The bus was God knows where, so he had to borrow Carl’s old bike. The tires were bald and the brake-pads unevenly worn, but it still moved. He started pedaling as hard as he could, making the bike spin anything but smoothly beneath him. Sal clicked it up a gear and flew down the hill toward the center of town, the wind whipping his hair back.
As he closed in on the hotel, the chain jumped off the bike. The handbrake wasn't of much use, leaving him no choice but to take his feet off the pedals and grind them along the ground in a makeshift, foot-operated brake.
He steered the bike up onto the sidewalk, almost colliding with two panicked pedestrians, and came to a full stop in front of a shopping cart filled with corn, parked in front of a grocery store.
A couple of small children peeked out at him from behind the cart.
Children of the Corn, he laughed to himself as he walked in the direction of the hotel.
Jack would have laughed.
“Piece of shit,” Sal said as he tossed the bike up against a wall.