Chapter Thirty-Four

Cycle-illogical

Brain retardant fog jam was causing editorial skips that led to redaction of key memory, obscuring the moments that had led to him being where he was: in a place with a set of new best friends…who furnished his mental evaluation rooms with the better shapes Humanity had to offer. They lived for riding the bicycles they loved, and when they were off-bicycle for any durational span they’d descend into a morbid sack of slackbaggedness; and at times overcompensate by being loud and feral. 

But they had a life and made him yearn for one too.

He’d pushed the bicycle past the entrance of the Les Cyclistes Four Hotel; the name had created an impression, four was a number he was looking to investigate, and four cyclists gave him a good number of units to have a crack at…and like a lengthening piece of elastic he walked passed and kept going until the name became so powerful it drew him pack at pace, to reread the name just in case he’d got it wrong. He had, it read: L’hotel de Les Cyclistes Fous (The Hotel of the Mad Cyclists).

The two males and one female who’d been riding back and forth and round and round in what looked like formulated acts of cyclomania closed in as Atoll stood at the hotel steps half watching them and half wondering whether he should book into the hotel. Then his eyes were taken by the female as she came close and balanced, feet up, and asked, ‘are you looking for accommodation?’

‘Yes,’ he answered, with next to little consideration.

‘Here?’ she gestured.

‘I suppose…’ he acknowledged vaguely.

‘Then I’ll book you in,’ she decided, putting her feet down, she produced a tablet, ‘single occupancy?’

‘Yes.’

‘Double….bed.’

‘Okay.’

‘How many nights?’

‘Just the one.’

‘It is cheaper to do three…’

‘Okay,’ Atoll agreed. The two males balanced performatively, monitoring the interaction.

‘You can put your bicycle in the foyer…you never know what might happen to a stranger’s bike around here…we are well known, our bikes are untouchless…a local unwritten rule…untouchless? untouchful?…they won’t get touched…they know the drill.’

Atoll didn’t know whether she was trying for humour or just a bit ignorant in the word department, obviously, he corrected to himself silently: it was ‘untouchable’…although doubts started to raise questions, even as he was thinking it.

They were reminiscent of the Marx brothers, but only in so far as the two males generally never spoke…it was like an unknown Marx sister had teamed up with two Harpos. Instead of harps one had a mandolin and the other a ukelele. Their level of playing skill was not stratospheric, but they had an impeccable sense of when their musical input was appropriate. They wore their instruments continually, strung over their backs, ready for the moment their melodic input was required.

‘Are you with luggage?’

‘No, I travel light.’

‘There’s a mall about half a bike ride away, there and back…they’ll do you good cheap luggage. It’s not compulsory, but hotels round here won’t let you in without it… Don’t shop local…it is a tourist trap. And if they see you have a bicycle they’ll charge extra.’

Atoll, knew then he’d made the right decision and he would be well catered for.

‘Uke will take your bicycle up to your room…Uke? Mando? Can you mando the reception. They both replied instrumentally with a chord that seemed to answer even more adequately than words; with a sort of melodic eloquence.

‘My name is Drum, Atoll. Can I call you Atoll?

She lead him to his room, number forty-four which he took as a coded clue that he was in the right place, to create a base from which to venture and find whatever it was he was meant to be locating.

Uke wheeled in Atoll’s bike, and sat crossed legged on the floor holding his Ukulele but not causing any sound, just silently fingering the neck.

‘That a rank bike?’ Drum asked, a modicum of scorn circulating the unstuffing room as she opened the window and swept back the curtains.

‘You could say that,’ Atoll replied, unaware of any associated elements of scorn.

‘We have some spare bikes. While you’re here you can pick an upgrade from our stable of wheeled steeds.’

‘That is a very nice offer thank you.’

We’ll take you down after lunch, yeah?’

‘Yes, sounds good…’

A sweet chord emanated from the Ukelele in alliance with Atoll’s utterance of the words ‘sounds good’ that seemed to carry a well of meaningful worth deep into soul territory…almost bewitching…

Atoll was still concerned about the biscuit situation: was he to maintain the crumby existence or had his efforts led to an upgrade. He hummed and aired internally for bit, and during a pause from Drum’s history of the hotel, hotels in the area, national hostelry and a general hotel history and current data and information, something she apparently did for every customer, time allowing, he blurted out his aching need to know, ‘is this a cake establishment or a biscuit?’

‘Cake, of course,’ she said, a stout come back in which he definitely notice more than a modicum of scorn, that carried the accusation he should not be asking such a question, but he was glad he did. Biscuits would have meant treading water, again. Cake meant traction and moister crumbage. Something he’d yearned with such depth that an Imaginary called, indeed, Moister Crumbage, often visited to mock Atoll’s stuck biscuitisation and general cakelessness.

Drum radioed down to the kitchens that were several floors below ground and asked them to rustle something up. Twenty minutes later a cake stand was wheeled in that was rammed full of cake and cake like substances that took on the appearance of a frozen fountain of fat and sugar.

‘Do you drink?’

‘When it is appropriate.’

‘When is it ever appropriate to pour poison into a cake hole?’

‘Good point…but I mean’t non poison liquids…I’d never touch poison…its a sure fire deficit I can do without…’

‘You passed.’

‘Passed?’

‘The drinking test.’

Drum went to the mini-bar and opened the door to reveal miniature bottles of water from different regions and she started to explain each one.

Atoll sat up and took notice, not to Drum’s tour of the water bottlers and their sources, but he recognised with a slow dawning that the mini bar was also doubling as a Bobvylan Cage…it was too small to enter and close the door without removing his head, but another mini-bar pushed together with this one would create just enough space for him to enter to see if he could pick up any unread worms and liaise with all pertinent Imaginaries.

Drum got on the radio, ‘Mando, will you be joining us for lunch?’

Mando appeared at the open door with a flourish of musical introduction, creating an apt microcosm of joy without being a burden.

They ate until the clock struck two; the cake stand was empty and no one had the heart for a dessert of any kind. The shadow of the curse of the cake had passed for now.

‘Would it be possible to order another mini-bar?’

‘Wow, such thirst, impressive…’

‘No, I mean the actual physical cooing device not the contents.’

‘Well, okay…’

‘Thank you.’

‘Could you get the mini-bar from the Professor’s room, he never uses it.’

Mando and Uke both went off on the errand.

‘The Professor?’

‘Yeah!’

‘Il Professore?’

‘How did you know that?’

That was why Atoll was there, he was sure, he was fated to meet up with the original guardian of the ethical virus. The Prof. must have something he needed to tell him.

The two boys made light work of fridge delivery and played a short, captivating burst of Dire Straits’ …money for nothing and your chicks for free…’

Atoll explained all about the Bobvylan Cage situation. They had never heard of such a thing…he’d probably brought it with him…some entity that was on his side providing it….most likely with Choir involvement. What Atoll was telling them was undoubtably strange. The fact they didn’t get ‘strange’ from it was yet another layer of strange strapped to the roof of a hover car hovering through a whole world of strange. Or perhaps they were just not taking it in and merely displaying dishonest reactions.

‘Bike break,’ Drum announced suddenly. They went to their bicycles that were in the hallway, ‘back in ten,’ she added, and they cycled proficiently along the hallway and down the stairs.

And as stated ten minutes later they returned….with fresh new plans for the afternoon; and a meal out at the cafe area in one of the eateries there, ‘man cannot live by cake alone,’ she’d said.

Drum closed the front door of the hotel and put up a ‘no vacancies’ sign…for to lunch they were to go…

‘Before the village could be called a town a small row of stores were proposed…a project that developed into the eatery quarter, a mock ‘old area’…designed to fool tourists into unwary investment, but backfiring by providing seriously fair quality food and drink at almost reasonable prices. The Communists shat on the Capitalists on that one…’  she told Atoll.

Men in overalls were erecting scaffolding and putting up bunting…

‘It’s some sort of fake queen drive through parade by a propaganda influencer rather than an actual queen, but the propaganda makes it official. We have to dance to the official tune, not least because we are booked for a performance in the post parade furore, as they are billing it. They are not expecting riots, but they are encouraging the incitement of them…

In the end, caught between the last cake episode and yearning anticipation of the next, they eschewed the local food and went back to the hotel for more cake…which they took on the small roof terrace which had a novel portable Vistamatic Trudisplay of the Paris skyline fitted…

Back in the room, that had three extra beds added for the pushbike crew, complete with bicycle themed duvet covers, they were all tired and ready for bed. Team Two-Wheels had a strict bedtime cut off of 10 pm.

The two mini-bars would not do the job and he was considering aloud what else he could use, while Drum was delineating their cycle group’s ambitions. The two Harpos played a little tune, as they did every night, surprisingly they spork the words ‘night-night’ and put their instruments and heads down; surrendering to the coming night.

‘We bill ourselves as entertainment pedlars…you know, peddlers of entertainment of a cyclical nature…on bicycles we ride across the great divide…’ Drum put forth.

‘I’m having a little wonder about removing the doors,’ Atoll said, keeping his business separate from hers.

‘We have a Penny Farthing, which is a modern copy, but an original, first batch, Chopper…a unicycle, which is technically only half a true bicycle…well, I mean it is a full on bicycle experience with ten times the thrill…’

‘Also, it might be worth a snoop round the kitchens, if you’ll agree, usually cold storage areas and the such like are sprouting with Bobvylan Cage potentiality…’

‘Who am I kidding….whenever the unicycle is brought up, it makes me feel treacherous to the bicycle, The Bicycle,  you know the two-wheeled entity observing our every move…’ 

‘I don’t know if you know, but a Bobvylan cage, which is a Sheldrakian wave-pulse actuation toptrometer, enables contact with others…but then I am not sure who these others are exactly, but I suppose that is one of the mysteries I need to find out about.’

‘I always knew crazy bicycle antics were for me. My brothers are older…they were born with wheels for feet and hands for strumming, that’s what our mother used to say, we don’t have the same father, so the bicyclophilia, as it’s called, is coincidental….but a fortuitous one.’

‘There might be some sort of tarpaulin with inherent Bobvylan properties that could be jerry-rigged to work in tandem with the mini-bars, maybe a third or fourth mini-bar…’

‘Tandem? Sorry, you said Tandem? What did you mean?’

‘Not the bicycle, a melding of two parties.’

‘That’s what a tandem is. That’s what I thought…usually people don’t talk of tandems so soon in a relationship.’

‘I am still working on the Bobvylan conundrum.’

‘Do you play?’

‘I have been known to, on occasion…’

‘What instrument?’

‘Oh no, I have no musicality, I mean I can hear it, but I just can’t distill sound out of the silence on my own terms without it complaining about being strangled.’

‘I need more input before being able to position myself. But I am now in a good position to position myself…that’s what I’m thinking.’

‘You need a better bicycle experience, Atoll. We forgot, but I’ll take you to the storage facility where we keep the most valuable of our bicycles first thing and get you some wheels…I have a few beauties in mind…we’ll get you saddled up,’ which hit a dissonant note and led to silence that foregrounded the soundtrack playing in the street beyond the hotel’s sleepy boundaries.

‘What do you know about the professor in room eight? …’ Atoll asked. 

‘He left…I think he was upset about the mini-bar,’ she said sleepily.

‘That is not a good outcome. Do you have a forwarding address?’

But she had slipped into a velospherical slumber; her proud nasal expellations resonating with the stringed instruments… It was as though she was making music in her sleep that she could never dream of making while awake.

Atoll got up and went to the mini-bar, stuck his head in and whispered to anyone who could hear him….but a leaky Bobvylan Cage is an inoperative Bobvylan Cage, unable to assemble the correct Sheldrakian wave-pulse ingredients.

Waking in the Sun mottled room alone with two dormant mini-bars Atoll rose and readied himself to go and find his new best friends because their absence gnawed at him… and the fact they didn’t leave a note gave him pre-abandonment shakes. He grabbed some cake that was on the side, stuffed it in the pocket of his complimentary hotel bathrobe and went to leave the room. The corridor seemed longer than usual, a vacubot went about its dusty, Sisyphean task unable to do anything about the ingrained tyre tracks… She was called ‘Drum’ because she kept banging on about stuff, wasn’t she, he thought. He felt like he should stay in the room and go back to sleep, which he did, hoping that he hadn’t fallen into another trap.