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“You want to go back to waiting on tables while I work in the machine shop?” There was sarcasm in his voice. I fought the urge to blurt out my information in a fit of pique. I kept my temper and tried to prove my point.
“We were happy then,” I said.
“Maybe you were. Want little, get little, be happy—wasn’t that your philosophy? I had bigger dreams.”
That was too much! I remembered the ambitions of my youth with aching clarity, ambitions he had trampled. The veils of nostalgia cleared. I’ll take no more insults, I thought. Let the new Mrs. Wolfe have him; I can’t be bought. Horns honked, pedestrians muscled their way across intersections, the cab turned down the block to my apartment, returning me to the flow of the present.
The cab pulled to a stop next to the locked bicycle. It had lost its brilliance in the months chained to the signpost. Dirty, beginning to rust, its remaining wheel bent, it was no longer an object of speed and power. I got out of the taxi. “Yes, well, here we are. You’ve seen the last of me,” I said and shut the car door with a flourish.