Reif Larsen - I Am Radar

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.

He glanced in his dentist’s mirror. He could see neither the police officers nor much of anything, really. It was dark. Truly dark beneath this underpass.

Holy mother of God. His heart was pounding, but he continued to bicycle forward as best be could, hoping not to crash into the walls of the tunnel.

“Blow me shivers!” he said, out of sheer nervous energy, the words echoing off the concrete underpass.

It was not quite the line he imagined he would say if this were a book or a movie, as it sounded more like the catchphrase of a randy pirate, but it was all he had to offer.

Rule #101: We are more than our words & our words are more than us.

Somehow, he emerged from the underpass without calamity. He was just beginning to wonder where the hell he had ended up when he reached the top of a slight hill, and there, looming ahead of him like a giant oasis, was the Meadowlands Stadium and the mess of the Xanadu mall behind it, all aglow in construction lights.

In truth, he had expected another seizure to overtake him. There were way too many signals going on inside his brain for there not to be some kind of electrical malfunction. He waited for the darkness to come calling, but nothing happened — besides the percolation of adrenaline streaming down his legs, he actually felt okay. Better than okay. Like a frickin’ champ.

Blow me shivers!

As he bicycled into the mall area, he was astonished by the vast amount of light illuminating every square inch of the road, the construction site, the building, the parking lots. At some point he must have passed beyond the boundary of the pulse, across an invisible barrier that separated the worlds of light and darkness. He stared at a streetlight as it buzzed above him. Such a simple thing, but a miracle nonetheless. The blackout already felt like a dream.

The mall complex was a maze of construction fencing and trailers and backhoes and dump trucks parked at odd angles. Radar glided among them all, trying to remain inconspicuous as he cut through various work zones abandoned for the evening. As he approached the behemoth of Xanadu, its hideous striped siding glowing eerily in the light, he wondered how on earth he was going to find the sender of the message amid all of this. Charlene was right: the place was not even open yet. You could spend days wandering its cavernous interior. It was not even clear how you entered the complex, considering that much of the building was blocked off by an imposing moat of construction barriers. The developers were insistent on this point: You can look, good people of New Jersey, but you better not touch.

Fearing that the police from the highway might reappear, Radar decided it was best to get inside as quickly as possible. He doubled back along the frontage road and found an unmanned gate in the chain-link fence. After stopping his bike, he discovered, to his surprise, that the padlock had not been secured. Maybe the contractors had grown complacent. He squeaked open the hinges of the gate, shuffled his bike inside the barrier, and closed the gate behind him.

He was in.

Ahead, he saw the entrance to one of the multilevel parking structures that cradled the mall in a great cement palm. Above him, a massive red-and-yellow-striped structure turned and inclined skyward, like a giant HVAC duct. This had to be the indoor ski slope. According to the plan, people would come and park in these lots on blistering ninety-degree days, they would come and rent skis by the hour, they would ski up and down an artificial hill chilled to subfreezing temperatures inside this giant HVAC duct, and they would laugh and high-five each other’s gloved hands and say, “Friends, this is really living.” Radar had to admit it sounded pretty nice. Particularly the friends part.