The Second Time Around

Adley Jenkins glanced out the front window as she walked from the study to the kitchen. In the forty minutes she'd been in front of her computer, the sun had disappeared and a hard rain had started. Standing in front of the big picture window, she watched the wind and rain coming in off the plains.

"I didn't think the front was coming through so early," she silently said to herself. "Glad I got the gardening done already."

Just as this thought passed, Adley noticed, at the far end of the road, a man on a bicycle struggling against the wind. The man's black bike crawled forward as he fought to push against the wind. Once the cyclist pulled even with her house, Adley noticed his limbs and head shaking; whether from the effort or the cold, she didn't know.

Suddenly, the man stopped pedaling and put both feet on the ground. Turning his head back the way he came, he stared at Adley's mailbox. Dismounting the bike and, still shaking, he started walking it up her driveway.

Adley took a step back from the window, wondering why this man was approaching her home, when the stranger let go of the bike, letting it crash to the ground. His shaking now more pronounced, he bent over and put his hands on his knees. Swaying, the stranger bent his head up towards the sky, and then slowly collapsed into a heap on Adley's driveway.

"Mary!" Adley screamed as soon as the man fell. "Mary! Get out here!"

Adley's daughter rushed to the living room from the back of the house.

"What? What is it, Mom?"

Adley pointed out the window and said simply, "He needs help."

Hurrying outside, the two women approached the cyclist, grabbed his right shoulder and hip, and turned his torso so they could better see him. With a bike helmet and sunglasses on, about all they could tell at first glance was that the man was middle-aged, perhaps close to fifty like Adley. He was about six feet tall and very trim, but what Adley and Mary noticed most of all was the blue tinge on his lips.

"He's freezing!" Adley yelled. "We've got to get him inside."

Luckily, the man sensed that someone was trying to help him, and, with the help of the two women, got to his feet. Still shaking uncontrollably, the man stumbled towards the front door while being supported by Adley and Mary.

"Let's get him under a hot shower," Mary suggested as they entered the house.

Straining now under the man's weight, Adley and Mary took him into the bathroom and set him in a heap on the floor of the walk-in shower.

"Ad-ad-ad-a col-cold," the man stuttered as he looked up at the two women.

Adley looked down at him, her mind quickly assessing what to do.

"Mary, go throw my bathrobe into the dryer and then get the heating blankets. Put one on top of the sheet in the downstairs bedroom and the other on top of the blankets. I'll call you when I want the robe."

As Mary hurried off, Adley turned on the warm water and aimed the showerhead down onto the stranger. She wrestled his shoes and socks off, unclipped his helmet and tossed it aside, and pulled his sunglasses off.

Hesitating now out of respect for the cyclist's modesty, Adley stopped undressing the stranger. His shivering not abating, she quickly got over her qualms, unzipped his tunic, worked his arms out of the sleeves, and tossed the cold, clammy garment out of the shower.

The man, who still hadn't said anything except 'cold,' turned his eyes up towards Adley but couldn't seem to focus on anything. His knees were drawn up towards his body in an attempt to stay warm. Grabbing both ankles, Adley pulled his legs until the man was half-laying on the shower floor. Despite the hot shower, he still shook uncontrollably.

"Damn it," Adley said, and grabbed the waist of his biking shorts and began to pull them down. The wet spandex didn't move easily, but Adley finally got the shorts off.

She helped the man curl back into a ball and shut the shower door. "You'll warm up soon."

After a couple of minutes though, Adley wasn't so sure the man would warm up soon. While he might have been shaking a bit less, he still shook uncontrollably. Adley took a deep breath while considering what to do next and then quickly rushed upstairs to her bedroom. Flinging the door shut behind her, she threw herself onto her knees in front of the chest of drawers and pulled open the bottom one. It had to be here, she thought as she tore through the pile of slips, bras, and panties. Finally, in the back, she found what she'd been looking for and pulled out an old one-piece swimsuit. Adley tore off her clothes, pulled the suit on, and rushed back downstairs.

Once in the bathroom, she said, "I'm going to come in and help you," pulled the shower door open, and stepped in.

The cyclist's lips were no longer blue, and he briefly looked up at Adley as she entered the shower.

"I want to sit against the wall and let you lean against me," Adley said quietly. With more strength than she thought he had, the man used his arms to scoot away from the wall so Adley could squeeze behind him. Gently, Adley wrapped her right arm around his shoulders, her left around his waist, and pulled him back until his head was nestled in the crook of her neck and his back was draped against her chest.

"Pull your legs closer to your body," Adley commanded. "Now just relax."

The cold coming off the stranger, despite having been in the shower for close to five minutes, shocked Adley. Holding him was like holding a block of ice. His extremities seemed coldest, so Adley began massaging them. Starting with his hands, she wrapped her fingers around his and slowly wrung them as if the cold was water she could squeeze out. Next, she held each of his hands individually and slowly tried to rub some warmth back into them.

She kept this massage up, moving from his hands to his forearms. When she reached his upper arms and shoulders, she noticed how toned the man was. Despite his age, his muscles were well-defined and he didn't have much fat on him. Adley had successfully avoided gazing below the cyclist's waist but couldn't put it off anymore if she wanted to try to warm up his legs. Placing her hands on the outside of his thighs, Adley realized she wasn't really in a position to massage his entire legs. All she could do was rub her hands against his upper legs and hope it would draw some of the cold away. She took a quick, but necessary, peek at the stranger's groin and, after confirming she wasn't going to brush up against his penis, began running her hands in small circles over as much of his thighs as she could. Adley kept this up until her hands were tired, even moving them to the inside of the cyclist's thighs. His thighs, Adley noticed, were even more defined than his biceps, and they were lilly white where the bike shorts had been.

"He must bike a lot," Adley thought to herself as her hands made another lap from the inside of the man's knees up to where his thighs met his buttocks. Very softly, she said, "Where were you biking to?"

"Cheyanne," the man whispered back.

Adley screamed in surprise. After taking a deep breath to calm herself, she asked, "You're feeling better?"

"Mom, are you OK?" Mary called from outside the bathroom door.

"Yes. Can you crack the door and drop the robe inside, please?" Adley replied.

Leaning her head toward the man's ear, she added, "I want to get you dried off and into a warm bed. You think we can do that?"

"Yes, thank you," he said, still shivering a little.

Adley turned the shower off, helped the man stand, and wrapped him in towels. "Please sit down so I can dry your hair," she said, pointing at the toilet. Despite having only been on his feet for a few seconds, the man gratefully sat down. Quickly, Adley produced a hair dryer and began drying his hair while he patted himself dry. Satisfied that the man was dry, Adley wrapped herself in a towel and held out the warm bathrobe for him while politely averting her eyes. The man dropped his own towels and allowed Adley to help him into the toasty robe. Taking his hand and opening the door, she led him down the hall to the guest bedroom. Pointing at the bed, she said, "There's a heating blanket for you to lie on, and I'll put another on top of you. Let's get you in bed."

Now barely shivering, the man lay down and, for the first time, looked directly at Adley. "Is there someone you want me to call while you rest?" she asked.

"No," he replied. "Thank you, Adley."

Adley turned toward him sharply. "How do you know my--" she began, then looked carefully at the stranger for the first time. No. How could it be, she thought. "Ellis Ford? Is that you, Ellis?"

But the man had drifted off to sleep.

After cleaning up and changing, Adley stared silently at her bedroom mirror. A younger version of herself flashed before her eyes: black hair down to her lower back, 5 foot 4 inches and rail thin. In the memory, she held the arm of a much younger Ellis Ford and guided him around an outdoor ice skating rink. Smiling at the long-ago memory, Adley snapped back to the present. A greying woman--still strong and lithe, yet confidently displaying the curves of motherhood--stared back at her. "What is he doing here?" she wondered aloud before turning and walking slowly out of her bedroom.

Adley returned to the living room and sat down next to Mary.

"I know him."

"What do you mean? Is he a neighbor?" Mary asked.

"No, I'm actually not sure where he lives. I know him from college. We drifted apart over 20 years ago," Adley explained.

Mary's eyes widened as she craned her neck to look down the hallway toward the bedroom where the man slept. "Were you guys friends? How did you know him? Mom! Is he an old boyfriend?"

"No, it's nothing quite like that," Adley began. "We grew up in Madison, though we didn't meet until my senior year of college in Appleton."

Adley then told Mary about meeting Ellis Ford through a mutual friend who thought they would be perfect for each other. They had gone out on a date at the beginning of her senior year, but nothing came of it. She hadn't seen him again until the end of the semester and, needing a ride home for Christmas, remembered he had a car and lived in Madison too. "We really clicked on the ride home and spent all Christmas break together," Adley remembered. "We went to the movies, went sledding and ice skating, had dinner together a few times, and talked and talked. I remember thinking how easy it was talking to him and how I felt like I could talk to him forever."

A smile crept across Adley's face as she recalled that winter more than 25 years ago. "When we got back to school he wanted to keep seeing me, but I said, 'No.' I was afraid anything too serious would distract me from my thesis and from enjoying my last semester. We hung out from time to time, but then I graduated. He was a year behind me. I moved west, and that was sort of the end of it."

"That's a sweet story, Mom. You never saw him again after graduation?" Mary asked.

"I did once," Adley continued. "At the end of his senior year, I went back to Appleton for a weekend to see old friends and ran into him. We wrote letters to each other for a couple of years, but then he got married and that stopped. It was all so long ago."

"And you have no idea why he's here? If he was a song, which one would it be?" Mary inquired.

Adley scrunched her face and looked at her daughter. "What are you talking about?"

"Oh, it's just a stupid game all the girls in the sorority play. When anyone meets a guy, we all want to know what song reminds us of them. My roommate's boyfriend is 'Freaky Deaky,' for example."

"Well, leaving that aside," Adley began, but suddenly a male voice interrupted them.

"Excuse me. I'm so sorry for the trouble. I didn't mean to just show up on your door, Adley."

"Oh my gosh, Ellis! I'm so glad you're OK. Don't worry about any trouble. Come sit down. This is my daughter, Mary."

Ellis slowly walked into the room, looked around, and chose a cushy chair opposite the two women.

"Please let me explain myself. I'm on a ride from home--that's in Wisconsin. I've often thought of you, Adley, and knew you lived in Cheyanne. This ride seemed like a good opportunity to see you again. I didn't intend to drop in unannounced; I found your address and number online and thought I'd call when I got into town. It's impossible to know for sure when I'll be arriving on a bike, so I just thought I'd call you when I got to Cheyanne. And that was today, but the rain appeared out of nowhere. I forgot to put my phone in its waterproof case, so I couldn't call you. I still had your address, though, and when I passed your street I was so cold and miserable... well, you know the rest."

Mary smiled at Ellis and then turned toward her mother. "You rode all the way from Wisconsin to see my mom? That's so sweet, Mr. Ford."

"Please call me Ellis, Mary. I can't say the whole point of my trip is to see your mom. But it's a nice perk," he said, and at that Adley blushed a little.

"Tell me, Ellis," Mary continued, "what was my mom like in college?"

At this, Ellis took a slow breath and smiled as if he were thinking of old favorite memories. "Well, we didn't really know each other all that long. Your mom was very quick-witted and very thoughtful. I remember having long conversations with her that went in all different directions. She made me think. She was easy to get to know and fun to be around. She was very concerned about her direction in life and making sure she was making the best decisions possible. That's what I remember most about her."

"If she was a song, which one would it be?" Mary asked.

Ellis looked confused. "What do you mean, Mary?"

Mary turned toward Adley and waved her arms as if her mother were a piece of merchandise on a game show. "If you had to pick one song to describe this beautiful woman, what would it be?"

Adley jumped up suddenly. "Don't you think it's time you got back to school, Mary?"

Mary, taking the hint, got up slowly and smiled. "It is, Mom, you're right." Turning to Ellis, she said, "I just came home for the night, and I do need to get back to school. I hope I didn't embarrass either of you. It was nice meeting you, Ellis. I'm glad you're OK, and I hope you enjoy the rest of your ride."

After Mary left, Ellis asked, "Is she your only child?"

"Yes. Her dad and I divorced after she left for college. Mary goes to Colorado State over in Ft. Collins, so I still see her pretty often. What about you? Do you have kids?"

"I do. I have twin boys. They are both at the University of Wisconsin."

A lull fell over the small talk as they both became aware of the strangeness of the situation--a quarter century separated them from their last meeting, and now Ellis was suddenly in Adley's living room wearing nothing but her bathrobe.

"Uh, what made you decide to ride a bike this far, Ellis? Isn't it kind of dangerous?" Adley asked.

Ellis got up and walked to the window, seemingly looking for his bike. "Mary put it in the garage. She said it was pretty heavy with all those bags strapped to it. Are you camping every night?"

"Oh no, I'm too old for that. I used to camp on my rides, but now I need a soft bed at the end of the day. The bags are mostly filled with water and food. There are so few places to stop once you hit western Nebraska, so I carry everything with me. I do have a tarp and sleeping bag in case I can't find a hotel, but I've only had to use it a couple of times on this trip."

"But why," Adley smiled at him, "and I don't intend this to be rude, but why are you riding so far? It seems so difficult. And isn't it boring, just pedaling day after day? How many days did it even take you to get this far?"

"I left home two weeks ago and have gone about 100 miles a day. I've been riding since high school, so I know how to stay safe. I stay off busy roads. When I ride, it's the only time my mind will turn off. I just focus on turning those pedals and the scenery of whatever I'm passing. It's my therapy."

Adley giggled and interrupted him, "What's happened to you that you need two weeks of nonstop therapy?"

Ellis' face quickly betrayed a sad frown. He recovered quickly, though Adley knew she'd hit a nerve. "I'm sorry. That was rude of me. It's none of my business."

"It's okay, Adley. I guess... well, I don't guess...I think you could say I'm going through a bit of a mid-life crisis. I'm in my late forties. I don't exactly have a job I love, and my marriage recently ended. Have you ever felt like you just needed a fresh start? Or a break from everything? When I go on these long rides, I feel like I'm young and free again. All I have to worry about is how many miles I pedal--no worrying about the kids, or work, or money, or my wife. I just focus on me. Maybe it's kind of selfish in a way, but don't we all need some sort of relief or break from life?"

"I understand what you're trying to say. We all feel that way at some point." Adley gestured toward a small framed picture on a bookcase showing her, a much younger Mary, and a man Ellis assumed was Mary's father. "When I divorced, I remember feeling like what you just described. Andrew, my ex, is a good man. We just drifted apart, and once it was over, I remember feeling unburdened. It was like a cloud lifted that I didn't even know was there. I started writing again and doing things I had stopped while we were married... not that Andrew kept me from doing them."

"It's like you didn't have the energy or mindfulness to do them while also living in a marriage that wasn't ideal... at least that's how I felt," Ellis offered.

"Yes! That's it exactly," Adley said with a sad smile.

After another long pause, Ellis bolted up, suddenly feeling that he was imposing too long on Adley.. "If you show me to the garage, I'll get changed and be out of your way."

"Oh, well, okay," Adley said slowly as she got up, ushered Ellis into the kitchen, and opened the door to the attached garage. "Are you sure you're OK to ride?"

"I'm fine. I intended to stop in Cheyanne, so if you just point me in the direction of a hotel, I'll let you get on with your day."

Adley hesitated, but finally responded "If you turn left from the driveway, go down to the fourth street light and turn left again, you'll hit a stretch with hotels and restaurants. Are you sure you're OK?" Adley asked.

Ellis nodded, rummaging through his bags for some dry clothes, and went inside to change. When he returned, the two stared at each other for a few seconds before sharing a hug. Slowly releasing Adley, Ellis took off his helmet and kissed her chastely on the cheek.

"Be careful," she said. "Come back anytime".

Ellis thought he saw disappointment in her eyes. "Thanks again for all the help. I haven't enjoyed a shower that much in a long time," he added with a wink. Swinging his leg over the bike's crossbar, he sat on the saddle and stared at her for several moments as if considering something important. "Tell Mary I pick Strange Currencies by R.E.M."

"What?!" Adley laughed as he started rolling down the driveway.

Ellis turned left as he reached the road and shouted back toward Adley Jenkins, "The song! Strange Currencies by R.E.M."

Once inside, Adley picked up her phone and opened her music app. R.E.M. wasn't really her type of music, but she certainly remembered them from high school and college. She found Strange Currencies and started listening. The song began with a beautifully melancholy guitar, but the lyrics--a plea of longing and unrequited love--really took her breath away.

"Oh my God," Adley said aloud. She listened to the song twice more, then went out to the garage, got in her car, and drove off after Ellis.

It didn't take long to catch up with him--after all, Ellis was on a bike. Adley pulled over in front of him, and he rolled up next to her.