“Thanks!” I beamed. “And you...get some hot chocolate or something. You look like you’re catching a cold.”
He chuckled again. “I’ll see if I can’t do that, ma’am.”
Revik glanced at me. I saw a smile on his lips just before he stuffed his dark head in the helmet, laying his hands on the handles. The guard stepped closer, not looking at Revik at all now. I took the passports and zipped them up in my jacket pocket. I stuck my head in my own helmet. As we pulled away from the booth, I saw the guard looking after me. He raised a hand in salute and I waved back, then clutched at Revik in alarm when he gunned the accelerator.
“Don’t push it!” he said loudly.
I laughed and, wonder of wonders, felt him smile.
He hit the gas harder and the bike leapt forward.
By then, the sun had dipped below the horizon. Fire-red clouds spread out over the ocean, and the sky behind them was dark indigo, almost the color of the Barrier.
He banked a few hours later, pulling us off a Vancouver city street and onto a small highway. He took another ramp just before the fork to Lions Gate Bridge.
I glimpsed a sign pointing to the forested dark of Stanley Park.
Exhausted, I gripped him in a desperation borne of fear that I might loosen my hold at a critical moment and fall off. He bumped us over the grass to meet the bicycle and footpaths near the water and turned off the headlamp, so we were riding in the dark. My eyes, stinging from fatigue, glimpsed dark trees to our left, a curve of bay and bobbing masts from the boat harbor on our right. Skyscrapers rose behind the docks, curved cylinders of glass that lit up the water, like a wall of green-blue eyes, staring into the mouth of the ocean.
We rounded the peninsula and a shock of cold air hit as wind gusted into the bike, forcing Revik to correct before he gunned it again. Water flew by in a blur, the image vibrating. As the bike’s tires rose to meet the sloping footpath, I saw a small lighthouse with its light off and a swath of moving darkness behind it, broken by reflected glows from slow-moving ships. I could just make out the white paint with the red horizontal stripe across the lighthouse’s base.
Revik parked the bike below two sets of stone stairs that met under the lighthouse itself. Before I realized we were stopping, he’d already turned off the engine, leaving us in an eerie quiet with only wind and lapping waves.
Unfastening the chin strap, he tugged off his helmet. Spikes of sweat-wet hair stuck up over his head.
Using a foot to dislodge the kickstand, he climbed off. I watched him walk directly to the stone base of the lighthouse. By the time I made out the square, metal panel, he was already kicking it in with his booted heel.
Seeing where this was headed, I took off my own helmet and climbed off, shocked when my weight on my legs sent pain from my tailbone all the way up to my shoulders. My arms hung like dead weight and I stood there for a moment, clenching and unclenching my hands inside the leather gloves, trying to get the feeling back.
I watched Revik finish knocking in the panel.
Then he turned, his face a stark white after being behind a tinted visor all day. Behind where he stood, a three by three hole gaped in the cement.
“I suppose a hotel is out of the question?” I said.
Walking back to me and the bike, he opened the motorcycle’s seat storage, pulling out a small, blue backpack and blankets, then a cheap, battery-powered lamp. Igniting the last, he set it down just inside the hole in the stone wall and crawled through, pushing the backpack and blankets in front of him.
Inhaling a last gulp of salty sea air, I crawled in after him.
Once inside, I turned around in the surprisingly large space, and leaned against a curved cement wall.
I watched in disbelief as Revik crawled back to the opening climbed back out of the hole. He lay the metal panel back over the opening...and I had a sudden vision of him hammering it back on, trapping me inside.
“Hey!” I said, close to a yell.
He bent his knees. He met my gaze, visibly startled.
“Where are you going?” I said.
“To hide the motorcycle.”
“Oh.” I exhaled in relief. Then I was embarrassed. “Oh, okay.”
Seeming to feel one or both, he straightened, then disappeared.
I just sat there while he was gone, numb with fatigue. I was starting to nod off when he climbed back through the rectangular opening.
After rearranging the panel door behind us, he sat on the opposite side of the lamp as me and began pulling off his leather gloves. In the yellow lamplight, dark circles shadowed his light eyes, which were glassy with fatigue.
I reached over his lap for a blanket, trying to ignore the faint reek from the empty beer bottles and trash littering the dirt where we sat. I eyed a used condom just past the circle of electric light and unzipped my jacket, running fingers through my matted hair.