It comes here to pass

I met Betty Rubble on the suburban streets of Bainbridge Island 12 years ago while I was riding my bike and she was vigorously walking a beach road. I almost ran her over and she screamed something profane at me, I had these headphones in my ears and I think I was listening to U2 at the time, so I could not hear a word she said, but I slowed and turned my bike around, and then I removed an earbud and stopped and waited, she approached and I asked if she had said something to me.

“Yes, I said you’re an asshole and should learn to ride a bicycle.” She continued to walk.

I nodded and put the earbud back in, turned the bike around, started to peddle, harder and faster until I passed her again on her left and dug in and rode away. At that time in my life I rode five or six days a week, rain or shine, almost every day at 10 in the morning. It was my ritual, it was both a punishment and a joy. There was never really a reason I started, although a painful divorce did coincide with the more serious riding, I kept at it, pushing myself, year after year, harder and faster until I was in the best shape of my life, a serious, daily cyclist.

I started to see Betty Rubble often out on the roads and in the various parks, walking. At some point I stopped at the Tree House Café for a quick coffee and she was sitting there and I grabbed my coffee and sat with her. She was wearing a tight, dark pair of runners winter tights, a gray lycra zip up top of some sort and something in her hair that pulled it all back in a bunch. Her face was clean and white, not quite a China doll, but very clear and pristine.

“You know who I am?” I asked.

“I know you ride your bike a lot.”

“You called me an asshole a couple months ago.”

“OK.”

“Kind of hurt my feelings.”

“Yeah, looks like you spent a lot of time doing a lot of crying and in deep introspection.”

“That and I drink more.”

“Is that helping to ease the pain?”

“Nope, I’m still an asshole.”

“I can tell. My name is Betty, Betty Rubble.”

“I’m Matt.”

From then on I would slow and chat while I was out and about on my cycle. We would have coffee, we exchanged phone numbers and we would meet. We became fast friends. Betty was tall, dark haired, fair skinned, thin, athletic, almost always smiling, naturally stunning and alluring in the most intense way imaginable. She married Fred Flintstone 5 years earlier, they had a 3 year old son named Barney and they seemed very happy with one another. How could they not be, she was amazing, he was some sort of male model, athlete attorney or something. Perfect really.

I liked Fred Flintstone, he was a man who seemed at peace with himself. I am not sure I could pull off his calmness, because here I was a cyclist in skin tight lycra shorts, meeting his wife out on the road, for a coffee now and then, sometimes downtown for a donut, we laughed and joked. He knows she and I are enjoying ourselves and yet he does not seem to care in the least. I had met him, we had talked, he seemed like a grounded man. He did not view me as any sort of competition for his wife, which was fine, because I never had been, but my question always remained, how did he know that?

That never really mattered though, how he knew, if he knew or if he just did not care if his beautiful and seductive wife was flirting with the guy on the super sleek Italian cycle. Some men were just not the jealous type.

There is a pier at Point White and sometimes, when I was slow and tired, I would ride my speedy racing cycle down to that pier and instead of continuing to ride, I would just get off my bike and walk out onto the wooden planks and sit over the water and watch fish. I know, thinking back on it I am amazed at how incredibly boring it sounds, but when you consider days of cycling, often the same roads, sometimes over a hundred miles a day, loafing on a pier on a warm spring day staring down on fish swimming below is not really all that bad.

I was laying face down on the pier, watching the small salmon doing some sort of happy primitive dance and someone walked up and laid down next to me, uncomfortably close, I don’t really like a lot of physical contact. I turned to my right, it was Betty. She was radiant, even more so than usual. We were just inches apart, her lips gently touched with a shade of color, but her face naturally tanned and supple. Our eyes met, she did not say anything. I could sense her breath. The closeness shook me. At that point, we were friends and there was a tension when we were with one another, not necessarily a sexual tension, but certainly a palpable chemistry that neither of us seemed to know what to do with, nor to even acknowledge. I just held my stare and we were both looking at one another, but seeing more than one another, for a second, the world slowed, for just a moment we were completely alone, the salmon stopped swimming, there was no traffic on the nearby road and the wind blew to a quiet hush. There was something in her eyes and then there was a tear. All of a sudden, what had been a peaceful scene filled with some sort of hope was now dread and not a word had been spoken. My head gently shook from side to side, hardly noticeable, but then she shook her head, almost in response, subtly up and down. A tear formed in my eye and slid down my cheek.

“Breast cancer,” she sort of whispered.

“Yeah.”

“He’s 3 fuckin’ years old.”

“Yeah,” I said, not so much a response as having nothing else I could muster.

We stared at each other for a long time. Then she said, “why are you laying on the pier?”

“Watching the fish.” Then we both laid face down, side by side, and stared at the fish. Her left hand, above her head, my right hand, reaching out, holding it. I liked that feeling. We laid there for what may have been forever. I asked if Fred had known and she said she had yet to tell him and asked me what she should do. I started to cry, laying there, my tears raining down on the swimming salmon. They did not know better.

“You tell him, he loves you, he truly loves you, he will do what he does. You are a beacon and you are healthy.”

Betty held my hand and the world began to spin again, slowly, but still it spun, as it should.

All that comes, it comes here to pass.