"Seventy-seven, seventy-eight, seventy-nine, eighty. There! Minus five bucks for that order you delivered late, here's your pay. Don't go spending it all in one place now, kid."
"I won't, mister Maroni."
Jackass.
Chet closed the door to the pizzeria and lifted up the kickstand on his bike. The air was much cleaner and fresher outside, but it was also getting chilly so he had to put his jacket back on for the ride home.
Straddling his bicycle with one foot on the ground, he took his olive green bomber out of his backpack and slung it on, popping the last two remaining buttons in place to close the front over his chest. The sleeves were torn and the zipper was busted, but it was still a smart jacket and fit him pretty well. He didn't have a lot of decent clothes, so he held onto them long after they were worn out.
Chet hoisted himself up, using his standing weight to push down on the pedals and overcome the initial friction as he climbed up the hill. After Norton Street, the ride was pretty level for the mile back to his house.
Or more accurately, his apartment. Hamilton wasn't very urban, but as a city in New England, there wasn't a lot of space in it, either. Ever since his father died, Chet's family sold their house and moved into a flat to save money. The red brick walls of the other tenements blurred by as Chet's wheels spun on the asphalt, trampling over fallen maple leaves and litter.
"Hey watch it!" he yelled out at three kids blindly crossing the street. He swerved around them, barely keeping upright on his bike. Even though they were the ones failing to pay attention, one of the kids muttered 'fucking retard' under his breath. He looked to be about ten or eleven. Chet sighed in annoyance and pushed down on the pedals harder to speed away.
Scrii-i-i-p!
Ah, fuck.
The bottom of his pant leg had gotten caught on the chain.
Just my luck.
Chet closed his eyes and hurried back home, not interested in having any more incidents on the way. The chain was already a mile or two away from busting from the strain of Hamilton's hills.
The cool wind nipped at his nose and ears as his bike picked up speed again, zipping past the lofts in Old Industrial. The hipsters and beatniks milling around were indistinguishable from each other, and from the homeless, too.
The tires screeched as Chet deftly braked and hopped off his bike in a single, well-rehearsed motion. He walked his bike up the three short steps to the lobby, then let it rest against the wall as he collected his family's mail.
"Evening Chester," came a voice from the booth.
"Evening Mr. O'Leary," Chet replied. O'Leary worked security in the building since '08, when the economy shat the bed. The old man was one of the lucky ones who found work again during the recovery, but he made about a third of what he used to in construction, and those glory days were catching up with him in medical bills.
Still, the job didn't ask much of him, and he didn't ask much of it in return. He turned back to his computer and bottle of Hennessy underneath his desk as Chet and his bike squished across the wet floor into the apartment elevator.
Luckily no one else was using it as there was really only room for himself and the bike. Half of the time he'd have to wait a while for other riders to clear out, or lug his wheels up two flights of stairs. Chet pushed the plastic '3' button and waited for the slow doors to close.
When they did, he sighed a bit, relishing the few seconds of privacy and isolation afforded by his metallic carriage. Unlike most moms, his wouldn't care that his pants were torn when he came home, which meant he was saved a scolding. But it also meant that he'd have to spend ten minutes patching it up himself. He let his shoulders slump a bit at the thought.
Chet let the doors fully open before he walked out, letting them clank and crank before they finally slid out from view. He walked out and turned to the left, blearily focused in the general direction of his room before someone almost tripped over his front tire.
"Oops!" came a girlish squeal as dozens of sheets of paper flew out into the air in front of her. Chet immediately set down his bike in the hallway and gathered them up from the floor.
"Sorry!" They both blurted at once. The two of them were on their hands and knees, quickly stacking the fallen sheafs.
"Sorry, Jane," Chet repeated. Jane Chikovani was the landlord's blonde and vaguely ethnic daughter who lived on the same floor as Chet and his mother. Her blue marbles darted around quickly as her deft, slender hands scooped up the last of the fumigation notices that she dropped. Chet glanced at the opening of her low-cut T-shirt, admiring the gentle furrow between her small breasts.
When the stack of papers, now slightly sullied, were returned to her hands, Jane stood up and thanked 'Chester' before flashing him a snaggletoothed grin and entering the elevator. Her eyes were big and bulgy, in a cute way. She didn't have the beautiful, bitchy face of a Victoria Secret's model, but she more than made up for it with her expressiveness, smiling freely and often. Chet always thought she kind of looked like Ursula from the Spider-Man movies (the first ones), but didn't feel it appropriate to tell her about this comparison.
Chet headed back to his apartment, his thoughts turning back to the subject of girls. Girls like Jane Chikovani were wallflowers, pretty fish in small ponds. Judging by the plainness of her clothes, Jane wasn't rich. Helping her father with the apartment probably kept her time and attention away from dating. Or did it? Was she dating? Chet was too afraid to ask; even laid-back girls like her seemed just a bit too far out of reach for a nobody like him. The thought depressed him terribly.
