“You coming to rub it in too?” I say. “I lost the race. I get it.”
“Take it easy. I'm not interested in making you feel worse. You look bad enough as it is.” He extends a hand. “I'm Kai.”
I grab his hand and pull myself into a standing position. My legs still feel like they're filled with water. But they hold me up this time.
“Actually,” Kai says, “I came to tell you I was impressed. I've never seen a breakaway like that. You tore up the track.”
“Thanks,” I say. “But I lost.”
“Yeah, you lost. Know what? It's just a shitty little crit. You get it together, learn some discipline, you could be winning the real races.”
I didn't expect that. It makes me feel a little better. “You offering to take me on your team? 'Cause I need one now.”
Kai studies me for a moment with this calculating look, like he's checking out a new bike. Like he's measuring me.
“No way. You need someone different from me,” Kai says. “Someone more experienced. You need someone who can handle you. Give you some discipline. Some focus.”
That little lift I just had? It fades away.
“Tell you what,” Kai says. He pulls out an old receipt and a pen from the pocket of his hoodie. He scribbles something down on the back of the receipt and passes it to me.
“Check this guy out. I used to train with him awhile back. Now he runs a bike courier outfit. He might be willing to take you on.”
“What's so special about him?” I ask Kai.
“He won gold in the Olympics, long time ago. And he's tough. Tough enough to make you into something.”
I wake up listening to a garbage truck clank and wheeze down the street. It's Monday morning, and the house is quiet. Dad is still at his night shift at the warehouse. He'll come back, grab a couple of hours' sleep, then spend the rest of time in front of the
TV
with a beer in one hand, remote in the other. When Mom left, he just kind of pulled back from the world, like a turtle into his shell. I couldn't handle it and started finding ways to avoid him. These days, we barely talk. But any conversation we have turns into an argument. Like last week, when Dad bugged me about getting a job. Money is always tight with us. He wanted me to stop screwing around with bikes, bring in some income. He called me lazy, told me to pull my weight. Which is ironic, given how much time he spends on the couch. I tried to explain why racing matters to me, how I think I have potentialâwhich he'd understand, if he ever came to one of my races. It turned into a shouting match. We haven't talked at all since then.
I look over at my bedside table. The receipt with Kai's handwriting is lying there.
Viktor
, it reads in blue pen.
Champion Couriers, Valleyside Industrial Park
.
A coach. Someone who could help me start winning real races. Like Kai said, give me some discipline. Make me into something. Because I'm not making it on my own.
There's no way I could ever pay for a professional coach. There's no way my dad would help me out with it.
Still.
What if�
Twenty minutes later, I'm dressed in my favorite Lakers T-shirt, Pop Tart in one hand, steering my bike down the street with the other. It takes a little while to find the address. It's in a part of town I don't usually go to. Industrial, big blocks of warehouses. Walls of rusty steel siding. But when I get to the address, I can't miss it. There's a sign that looks like the gear from a bike.
Champion Couriers
is painted in peeling white-and-red paint. Below the sign is a big open garage, dark like a cave despite the summer sunshine.
I hop off my bike and wheel it inside. Shelves of bicycle parts clutter the sides of the garage. A metal staircase leads up to another level inside the building. As my eyes adjust to the gloom, I see four young guys working on some bikes. And a girl. She's got bright-red hair, kind of punk. Kind of hot. Except for the tough look I get when she catches me staring.
Before I can say anything, there's a burst of noise from the top of the stairs. A tall guy with dreadlocks comes stomping down. A shorter, older guy is right behind him, and he's mad as hell. I'm not sure what language he's yelling in, but the old guy is clearly pissed at Dreadlocks. The two of them nearly run me over as Dreadlocks heads for the open garage door.
“You walk out, you don't come back,” the old guy yells in a thick accent. “I don't take you back, never!” Dreadlocks just sticks his arm behind him and flips out his middle finger. Keeps walking.
“You were a crappy courier, Neil! You sucked, always!” the old guy says. Then he switches to another language and yells some more. Russian or something?
Not a good time to introduce myself. But I don't have another plan. I say, “Viktor?” He spins toward me. He's got a square face, all hard edges marked with a white mustache, military style and yellowed from cigarettes.
“What?”
“Uh, Kai said I should talk to you.”
“Kai?” I can see his watery blue eyes thinking, remembering. He takes a deep breath, cooling off. “Yeah. Kai. Okay. Many years ago. What does he want?”
“He said that I should ask you about coaching,” I say. Viktor's face tightens up. I stumble onward under his cold gaze. “Coaching, like for racing bikes. He said you were good.”
“Good? That's what the big man said?” Viktor snorts. “That kid left me as soon as I made him.” He squints, looking out of the darkness of the garage into the daylight outside. “Look, I don't coach anymore. I spend all my time on these whiny children. Like Neil. All my time trying just to keep the doors of this business open.” He starts to walk back up the steel stairs and says over his shoulder, “Go home. Tell Kai to stop by sometime. If the big man has time for me anymore.”
I'm watching this Olympic champion walk away from me. And it feels like I never had a chance. My bike clatters to the floor as I drop it and walk after him.
“Wait, you were better than good. You placed in the Olympics, right? Gold?” Viktor stops at the top of the stairs, listening. “You were the best in the world. That's why I'm here. I could be like that. Like you. But I need a little help.” Viktor turns around slowly. I'm surprised to see that he's smiling.
“You think you need a little help?” he says. “I can tell. You need lots of help.” Some of the couriers in the garage laugh at that. I'd forgotten about them. I feel my face start to burn when I see the red-haired girl shaking her head.
“All right,” Viktor says finally. “Come upstairs. We'll have tea. Maybe we'll talk about racing.”
Viktor leads me up, then through a cluttered room filled with desks, filing cabinets and a couple of computers. We pass a guy wearing a green baseball cap and headset, working his phone and computer. He nods as we walk by but doesn't stop talking into the phone. The whole building looks like it was built a hundred years ago and nobody has cleaned up since. There are layers of posters on the walls, piles of papers everywhere. We go down a long hallway, where Viktor unlocks a wooden door with a sign that says
Viktor Lubyenko, Owner
.
Inside, his office isn't any neater. A big deskâmore papers, no computerâand a couple of armchairs. There's clutter everywhere, but it's the stuff on the wall that catches my attention. A bunch of framed pictures and newspaper clippings, including a sports page with a picture of a young guy on a podium. Must be Viktor. I check the caption.
1976 Montreal Olympics. Individual Road Race. Gold medal.
“You like milk in your tea?” asks Viktor. I turn around and see Viktor pouring boiling water into a teapot. Then he squeezes a slice of lemon into his teacup. “I drink mine like the Russians, with lemon. You want that instead?”
“You got any coffee?” I say. Viktor snorts and shakes his head.
“Today, you drink tea. But I'll put milk and sugar in, make it easy on you.”
“Is that what you are?” I ask. “Russian?”
“No, no. I'm Serbian.” Viktor sees my blank look. “Schools here, they don't teach anything,” he mutters. “Serbia. It's a little country, used to be called Yugoslavia when the Russians took it over. So I'm Serb, but I grew up Russian. Lived with Russians, trained with Russians, came over here with their Olympic team.”
“That's when you won your gold medal.”
“Yeah. Nearly lost to a guy from Sweden.” Viktor hands me a cup of tea, warm and mud-colored. We both sit in the beaten-up chairs in front of his desk.
“So what happened after that? What else did you win?”
“Winning at the Olympics isn't enough for you?” Viktor pauses, slurping some tea. “I had to go back home. In those days, it wasn't easy to leave Serbia. The government kept athletes like me under lock and key. They owned me. But it was a good life. I trained, I coached. Nice wife, handsome son. He was taller than you.”
“So why did you come here?”
Viktor slumps a little into his chair and looks at me over his teacup.
“War. We had a big war, everybody fighting everybodyâyou know any of this?”
I shake my head.
“No, you were born too late. That's the problem with young peopleâyou make me feel old, part of ancient history. Anyways, when the wars came, my son ran away to fight. He was your age, foolish, full of ideas about Serbs and Croats, right and wrong. Came back one month later. Only now a grenade had taken away his hand.” Viktor stares at his own left hand, slowly flexing it. “His hand wasn't the only thing. He had changed so much. So full of hate. My wife and I decided to get us all out of Serbia, walk out with other refugees. But we got caught up with some soldiers and she⦔ Viktor stops and looks through the big window at the warehouses outside, lost in thought.
I don't say anything, because I don't know what to say. The silence drags out for a while. Then Viktor starts up again. Speaking louder, faster. Like he can just speed over that part of his story.
“Anyways, we didn't see her again. I left Serbia with my son. I remembered how good it was here the first time, during the Olympics. So I came back. Not a star this time, just a refugee. Decided to be a businessman. Now, I'm like Donald Trump.” He laughs and stretches his arms out wide, as if he's king of the world. He's got a strange sense of humor. The business is a dump.
“You don't look like a millionaire,” I say. He laughs again.
“No. Business can be hard sometimes. But one day, I will be rich. I will win, just like in the races.” He smiles broadly under his mustache and reaches for more tea. While he pours, I look around the office. Despite all the photographs and newspaper clippings on the wall, I realize that I haven't seen a single picture of his wife or kids.
“What about your son?”
“Niko?” Viktor looks startled, rattling the teapot back onto the desk. “What about him?”
“What happened to him?” I say. From the expression on Viktor's face, I realize I shouldn't have asked.
“He lives in the city. He is a kind of businessman too,” says Viktor. But that's it. The silence drags out between us.
“So you still coach?” I say nervously.
“Not for long time. Kai, a few others. Some of these bike couriers think they want to race, but most of them are too crazy. Not enough strength up here.” He taps his forehead. “All strength down below. You understand?”
“Kind of.” I shift uncomfortably in my seat, fiddling with the teacup. Viktor laughs, which turns into a gravelly cough.
“I think you might be like that.” He shakes his head, still coughing. “You know what? I'm tired. Too tired to coach a little lion.” Viktor pulls himself slowly to his feet, spilling some tea on his old sweater.
I can feel myself losing ground. As if I'm watching the pack pull away from me again.
“You don't understand,” I say. “I'm so close. To being good. Really good. Other people say so. I know it. I just need some help.” Viktor is shaking his head, holding up his hands like he's pushing me away. But before he can speak, the dude in the green baseball cap and headset opens the door and sticks his head in.
“SorryâViktor, we're getting slammed. Without Neil, I'm still a man down. Can you get him back here?”
Viktor shakes his head and starts to answer. But I see my opening and go for it.
“I'll do it,” I interrupt. “I'm your man. Tell me what to do.” Both Viktor and baseball-cap guy look at me, surprised. After a moment, Viktor shrugs.
“Okay, okay,” says Viktor. “You work here for a while, let's see how you ride. Then we talk about coaching.”
As we leave his office, Viktor says to me, “You ride with Robin today. You listen, do what you're told.”
“Sure, whatever,” I say, walking away. I just want to get started. But Viktor slaps a hand on my shoulder and pulls me around. He looks at me hard.
“No. No sure. No whatever.” He leans in, bringing the smell of cigarettes with him. “You want to work for me? You want to learn? You follow two simple rules.”
Surprised, I just nod.
“First, you don't talk back. You do what you're told every time. Every time.” He punches me in the chest with a finger to make his point. I nod again.
“Second, you focus, right? Like a laser.” He points at his eyes. “Thinking. Planning. You always get the delivery to the right place. On time. The first time.”
“All right,” I say. “I get it.”
He stares me in the eyes until I break away and start down the metal stairs. I'm moving fast and nearly run into the cute punk girl and the baseball-cap guy, waiting at the bottom.
“You're Sam? The fresh meat? I'm Robin.” She's even better-looking up close. I'm still feeling rattled from Viktor, but I try to stay cool as she starts giving me instructions.