The day I met Vivian was the same day as the Great Teatime Earthquake. So named for having occurred at the precise moment the clock struck 4:00pm, it was the largest natural disaster in any of our lifetimes, causing widespread fires and flooding, $150 billion in damages, more than 2,000 deaths, and the rise of a mysterious new virus known as RAV-4.

 

Before then, I had no idea a person could totally rearrange my molecular structure, just by meeting me. And, at that moment, finding a girlfriend was the furthest thing from my mind. 

 

I’d just finished a full morning shift on Pier 6. The average bike-shaw rider logs between 15 and 20 miles a day, and I’d already done upward of 25. Plus I’d been sneezing all morning, feeling the beginnings of what I suspected was the latest version of COVID. 

 

Wishing for nothing so much as a bowl of pho and to fall asleep on my couch with an episode of The Sweet Tooth Salaryman playing in the background, I stood on my top pedal and pushed off. Only, rather than the expected feeling of propulsive liftoff, the bike lurched forward, as if its weight had doubled in the half-minute since I’d pulled up to the curb.

 

Which was because it had.

 

I turned around, and there she was: a very pretty, very forlorn girl sitting in my carriage, frantically digging through her purse. Some holy fusion of bratty kid and immortal sorceress, she had an apron wadded under one armpit while dark mascara streaked her cheeks like bolts of black lightning.

 

Behind us, a whole fleet of bike-shaws sat waiting, but for some reason, she’d chosen mine.  

 

“Fuck,” she said. “I forgot I can’t afford things anymore. Do you offer any deals to first timers? Or ‘free rides for the downtrodden’, or some crap like that?”

 

“I—,” I said. “Actually, are you okay? Is something bad happening right now?”

​

She looked up from the mad disarray of her purse, initiating our first-ever eye contact. Which was enchanting in a dread-inducing kind of way. 

 

“No,” she said. “It’s over now. I am no longer a waitress at Dumpling Italiano. I have been fired. I am unemployed.”

 

She spoke with the rising lilt of someone who'd grown up on the islands. The sadness on her face splintered into anger.

 

“That chauvinistic creep,” she growled, and then dropped her voice an octave, into an imitation of a man. “Why can’t you be more like Sadie? Her makeup is always so professional!” 

 

Then, switching back to her own voice:

 

“Gee, I don’t know, Kenny! Why are you so shallow? Why do you think it’s okay to throw heavy objects at your employees? Why does everyone talk shit about you every time you leave the room, including your wife?” 

 

My jaw fell open.

 

“You said that?” I said. “To your boss?”

 

Her rage morphed just as quickly as her sadness had, next becoming mousy bashfulness, as if some fairy godmother had suddenly gifted her the capacity for self awareness.

 

“Yeah.”

 

I didn’t realize it at the time, but that was the moment she hooked me—if not for life, then at least for the foreseeable future. There was just something about the force with which she existed. About the audacity of a person who would stick up for herself to the point of her own ruination, and then be coy about it.

 

I was afraid of her, but even more than that, I admired her. 

 

She gripped the sides of her head, and shrieked.

 

“GyAhhh! How am I gonna live now? What am I supposed to do?” 

 

“Your boss,” I said. “He really threw stuff at you?”

 

She pushed her sleeve up, revealing a large mark on the back of her arm, just above her elbow.

 

“The tray from the dumpling machine,” she said. 

 

The mark was fresh, probably less than a week old, red with plum bruises around the edges. I felt queasy at the sight of it. And then, as if by magic, a searing pain braised my own arm, above my own elbow, her contusion somehow transmitting itself to me.

 

And it wasn’t just the pain, either. A whole kind of awareness dove to my metaphoric seafloor, a picture of the world as a dangerous and cynical place, harpooning the final fish of my innocence.

 

I’d never been one to rush to anyone’s rescue, but there was no denying it now — I was hellbent on proving there was still a shred of goodness and generosity left in the world.

 

Sitting there, backwards on my bike seat, gazing into her splotchy wound, I told Vivian I’d waive my fee up to however much money she would have made that day, effectively cancelling out her losses. 

 

Her face came alight.

 

“Are you sure?” she said. “It’s something like a hundred dollars.”

 

“A hundred dollars is five miles,” I said.  

 

She grinned and said five miles was actually perfect because that was exactly how far away her apartment was. And that was that. I tipped my cap and pushed off, powered by a mysterious energy I hadn’t had ten minutes prior. 

 

“5th and Walnut!” she exclaimed, kicking her feet up on the guard rail. “Kinda behind the Cheesecake Factory.”

 

“I know where that is,” I said, then darkly muttered, “It’s at the top of a hill.”

 

I harbored no illusions about what I’d gotten myself into. She lived on the north side of the island, not far from Barrows Bluffs. So even before the steep incline, we’d be climbing the whole way there. 

 

Not to mention I was already much sicker than I’d realized—feverish, with gummy mucous clogging my nasal passages, and sweat drenching my palms. It only took a couple blocks for extreme fatigue to set in, for cramps to cinch through my legs, and hips, and ankles. And once we got to the rolling hillside, I began to unravel. 

 

The last thing I saw was the slope, rearing ahead of us like the spine of a sleeping titan. And, and darkness flooded my eyes, but out that darkness came a sound—pulsing drums and jangly guitars, and sweet, melodic singing.

​

The light returned—The sky, the rolling blue fields. Vivian was playing a song on her phone, holding it up to my ears. 

 

“What is this?” I asked.

 

“A band!” she said. “Advantage Lucy!”

 

“So good,” I wheezed. “So much life.”

​

“Yeah, so much!”

 

She started slapping my back to the beat, and then, her skinny, braceletted arm shot forward beside my head, holding a bottle of store-bought green tea.   

 

“Drink it!” she exclaimed, and tilted the spout back to my mouth. 

 

It was like I’d entered a TV commercial for a refreshing beverage. An Antarctic chill washed over my tongue, down into my furnace-hot chest, resuscitating every cell in my body. I stood up, veins plumpening, stomping with the full-on delirium of newborn love. We began to climb, five feet at a time, and then ten. The chain strained on the crankset, and the chassis creaked like bowing bones.   

 

“Dig!” Vivian hollered, with the gung-ho attitude of a personal trainer. “This is us cancelling out our losses! It’s been a really hard day, but right now I know that anything is possible!”

 

“'Free rides for the downtrodden!'" I heaved. "I... won’t let us down!”

 

“And neither will I!” she said, drumming faster on my back. “Go, go, go!” 

 

“Any... thing,” I said. “Is… Poss... ib—”

 

Snap. 

 

Suddenly, the resistance dropped from my pedals. My foot fell fast toward the pavement, and my chest smashed against my handlebars. The bike hung still, then rolled backward, fast. We both screamed. I squeezed both brakes, but they didn't work. I jammed my heels against the road, and the bike twisted beneath us like a drill bit, ejecting our bodies into the tall grass before scraping to a stop.  

​

We both broke our left fibulas.

​

 

—

 

While we waited for the ambulance, we sat on the hillside, cupping our bloody hands over our bloody knees.

 

“Your old boss sounds like a real-life demon,” I said. “But the first thing you called him was shallow.” 

 

She gazed out at the endless blue ocean.

 

“Yeah,” she said. “To me, ‘shallow’ is worse than ‘demon'. We’re probably all sorta demons, but—” 

 

She paused.

 

“I dunno. People think of depth as the amount of stuff you have below the surface. But really it’s got nothing to do with the stuff at all. Even if there’s nothing in the water, you can still be there, in a state of hyper-envelopment, you know? It's just, hardly anyone goes there.”  

 

I wanted to kiss her right then, but it suddenly occurred to me that we didn’t even know each other's names.  

 

“Hey!" she exclaimed, and shoved me. “I totally know what I’m gonna do. For my next job, I mean.”

 

“Wait,” I said. “Did you feel that just now?”

 

“You mean me hard-shoving you?” she said. 

​

“No,” I said. “I think the whole Earth just shook.”