Page 33 of Life Out of Order

Alba: I’m watching Rosa and Caralora make a ghost bike. We are in Rosa’s parents’ garage in West Rogers Park. The Gomolinskis just moved here two days ago, so the garage is full of boxes with random-seeming words like FRAGILE CHICKEN and WINTERIZING written on them in Sharpie. Rosa peels the tape off a box labeled GHOST KIT. It contains white and black spray paint, a set of alphabet stencils, an abundance of plastic flowers: roses, sunflowers, daisies, peonies. Caralora lays out plastic sheeting on the cracked cement floor and wheels in a battered yellow Huffy that reminds me of the bike I had when I was twelve. I sit on a folding chair. It’s a hot morning and I’m already thinking about taking another shower. A breeze comes in through the open garage door, but it stinks of cooking oil and burnt coffee. C-lora is wearing a blue tank top, a purple bra and shorts. Her hair is braided and pinned up. Rosa is wearing a paint-spattered lab coat with the sleeves ripped off. I am wearing my usual black jeans, black T-shirt, black Docs. My hair is stuck to my neck. Rosa says, “Just looking at you is making me hotter, Alba. Could you go inside and bring us beers?” In the kitchen, Charisse and Gomez are unpacking glasses. “Why do we have to wash them again?” Gomez asks plaintively. “We washed them when we packed them. Hello, Alba, how goes it?”

“Okay,” I say. “We’re making a ghost bike.”

“Again? So, not okay,” Charisse says. “Who is it for?”

“A girl named Lily Hanko. We knew her from Critical Mass. She was only eighteen.”

“Oh, no.” Charisse and Gomez both stop what they’re doing and stare at each other, then at me. Gomez says, “Was this the girl who was killed in that hit and run on Leavitt?”

“Yeah,” I say. “We asked her family if they wanted a memorial and they do. People have been leaving stuff on that corner anyway . . .”

“Is it the same driver?” Gomez asks.

“They think so,” I reply. “But it’s never the same car. The cars were all stolen. He’s gone before anyone can get to him.”

“But why?” Charisse wonders.

“Let us know if we can help,” Gomez says.

“Come with us to chain it up? People might not mess with it if they know you’re involved.”

“Sure. Let me know when you’re ready,” Gomez replies.

I grab three beers out of the twelve pack in the fridge (which otherwise contains only condiments) and return to the garage, where C-lora has started to strip the gears off the bike. Rosa hands me cardboard and stencils, but I decide to freehand the sign. I begin sketching Lily’s name and depressingly brief dates in pencil. Rosa uses sandpaper and steel wool to roughen the painted parts of the bike so the new paint will stick better. We don’t discuss any of this; this is the third ghost bike we have made in the last six weeks, and we are good at it now, and we are angry.

Caralora tapes up plastic for a makeshift spray booth. She and Rosa test spray cans, decide that it is not too windy to leave the garage door open. “I’m not planning to asphyxiate myself for the sake of better coverage,” C-lora says. We all don respirators. Rosa sprays white primer over the whole bike, tires, seat, everything, and the bike ceases to be cheap and ugly and becomes a somber ghost bike.

We relocate to the cool of the kitchen while the primer dries. Gomez and Charisse are upstairs; we can hear them calling to each other from room to room, searching for an errant box. The air conditioner sucks the paint fumes into the house. The doorbell rings, so loud and unfamiliar that we all jump; upstairs, Charisse yelps. Rosa makes her way through the echoing house and comes back with Zach. He gives me a quick kiss. Rosa hands him a beer and doles out a set of the house keys she got from the locksmith this morning.

“Look who’s here,” Caralora says. “Come to mingle with the hoi polloi?” Gomez has had Zach working on a direct action that the rest of us are not allowed to know about, and Caralora is irritated about it; in the past only C-lora and Rosa got their own projects. Zach and Gomez have been out somewhere for the last three nights. This morning Zach appeared on my doorstep, told me the action was completed, came inside and fell asleep in my bed. I left him a note and here he is, looking somewhat rumpled.

Zach just smiles. “What are y’all doing? Oh.” He reads the sign over my shoulder. “Another one?”

“Yeah,” I say. “We all knew her. She was nice.”

“Well, damn,” Zach says. “I’m sorry.” He makes the small circling gesture that means causal loop in our private code. No one sees but me. Uh-oh.

I finish drawing Lily’s name and begin to fill the letters in with some black acrylic paint. The only brush Rosa can find is tiny; I’m glad because it takes a long time to paint each letter, and this gives me something to do. Gomez orders pizza for lunch even though some of us say we’re too hot to eat. Zach reads about the hit and runs on his phone. Rosa and C-lora spray the first coat of white enamel over the bike.

Pizza arrives. We eat it without much enthusiasm. Gomez and Charisse have to attend a ward meeting because people have been shooting at drones and yesterday a dead drone landed on a kid in Indian Boundary Park. The 50th Ward is officially anti-drone and pro-child, so Gomez has proposed a no-fly zone and the City Council is dithering about it. Ward meetings these days are mostly people yelling about things none of us can control. After they leave, the rest of us sit in the kitchen feeling queasy from the air-conditioned paint fumes and the pizza heavy in our stomachs.

Zach looks up from his phone. “We should get this guy,” he says. Everyone perks up.

Rosa says. “How?”

They all look at me. “No clue,” I tell them.

“I have an idea, or actually, it’s Older Alba’s idea,” Zach says. “What if we could make use of Alba’s tendency to vanish under stress—?”

“No,” C-lora snaps before I can respond. “That’s a shitty idea. What if she gets killed?”

“Hush, Caralora,” I say. I want to put my hand over hers, but then I feel too self-conscious and I don’t. “You know I’m alive years from now. I’m not saying I’m indestructible, but I have more confidence in my own longevity than most people could.”

“I really, really do not want to make a ghost bike for any of us,” C-lora says. “And this isn’t even our mission. Unless you think the driver is targeting these girls for their politics?”

“It’s within our power to do something beneficial for the community,” Zach replies. “Isn’t that what we do?”

Rosa says, “What’s the plan, Zach?”