I'm the Only One Going in Blind novel · Chapter 7 of 24

Chapter 7: Repair Tag 4471

Grady's Cycle was a low brick shop on Oberlin Avenue with a bell on the door and bikes hanging from the ceiling.

I went in at ten past nine with a bandaged hand and a bike tube I didn't need.

The owner was at the register, a heavy woman with reading glasses on her head.

She looked at me and said, "I saw the video."

"Which one?"

"Both." She jerked her chin toward the back. "He's in the stand room. He hasn't said ten words to anyone since Tuesday. If you upset him I'll hit you with a wrench."

"Understood."

Dustin was at a repair stand in the back, with a wheel clamped in front of him and a spoke wrench in his hand.

He didn't look up.

He kept turning the nipple, a quarter turn and then a pause, the way I had watched him do since he was fifteen.

I stood on the other side of the wheel.

"Hey."

He didn't answer.

"I'm not here to say sorry or to ask you to say anything. I bought a tube. I'll go in a minute."

His hand stopped.

For a long time he looked at the rim of the wheel.

Then he reached over to a spike on the bench where the repair tags hung, and he tore one off.

He picked up a pencil and wrote on it with his back half turned, his body between the tag and the shop window.

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