A few days later Avery and Alistair were waiting in the van for the start of the Care for Kids Fun-Raiser Bike Ride. Outside the van, the grass between Naito Parkway and the river was packed with vendors. Everything was fluttering leaves and sparkling water, but nothing looked beautiful to Avery. She couldn’t see the quintessential Portland she was supposed to capture in her decorating of the Elysium.
“Body Biscuit?” Alistair asked meditatively. They were both wearing spandex bicycle suits in the brand-specific green of Global Body Biscuit. Venner wanted King & Crown to be a whole lifestyle brand, which might help with their unexceptional viewership (although it might just sell biscuits).
“I haven’t ridden a bike in twenty years,” Avery said.
“You never forget.”
Wasn’t that the truth? She hadn’t slept since Merritt had arrived on set, and the more tired she became, the more her memories of Merritt tormented her.
“I got you this.” Alistair held out a paperback book. “It’s a romance. It’s got a happy ending. My mom reads them.”
Alistair’s mom worked in the front office of a mining company and read books about the Winchester Mystery House. Anytime Alistair had offered to take her there, she’d declined, saying, Oh no. The good Lord gave me all I need right here, which in Stone did not make the Lord look very good. Avery and Alistair’s mom did not have much in common.
“Thanks,” Avery said.
“The Untouchable Canyon,” Alistair said, as though the title might cheer her up. “‘Lucy Sunderland was born into wealth, but she pines to run free over the moor.’ You want to run free over a moor, don’t you?”
Avery looked at Alistair. His blue eyes were full of sympathy, but he never got it quite right. King Cobra for grief. An enormous arrangement of plastic dahlias because he said his love for her would last forever, like plastic, which took four hundred and fifty years to biodegrade. Still, she would take his dahlias over any diamond solitaire.
“What’s a moor?” Avery asked.
“It’s a heath. A fen for shooting grouse.”
“You miss Stone.”
“Do not.” He took out his phone. “Cheer you up?”
He cued up a video. The America Wyoming Foundation had put in a swimming pool for the twenty days it was warm enough to swim in Stone. The video made her feel worse. Alistair was good. The world was full of good people, and she wasn’t one of them.
A loud knock on the van window startled them both. The back doors flew open.
“Hello, you beautiful Barbie dolls,” DX declared.
She too was dressed in a bicycle suit, although hers was black and sleek, like the outfit of a superhero.
“I was going to come up tomorrow, but I called Greg and he said you were riding in this kids’ thing, and I was like, I frickin’ love kids. Here.” She picked up a small cooler she had brought with her and offered it to Avery. “Hi Song sushi. Your favorite. We were in San Francisco for breakfast this morning, so I picked it up. I had to keep it on dry ice. The guy on the helicopter had some problem with that. Something about sublimated CO2. I said fuck yeah! Next time I’m filling a whole fucking bathtub with dry ice and we’re flying overnight to Nepal.”
“The guy on the helicopter,” Alistair said, shaking his head with a smile. “Would that be the pilot?”
“No. He was just this guy we picked up in San Fran. I flew! Feminism is flying your own chopper.”
Of course DX flew. DX probably prepared fugu fish for her entourage, had sex with her boyfriend in the cockpit, and recorded a new song that had gone platinum…all in the time Avery and Alistair had taken to squeeze into their Body Biscuit suits.
Alistair hopped out of the van and gave DX a full-body hug. “Cheer Avery up for me, will you? She’s blue. I’ll go give out our free biscuits.”
DX took the seat next to Avery.
“So, you and this girl?”
“Me and this girl nothing. She doesn’t want to see me.”
“Did you break into her house? Tie yourself to her bed?”
“No!”
“Don’t you think you should at least try?”
“To get myself arrested?”
“To get yourself arrested for love.”
Greg appeared at the open doors.
“Sorry, Avery. You’ve got to get out there. Photo ops. Hi, DX.” He looked wary. DX was not the person you wanted on the set of a well-organized decorating show, especially not with the TKO boss sniffing around like an auditor.
“We’ll talk more,” DX said. “Let’s go ride the hell out of this race.”
Avery made her way through the throng of vendors. One hour of hawking Global Body Biscuits and a few of hours of shooting: She could do it. Filming had always exhilarated her. A ten-hour day just made her want a twelve-hour day. But now all she wanted to do was lie in her hotel room and watch reruns of any show but King & Crown.
Alistair was passing out samples, his charm in overdrive. It took a lot of charm to sell energy bars that tasted like dirt and Body Biscuit’s Around the World Energy Shot, which tasted like turpentine.
“You want to fly around the world?” Alistair asked a passerby. He tossed the woman a sample. “Now you can.” To Avery he whispered, “Ponza is over there. I swear he doesn’t have a real job. Why isn’t he chasing after someone with a scandalous paternity lawsuit or a nose transplant or something? Anyway, the race starts in an hour. We’ll ditch him.”
Avery sat down behind Alistair and opened one of the small plastic vials of Around the World. Alistair grinned at the crowd, talking enough to make up for Avery sulking in the back of the vending tent.
Eventually, the crew arrived for a quick product-placement shot. Venner came up behind Gould, the cameraman.
“Around-the-world energy. Red Bull’s a 747. This is a rocket,” Venner said. “I just went to China! Bam. Japan! Bam! Paris! Bam! Let’s go again.”
Avery took another shot. She wasn’t tired anymore, and her heart rate had sped up.
“Again,” Venner said.
Gould’s camera sprang at her. Alistair knocked back the same empty bottle four times. One. Two. Three. Four. DX zipped by. Venner called “action.” Avery took another shot.
“Again. Action. Cut. Bam! Pow! China. Again.”
Then one of the production assistants was holding the handlebars of a bike in front of her.
“It’s too big,” Avery said. “I don’t remember how.”
She felt jumpy energy sear through her body. Everything was vibrating. Maybe there really was something to the Global Body Biscuit line.
“What’s in those shots?” she asked Alistair.
“You didn’t actually drink all those, did you?” he asked, suddenly noticing the empty bottles. “You’re supposed to pretend. Here, drink some water. Get it out of your system.”
“I feel okay,” Avery managed.
Someone fired a starting pistol.
“Just take it easy,” Alistair said. “I think it’s legal speed. It’s not good for you.”
He was wrong, though. The first mile was all uphill, but the shots had kicked in, and she felt light and free. Her bones vibrated. She pedaled faster. She imagined Merritt watching from the sidelines. Merritt would see her moving so fast, so gracefully, her body a flash of green. Merritt would think, She’s so strong and athletic. What a good cause. She loves children! Merritt would be waiting for her at the finish line. Oh, Avery. I was wrong to be so angry. Maybe Merritt would think she looked good in green spandex. Maybe antifreeze green brought out something in her eyes.
She thought she heard Greg (or maybe it was Gould) calling, “Cut. We got it.”
She pedaled harder.
“We’re done,” Alistair yelled.
Avery wasn’t listening. She was moving fast. They had climbed a hill, and now she was on the downward slope, racing toward a conglomeration of office parks. Faster and faster she pedaled. She was at one with her bike. Forget Pilates. She needed speed.
“Woo-hoo!” someone yelled.
Avery saw a flash of superhero suit, then DX’s wiry body bent over the handlebars of a BMX bike.
Avery thought she heard Alistair yelling behind her, but she couldn’t stop. Stopping meant thinking. Stop and the King & Crown contractor was painting over vintage wallpaper in the beautiful Elysium building. Stop and the only memento she had of Merritt Lessing was a memory. Stop and tomorrow would be—
“Avery, wait! No! Not that way!” Alistair’s voice was far behind her. “Aves! The road!”
Alistair didn’t know. Avery needed to follow DX on some wild quest. She needed to fly a helicopter full of dry ice. She needed to kiss Merritt on a busy street and not care who saw.
She saw DX flying down the road before her. They had left the other riders behind. Everything was a blur. Then, in one beautiful, sweeping movement, DX flew up the side of a concrete embankment. Avery saw her suspended against the blue sky, and then Avery was racing up the same embankment. She was soaring. She could do anything, and she would win Merritt back. She would learn to fly because she was a rocket. Avery looked down. She was airborne. Then, with a crunch of metal and gravel, she was not.