The Back of an Envelope

At the foot of the hill on Congress a bike has stopped for a man with a pencil.

The bike is a red Schwinn in front and a blue cargo trike behind, joined by a steel spine with every weld showing. Dot did that, the man on the saddle says, when you look. She took tomatoes. He holds the bike up with both feet flat on the road. In the trike's bed sits a crate knocked together from floorboards, with flowers painted on it, badly, and in the crate stand twenty-four quart pots in newspaper gone dark with water. You count them. Twenty-four, you say. Twenty-four, he says.

The man with the pencil used to carry mail. On the back of an envelope he draws a crank, a bolt, an arrow. By June the left crank fails, he says, and hands it up. Where you headed? East Twelfth, says the man on the saddle, putting it in his shirt. There's a wall.

A bell rings behind you. A cargo trike goes past with a bucket of cut flowers, the woman standing on the pedals. Lisa, says the man with the pencil, to no one. She turns east.