Now, as the red and blue lights illuminated the police officer’s expression of blatant incredulity, Radar felt the same sinking feeling in his loins. He knew he would crumple under the lightest of cross-examinations. He would never be able to sustain a narrative in which his mother loved chicken so much that she would send him out on a long excursion in the middle of a blackout. It was hopeless. They might as well arrest him right now for perjury, libel, and slander.
Much to Radar’s surprise, however, the officer seemed to relax and then waved him on.
“You better get the old lady some chicken,” he said. “But be careful, you hear? Lot of ways to get hurt right now.”
“Yes, sir. Of course, sir,” Radar said. He wanted to hug the officer, and again had this dangerous impulse to declare his newfound identity as a black man who was no longer black. Again, he resisted the urge and instead asked, “Did they figure out what happened yet?”
The officer shrugged. “I’m just doing what they tell me.”
“But do they think it was a terrorist?”
“Look, I don’t know any more than you, son. And frankly, I don’t give a damn if it was al-Qaeda or the Russians or who now. I’m going on my seventeenth straight hour.”
“I don’t think it was a terrorist,” said Radar. “I think it was an accident.”
“Well, that’s some kind of accident,” the officer said. “How ’bout we just keep moving and keep this street clear, all right?”
“Yes, sir,” said Radar. He wheeled his bike a couple of paces and then turned back.
“I’m with you,” he said.
“All right, son,” said the officer. “We’re with you, too. God bless.”
“God bless.”
After this, Radar switched off his headlight and rode on, commando style. Whenever he saw a blockade or an emergency vehicle, he would veer onto a different block, weaving his way northward. At some point he realized he did not actually know how to get to Xanadu and East Rutherford. In his haste to leave the house, he had consulted neither map nor atlas to untangle the web of highways and byways that knitted the Meadowlands into an impenetrable tapestry of cloverleafs and interchanges. Once he got far enough north, there was actually no way to safely cut east across the swamps by bike. Xanadu mall was not a biking destination. There were no bike paths in this land of automobiles, NJ Transit, and the occasional Boston Whaler.
He had actually been to East Rutherford only once, when, as a twenty-four-year-old, he had attended a Bruce Springsteen concert at the Continental Airlines Arena. He had gone alone, and from the highest possible point in the stadium he had watched the Boss roll and tumble and sweat and stir that magical Jersey elixir with his golden Telecaster, and afterwards, streaming out of the stadium with the rest of the blissful New Jerseyans, he had felt a great pride for his home, as if this were the one true place on earth. The concertgoers had a dazed look on their faces, as though they had just witnessed Jesus turning water into wine, and maybe they had. For one night, at least, the Boss had transformed those swamps into a paradise. After that show, Radar never had the desire to go see another concert. Sometimes, glimpsing the divine just once was enough.
But now, trapped by the constricting geography of wetland and darkness, he was not sure which way to go. He tried to conjure a mental map of the Meadowlands, tried to picture Bruce’s voice calling out to him from somewhere in the middle of all that night.
He rode on, blindly, past rows and rows of darkened homes, past a cemetery, past a silent gas station, through an intersection filled with stalled cars, past an empty city bus frozen like a submarine in the middle of the road. Everything and nothing looked familiar — it was all part of a long and endless Jersey sprawl.
He was just about on the verge of giving up and seeking help from some bystander when out of the darkness he saw an oasis of red light appear. It looked at first as if an alien ship had landed, but as he got closer he saw that it was in fact the sign for Medieval Times, that beloved Lyndhurst medieval-themed dinner theater that featured live jousts as you downed your mutton and gruel. The sign was such a startling sight, after he had seen no lights at all, that Radar nearly crashed from the beauty of it. He felt like a caveman witnessing fire for the first time.
Radar had staged his birthday party at this establishment every year without fail between the ages of ten and fifteen. The number of friends in attendance had slowly dwindled from eleven the first year to only one in that final year — a snotty, heavily myopic boy named Jurqal, who had an unhealthy obsession with anything to do with the Middle Ages. Radar had not been back since. Even now, seeing the glowing Gothic letters in front of two armor-clad knights preparing to collide in mid-joust instantly brought back the same bitter, coppery taste in the back of his throat — a Pavlovian recall of the rejection he had experienced years ago when confronting Jurqal’s sole RSVP.
But how had Medieval Times kept their lights on? What kind of electric sorcery were they practicing inside there? He stared at the letters, hot and proud against an unending sky.
Medieval Times! they shouted. Medieval Frickin’ Times!
More important, he now knew where he was. The entrance to the highway was just beyond. It was the only way across those swamps, and he decided to risk it.
Rule #34: If the choice is between no and yes, choose yes (unless you must choose no).
He turned on his headlight and hit the on-ramp at full speed, weaving around three stalled cars. And then he was on the highway. It was a rush. As he passed more stalled cars, he slalomed between the stripes of the centerline, then drifted to the breakdown lane. How often did one get to bicycle down a highway like this? The world was his private playground.
He noticed the cars beginning to thin out, and then he was passing a tow truck as it was levering up a sedan. Next to the truck was a police car.
Drat! He looked in the dentist mirror attached to his helmet and saw the police car start up and turn around behind him. Lights ablaze. It was coming for him. Ahead, the highway was completely open, devoid of cars. A prison. He saw the stiff rumba of red lights blanket his world as the police car came up right behind him. The car gave him a quick woop woop of its siren: •, a careless little “I” in Morse code.
The car’s loudspeaker came to life: “Please pull your bicycle to the side of the road and dismount.”
Radar responded to this directive by bicycling harder, swerving this way and that, like he had seen gazelles do on the savanna.
“PULL OVER TO THE SIDE OF THE ROAD! THIS IS NOT A REQUEST! THIS IS AN ORDER! YOU ARE NOT ALLOWED TO RIDE A BICYCLE ON THIS ROAD! PULL OVER NOW!”
Up ahead, he saw the highway slope down a grassy knoll. An idea occurred to him. He had once seen a pretty awesome getaway performed by a cyclist in a movie on one of his father’s pocket televisions. He was not sure whether such a maneuver could work beyond the confines of a two-inch screen, but at this point anything was worth a shot.
Radar slowed his bike and pulled over to the breakdown lane. The police car rolled to a stop behind him. In his dentist mirror, he watched as the officers slowly got out of their car. It was then that he remembered that the getaway he was thinking of had actually been performed by a man on a motorcycle and not a recumbent bicycle.
Crap. Well, it was too late now. He couldn’t risk getting caught. Not now. Holding his breath, he waited for the policemen to approach, and when they had almost reached him, without warning, he swung his bike to the right and pedaled down the grassy slope, which led to a darkened little outcrop of bushes. Behind him he heard the policemen yelling and he winced, half expecting a volley of bullets to come flying his way, but then he was riding through the trash-covered underbrush, the branches and bracken whipping at his windshield. He went up and over a culvert before spotting a chain-link fence up ahead. He was certain he was going to crash into it and that would be that, but at the very last possible moment he saw a small hole in the fence, which he just managed to steer through, only to suddenly feel himself go airborne, launched without warning off a four-foot ledge. Time stood still. In midflight, he prepared himself for the spectacular wreck that was sure to follow, but somehow, miraculously, he managed to land on two wheels, swerving wildly before righting the ship. His jerry-rigged flashlight went flying off his bicycle, the hula girl shuddered, and he heard something snap in the chassis, but he paid no heed, and pedaled on like a demon, following the road as it cut beneath the highway through an underpass.