wasn't hard. That is, it shouldn't have been hard. Everybody in town seemed to know the way. With my head full of fuzz, I kept losing my way, and I had to ask many times before I finally arrived at the end of the alley with the ranks of damaged motorcycles.
Spirit
was there, waiting for me. With some anxiety—with a lot of anxiety, to tell the truth—I asked Big Bob what I owed him.

“It's been taken care of,” he said. “Paid for by the MDMC.”

“Paid?”

“That's what I said.”

With a mighty roar, Johnny appeared at the other end of the alley, mounted on his bike. “Petey!” he called. He thundered the length of the alley and came to a stop beside
Spirit.
“How you feeling?”

“Not so hot,” I said.

“That is often the state in which a new initiate finds himself the morning after his election to the gang.”

“Election? To the gang?”

“That's right. By unanimous vote, you are now a member of the MDMC.”

“A member?”

“Full-fledged.”

“Since I'm a member—do I get to know what the initials stand for?”

“You do,” he said. “The name was originally suggested by my father.” He glanced upward and said, “Thanks, Dad.” To me he said, “The old man was always telling me, ‘Johnny, you're nothing but a muddleheaded dreamer who never does anything but ride around on that damned motorcycle in the aimless pursuit of adventure, and that's all you're ever going to be,' so one day I said to myself, ‘Johnny, he's right! That's exactly what you are, and that's exactly what you want to be. Enjoy it. Just get on your bike and
go.
' So I assembled a bunch of like-minded individuals, and we formed the Muddleheaded Dreamers' Motorcycle Club—and now you are a member. You are officially a muddleheaded dreamer.”

“But your father was wrong!” I said.

“About my being a muddleheaded dreamer?”

“I don't know about that. I mean he was wrong to call the pursuit of adventure aimless because—
Spirit
and I were talking about this just yesterday—if you're pursuing adventure then just about any route you take is the right route if it leads you to adventure—so if you're having an adventure, you're always on the right track, and—”

“Petey,” he said, raising a hand. “Cool your jets, man. If you're gonna stay cool, you gotta get a grip on yourself. I'll have to straighten you out. Remember what I said? Hmmm? Don't overreact.”

*   *   *

I GUESS that “Don't overreact,” was the advice that Johnny wanted me to take with me when I left, but I heard something else in addition to that. I heard what he had said when he told me about his father. I heard him saying, If you're a muddleheaded dreamer, enjoy it. Just get on your bike and
go.
” I haven't done a very good job of restraining my tendency to overreact—ask the girl in the furniture store about my reaction last week when a sofa that Albertine and I had ordered wasn't delivered on time and I'll bet you hear the word
maniac
—but I have done a good job of admitting that I am a muddleheaded dreamer, a full-fledged member of the MDMC.

Chapter 24

Pre-Traumatic Stress

I WAS ON THE ALERT. I was keeping an eye out for dogs. I had the feeling that we were in the area of my crash, the crash that had been more the fault of the dog than the muddleheaded dreamer at the controls of the aerocycle, and I didn't want history to repeat itself.

“You seem on edge,” said Albertine.

“I am. I'm tense.”

“What's the matter?”

“I'm on the alert for dogs.”

“Dogs.”

“With every fiber of my being, I'm watching for any dogs that might suddenly dart in front of us and cause a crash.”

“Was that one of the duties of the guy riding shotgun?”

“In the westerns, you mean?”

“Yes.”

“Hmm. Let me check.”

I had barely begun a random ramble through my memories of westerns that I'd seen at the Babbington Theater, looking for dogs that might have darted dangerously in front of the steaming team hauling a hurtling stagecoach over the dusty plains, when suddenly, there it was, the threat that I was on the watch for: a dog.

It was a small dog with spindly legs and large ears, the kind that you may have heard people refer to uncharitably as a long-legged rat or, for short, a rat dog. The dog was at the end of a leash held by a woman who was standing on the curb. Both the woman and the dog seemed to intend to cross the street, but neither of them was paying any attention to the traffic. The woman was pressing her cheek to her shoulder to hold a cell phone to her ear. In one hand she held the leash that ran to the collar of the rat dog and also a purse, open. She was peering into her purse in search of something, shuffling through the contents with the hand that held no leash. The dog was looking up and down the sidewalk for someone to trip.

“There's a dog now,” I said.

“Where?”

“Right there, on the sidewalk. See the woman poking around in her pocketbook? She's got a rat dog.”

“It's on a leash.”

“Right. Probably nothing to worry about. Still, I do want to keep you informed, to alert you not only to danger but to potential danger.”

“What about that other dog?”

“What other dog?”

“The one that might run in front of us in the next town.”

“We'll avoid that dog when we come to it. Right now, I'd like you to concentrate on missing this dog. Uh-oh. There they go. They're stepping into the street.”

Albertine slowed the Electro-Flyer. The woman and her dog took a couple of steps, oblivious to the traffic. Albertine veered a bit to the left. The woman quickened her pace. Albertine veered a bit to the right. The woman stopped in the middle of our lane. Albertine stopped. From behind us came the sound of screeching brakes.

The woman and the rat dog snapped their heads in our direction and registered surprise. Then the woman thrust her cell phone at us. It was a rude gesture. “Watch where you're going!” the woman shouted.

The dog frowned and said, “Yap!”

The woman and the dog continued walking, noses in the air.

The driver of the car behind us leaned on the horn. Then he shot forward with squealing tires, swerving out and around us, lurched up beside us on the left, then slammed his brakes when he saw the woman and the dog, now directly in his path. Voices were raised. The dog became particularly animated.

“This is getting ugly,” I said to Al.

“I think I'm just going to back up,” she said, throwing an arm across the seat and looking toward the rear as she reversed, “then make an illegal U-turn,” she added, whipping around to the left and slipping into a gap between oncoming cars, “and try another route.”

*   *   *

THE ALLEY WAS THERE, where I remembered it, and at the far end was Big Bob's, with a collection of broken motorcycles in front.

“Big Bob around?” I asked a beefy guy who was idling in the doorway.

“Big Bob?”

“Big Bob.”

“Big Bob hasn't been around for—oh—about twenty years.”

“Took that last ride, eh?”

“Huh?”

“Died?”

“Oh, yeah. Died. That's kind of a colorful way of putting it: ‘took that last ride.' I like that.”

“He's got a way with words,” said Albertine.

“Actually, I was hoping I might find a guy named Johnny. He used to be the leader of the MDMC.”

He chuckled. “You mean Dr. Wylie,” he said, “the distinguished director of the prestigious Algan Institute, the world's foremost clinic for the treatment of pre-traumatic stress syndrome.”

“I don't think that could be the same—”

“Oh, yeah,” he said. “It is. It's the guy you're looking for. Johnny Wylie. Formerly a muddleheaded dreamer, now a prosperous quack.”

“You mean h-he was c-cured?” I stammered.

“Let's say he heard the call of the open wallet.”

“Just what is pre-traumatic stress syndrome?” asked Albertine.

“The unsettling complex of stress-related disorders that results from contemplating the traumas we haven't suffered yet, but might,” the biker explained.

“Are you trying to be funny?” I asked.

“Certainly not,” he declared. “Pre-traum is big business. Nearly thirteen percent of the general population is convinced that they're suffering from it, thanks mainly to Dr. Wylie's books and infomercials.”

“Where is this Algan Institute?” Al asked.

“Right here in town. You ought to drop in. You'll get to see Johnny in action. Just tell them you think you might be suffering from pre-traum. After all, you probably are.”

“I don't think so,” I said.

“We did almost have a crash,” said Albertine. “That's got me a bit tense, nervous, edgy.”

“You say that you
nearly
had a crash?” the biker asked.

“That's right,” said Albertine.

“But you didn't actually
have
a crash?”

“No,” I said. “Fortunately, I was riding shotgun and—”

“Would you say that if you
had
had a crash, you might be suffering from post-traumatic stress syndrome now?” he asked me.

“Possibly,” I said. “I'm not sure how traumatic—”

“As it is, you
didn't
have a crash,” he said to Albertine, “and yet you're feeling tense, nervous, and edgy! That's pre-traum. Classic. Drop in at the Institute. They'll let you sit in on a group session—but take my advice: keep your hand on your wallet.”

*   *   *

THE ALGAN INSTITUTE occupied a stately mansion on the tree-lined main street of the town, set well back and surrounded by a wrought-iron fence.

“Impressive,” I said to Albertine.

“Are we going to go in?”

“I don't know,” I said. “All these years, I've thought of Johnny not only as a muddleheaded dreamer but as perpetually such. I think I expected to find him and have him say to me, ‘Hmmm, Petey, what do you say we get on our bikes and just
go.
'”

“Hmmm, and what about me, Petey?”

“Well, he would have been all over you, of course. I might have had to mess him up some.”

She rang the bell.

“Yes?” said a woman's voice from a speaker beside the door.

“Peter Leroy and Albertine Gaudet to see Dr. Wylie,” I said.

“What's troubling you?” asked the voice.

“Nothing. I just—”

“We nearly had a crash,” said Albertine.

“Ah!” said the voice. “You say you
nearly
had a crash?”

“That's right,” said Albertine. “A woman with a small dog—”

Something whirred, something clicked, and the door swung open.

We entered a marble hall. Some distance away there was a desk, at which a woman in a crisp suit sat. We hiked across the hall and eventually arrived at the desk.

“I wonder if it would be possible to see Dr. Wylie,” I said.

“You nearly had a crash,” the woman said with professional sympathy. “I'm sure that Dr. Wylie would like to help you. Who is your insurance provider?”

“Insurance?”

“Your health insurance provider.”

“Oh—I—”

“A charming man at Big Bob's told us that we might sit in on a group session and see whether it was the right thing for us,” Albertine said.

“Very well,” the woman said. “There is a group in session now. Follow me.”

She led us a few hundred yards across the entry hall to enormous double doors that she flung open without ceremony, revealing a group of people seated in a circle. I recognized Johnny immediately, even without his sideburns and black leather jacket, and I would have recognized him even if he hadn't been wearing a white lab coat with the name
Dr. Wylie
on it.

We had obviously interrupted the session. Everyone turned in our direction. The doors thudded closed behind us. We found our way to empty chairs, trying our best to disappear.

“Go on, Stan,” said Johnny.

Stan, a thin, nervous young man, said, “As I was saying, I'm suffering from the stress that I feel from the trauma that generations as yet unborn are going to have to suffer as a result of the selfishness and stupidity of the generations that preceded them, including my own.”

“That is just a bunch of abstract bullshit,” grumbled a young woman seated next to him. She nibbled on her fingers.

“I think it's an interesting example of sympathetic pre-traum,” said a young woman seated on the other side of him. “I'm starting to feel some of it myself.”

“Nyeea,” snarled the first young woman.