Clare’s head a chorus of anonymous voices fired cautions.
“Are you worried about the roads?” Adam said. “’Cause I was out walking earlier, and the streets were mostly dry.”
She shook her head. “No. The roads are fine.”
He twisted the rag one more time, then released it, and the fabric sprang out. “It’s something to try,” he said. “There’s this amazing sense of freedom you get on a bike, like you’re in complete control. Know what I mean?”
The idea was absurd. The voices in her head became more belligerent. You’ll have to talk to him. You’ll run out of things to say. If you get on the motorcycle, you’ll have to touch him. Again she looked back at her house and saw in its ordered bricks, in the vacant stare of its windows, her father’s face. Above all the warnings in her head, Emma’s voice spoke to her, clear and certain. Go with him, she said, and Clare turned away from the house.
Adam took a step backward. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to pressure you. I was just thinking that I don’t really know you at all, and this might be a good chance to ... But I understand if you don’t want—”
“I’ll go,” she said. “I want to.” She heard the words but wasn’t sure they’d come from her.
Adam’s green-brown eyes searched hers, then he smiled and gave her a thumbs-up. “I’ll get the helmets. You should put on a heavier jacket, though. Leather’s best, if you’ve got it.”
She didn’t.
Adam frowned in thought, then he tucked the rag into his back pocket and took off his own jacket. “Here—take this. I’ve got something else I can wear. I’ll be right back.” He turned and jogged across the street. Halfway up his driveway, he stopped and called across to her. “The Provigo isn’t very far. Would you like to take a ride along the lakeshore first?”
Clare clutched the jacket to her chest. “Sure.”
“We can stay on quiet streets. I’ll take it real easy.”
“It’s okay. Go the way you’d normally go.” She kicked at a chunk of dead snow. I’ve been taking quiet streets my whole life.
When Adam had disappeared into his house, she slipped off her old ski jacket—the one she’d had since she was eighteen—and hooked it over the wrought iron lamppost at the foot of her drive. It would have to stay there. If she went inside to hang it up, she would lose her nerve altogether. And then, of course, there was the impossibility of telling her mother what she was doing. She slid her arms into the sleeves of Adam’s jacket and let the weight of it settle on her shoulders. It had heavy seams and a satiny lining. The leather was wrinkled, cracked at the elbows, and it smelled like cologne. She fastened the zipper and looked down at her faded jeans and scuffed boots, wishing she could see the entire image—herself in Adam’s jacket. She wished Emma could see her. Look at this, she wanted to say. I can change. She straightened her shoulders and adjusted her head-band, while underneath Adam’s jacket her heart raced.
SOMEWHERE ALONG Lakeshore Road, he called to her over his shoulder, but his words were lost in the engine noise and the rushing air.
“PARDON?” she shouted.
“I SAID ARE YOU OKAY?”
“YES—I’M FINE.”
“IT’S NOT TOO FAST?”
“NO.”
Hands anchored against Adam’s hips, body leaning with his, Clare laughed out loud. It was a brilliant spring day, and she was riding on the back of a motorcycle—a motorcycle, Emma!—with a man she hardly knew. This wasn’t the old Clare Fraser. On this speeding motorcycle, she was someone else—a fate-defying force, mocking the grey stodginess of the stone mansions and churches that they passed. Tearing through the patterns. She turned to the expanse of water on her right, squeezed the padded seat with her thighs, and exulted in the noise, the air, the sparkling water and trees, and the tensed muscles of Adam’s shoulders and back. Right there, so close. His replacement jacket was trimmed with metal studs and chains, and his helmet was gleaming black. He should have been terrifying—much more so than the Jazz Studies Director—but he wasn’t. Re-emerging from his garage, he’d worn an expression so undemanding, and yet so eager, that Clare had felt her awkwardness begin to dissolve. And now, at such speed, so far away from Morgan Hill Road, it lost its grip altogether. She thought of the dullness and doubt in which she’d been foundering that very morning and laughed again. This outrageous, unexpected flight was the most thrilling thing she’d ever done, and she knew that if Adam were to keep going, as far as the Jacques Cartier Bridge, right off the island, she wouldn’t protest.
But at a narrow crossroad he slowed the bike, turned left, and pulled over. Lifting his visor, he looked back over his shoulder.
“There’s a depanneur just there. Will that do?”
She nodded, and Adam shut off the engine. In the sudden stillness, Clare felt her real self—the person who didn’t do these sorts of things, who needed to buy eggs and get home—catch up. She lowered herself clumsily to the ground and fumbled with the chinstrap of her helmet. She unzipped the jacket partway but didn’t dare take it off.
A cowbell rang as they entered the small, cramped shop, which was unnaturally warm and smelled like tobacco and root vegetables. Passing by the front counter, Adam plucked two strings of red licorice from a plastic cylinder and handed one to Clare. The grocer, perched on a high stool, reading La Presse, took note over the rims of his glasses.
“I really like these little shops,” Adam said through a mouthful of licorice. He was moving slowly down the canned goods aisle, his helmet dangling from one hand. “You get the feeling they know most of their customers. Everything’s small scale. You don’t get that at the Provigo.”
Clare said, “Mmm, you’re right” and wondered how he came up with such things. Clever, engaging things to keep the conversation going. It seemed so effortless for him—for most people, actually—that she wondered if she herself were missing some necessary hormone or gene. It wasn’t that she didn’t have ideas. Sometimes, as now, they even came to her right away. The words indifferent service and generic atmosphere were in her head, needing only the most rudimentary grammar to be transmitted. But as she imagined those words irretrievably leaving her mouth, the pathway between her brain and her vocal cords seized up. She took a bite of licorice and hugged the motorcycle helmet.
Near the end of the aisle, just above her head, she spotted a tin of Érablière Bélanger maple syrup and took it down.
“Aren’t they the same Bélangers that live up the street?” she said. Pointless, but better than nothing.
Adam glanced at the tin. “I’m not sure. I don’t really know them.” He then looked at Clare, frowning, and waved the stub of his licorice in her direction. “You know, there’s something I’ve been thinking.”
She replaced the maple syrup and hugged the helmet tighter. She imagined what he was going to say: that he’d had enough of her boring contributions, and could she please, for God’s sake, say something interesting.
“What’s that?” She held her breath.
Adam hoisted his helmet and wrapped his arms loosely around it. “It’s about our street, sort of. I was thinking—I’ve been living there almost twenty-five years now, and you know, I don’t know a damn thing about any of my neighbours? Nothing important, anyway. It’s pathetic.” He paused, still frowning. “I’m kind of a hypocrite. I complain about how impersonal modern society is, but I don’t do anything about it.”
Clare exhaled. “I know what you mean. I mean, not that you’re a—I meant myself.” Her cheeks flushed. “Sorry, I didn’t—”
“No,