It takes more love to share the saddle than it does to share the bed. ~Author Unknown

Some say that the thunder of a bike never leaves your blood and I reckon’ they’re right. There’s nothing like a bike for freeing body and soul even when the daily grind threatens to wear you down to nothing at all.

It was a Sunday morning and I was at work as usual at a small general store just off the PCH, fighting temptation to skip out, take the proceeds of the register and ride until all the gas in the world ran out when the rumble of a couple of bikes coasting into the forecourt of the gas station next door set my heart pounding with a sympathetic rhythm.

Ding a ling a ling…Creeeaak….Thump. Clack. Clack. Clack. Clack.

I loved the sound of boots on linoleum. In my time as the checkout girl at Barbara’s Duck n’ Dive, I’d heard plenty of them. As was my wont when I heard a particularly alluring pair, I turned from my task, which happened on this occasion to be restocking the cigarette cartons and looked first at the boots, then at the woman who wore them.

The boots were well tended thick matte leather with a short heel – boots you could ride all day and night in. As my eyes ran up the length of their owner, I saw that she was also well tended in leathers over pressed dark jeans. Under her leather riding jacket she wore a checkered shirt that hung open just enough to reveal a hint of cleavage. She was tall for a woman, with flaxen blonde hair that hung shaggily about her shoulders and a thousand mile stare that went right through me to the neatly lined up packets of cancer sticks behind me.

“Can I help you ma’am?” I smiled brightly, pushing my short dark hair out of my eyes.

“Pack of 20’s,” she stated in a slow drawl native to the southern states, not taking her eyes off the cigarettes for a moment as she tossed a twenty dollar note down on the counter.

I was mildly offended. Here I was, smiling obsequiously and waiting to serve her every whim, and she wasn’t even looking at me. I wasn’t a person to her. I was part of the scenery, a fleshy automaton and nothing more. I hated customers like that, people who seemed to think that I existed only to serve them, and that the slightest polite courtesy was too good for a mere minion like me.

Maybe it was because she was hopelessly addicted to the ‘baccy. Maybe she was preoccupied with something else. Maybe it was because she was probably an older professional woman with just enough time left to ride on the weekends and I was little more than a college drop out keeping a roof over her head and gas in her tank by slinging jerky and tobacco.

Whatever the reason, I decided that I was going to teach her a lesson she wouldn’t forget quickly.

“I’m afraid that won’t be possible ma’am.”

Bam. The gaze was on me now. Seeing me for the first time. Her visage twisted in irritation. Yeah lady, that’s right. I exist. How you doin’?

“What do you mean?”

I kept my expression composed as I answered her, letting no sign of the deep mischief I was perpetrating show through in my face. “You’re supposed to be quitting, ain’t ya?” I wasn’t from the South, but I put a hefty dose of the accent in my reply.

Her expression of surprise was priceless. Her lips parted, but no words came out. I knew she was wondering how I could possibly know such a thing.

“How…”

“You promised you’d quit.” I smiled seraphically as her confusion grew more intense. After a moment or two more of open mouthed staring, she grew resolute.

“Just give me the cigarettes, kid.”

If I had been temped to give her the cigarettes, her casual use of the diminutive ruined all chance of that.

“Not possible, I’m afraid ma’am.” A madness had gripped me. I’d played games like these before, but I’d never gone so far as to actually deny a customer what they wanted. Barbara certainly wouldn’t be pleased if she caught me at this game.

Now the woman’s eyes were narrowed on me. She looked like the sort of lady who usually got what she wanted, whether it was a girl for the night, or a pack of cigarettes to take on a ride. Being denied what she wanted wouldn’t just displease her. It would confuse her.

After taking my measure for a few moments longer, she surprised me by relaxing and actually gracing me with a smile of genuine humor that made the fine lines at the corner of her eyes crinkle with warmth. She placed both her palms on the counter and leaned in towards me. “Alright kid, you got me. Good trick. Now hand ’em over.”

Biker chicks usually smelled like grease and sour sweat. This woman smelled of leather conditioner and vanilla, a surprisingly heady mix. I was tempted to do what she asked, really I was. But I was committed to a course of action now, and to sell her cigarettes would be to undermine my entire point.

“I’m sorry ma’am, I don’t know what you mean by trick.”

“You want to keep playing this little head game, huh?” Her expression had darkened again, but not with the same blank annoyance as before. Now she looked very much like she’d enjoy the game as much as I did if we kept on playing.

She was definitely on to me. I had to give her credit for catching on to what I was doing so quickly, playing the averages. Every smoker I’d ever known had at some point said that they were quitting and damn near every smoker had promised someone they’d quit too. But being called out like this? This had never happened before. Usually people wandered away confused or hailed me as a psychic. They didn’t give me this clear, keen look of amusement that said I was getting in over my head.

I was composing my next reply when fate, or rather, a large biker with ‘F A T E’ tattooed across her knuckles slammed into the shop.

“Daddy, what the fuck is takin’ so long?” she said in a guttural voice that threatened to spit all over the corn chips.

“What is taking so long, Daddy?” I reflected the question back to my customer with a smirk of pure joy.

The woman called Daddy raised a single dark brow at me. “Little girl, you are so lucky I am on a schedule,” she purred.

“Sure, you’ve got to get out on the road in time to get home to file Monday’s paperwork.”

I saw in her face that I’d nailed her again. Got it in one. I’d known it all along. She was a weekend rider playing out little games of freedom all the whilst being tamed to the office.

“Let’s finish this later, kid,” she drawled, plucking a card out of the innards of her jacket and tossing it to me.

I saw without picking it up that the card was stamped with the logo of a local lesbian bar, Bodie’s Arms. It had a reputation as being a leather dive. I doubted that was where she usually drank, but if she wanted to play it this way, it was fine by me. It had been a long time since I’d met anyone as even remotely interesting as her. I was enjoying our little repartee more than I probably should have been.

“Where are my fuckin’ cigs?” her friend swore, stomping towards the counter with all the aplomb of a raging bull.

“Right here, ma’am,” I said with sickly sweet politeness, pushing a pack of 20’s and a handful of change towards the glowering biker. She grunted thanks at me and thundered off outside to start puffing her way closer to death.

Daddy’s eyes twinkled as she leaned against the counter on one arm. “What’s your name?”

“You can call me Pixel.”

“It’s sure nice to meet you, Pixel.” There was some hidden intent in her words, something I couldn’t quite fathom, but I felt she was being straight with me. She was genuinely pleased to meet me.

“Thanks. And what’s your name?”

“Oh girl, you can call me Daddy,” she winked.

“Right on, Daddy-o,” I agreed.

She stood up straight to her full height, instantly making me feel small, flashed me one last smile and sauntered out of the shop. When she’d gone, I turned the card over in my fingers and saw that there was a cell number written on the back. How often did she do this then? Toss out cards to females she met in her travels? Why did I care?

The rest of my shift was direly boring in comparison. Like the card, I found myself turning our conversation over and over again in my mind. God, she was hot. She would never have featured on the front of the glossy beauty magazines that sat in racks along the right hand side of the store, but there was something in her features, a character that drew you in.

I toyed with my phone, tempted to send her a text message. It hadn’t been three hours since she’d left the store and I wanted to be in her presence again. Damn if she hadn’t played a bigger and better mind game on me than I’d managed to play on her. I swore under my breath, put my phone away and filled in the rest of my shift reading tales of celebrity woe.

The sun was beginning its descent towards the horizon by the time I locked up the shop, casting a fantasy golden orange glow over the ocean. My trusty steed, a blue ’91 Honda VT600C Shadow waited for me faithfully and as the engine purred into life, I forgot about all the cares of a mundane job and opened the throttle, letting the bike draw me onto the highway and towards my destiny.

When the wind rushes past in a roaring gale and the road skims by mere inches below your feet, you know you’re truly alive, even though perched on the precipice between exhilaration and disaster. One false move can send you spinning into an infinity you’ll never return from, but you are the mistress of your own destiny, you control what happens out there. Riding my bike was the one time I truly felt in control, the one time I truly felt free.

I rode towards SF, towards home with the memory of the card and the woman sitting in a corner of my mind like a burr. She wouldn’t be at the bar tonight anyway, I told myself. It was a Sunday night. She’d be taking a bath, rubbing moisturizer into her smooth, pale skin, preparing to scrape that shaggy blonde mane into a professional updo and picking out what pair of high heels to crowbar her feet into for another week of working for the man.