It was time to leave. The empty Tularosa apartment had tacks and bobby pins embedded in the ratty, brown rug along with ancient hairballs from my fussy male cats. The window ledges were covered in paw prints where they sunned themselves for the last eight years.

       I held the last garbage bag in my fist and stole a long glance out the windows. There was my view of Griffith Park, the observatory and the Hollywood sign. There was the giant jacaranda tree now withered and red, dropping dead, wet blossoms. And downtown: there were the buildings in a grey cluster, circling the hazy lavender sky. I’d exchange one fig tree for our Christmas tree, decorated with antique ornaments, a lemon and orange tree out back. I’d leave a shared deck for a private porch to sip espresso with my sweetheart. I’d depart from Flore Café in search of the one supreme taco truck in Highland Park.

            The last thing to go was my motorcycle, which wasn’t my dream bike at all, but an affordable replacement bike–a right now bike. My favorite bike was Grace Landing, a cherry 1971 blue Honda CB 550-4 with the original paint job, and, she hated Los Angeles.

          She stalled on Sunset Boulevard in the August heat. The potholes on Beverly were hell on her wheels. The stop and go on Wilshire made her start smoking. She seized up, refused to particpate in my hour and change commute to Century City. A beautiful girl with brown hair and blonde bangs told me to ask Roberto because he fixed motorcycles out of his one bedroom apartment in an alley behind Circus of Books in Silverlake.

            “Bring it by,” he said. I towed her to his house and I sipped coffee on his steps, and got a migraine, which were consistent at the time.  Every Sunday after the breakup with the stoner, one look at the sun and rainbow prism zig-zags appeared on faces and cars. When I looked at Roberto, he had rainbow prism horns. I laughed, knowing I had twenty minutes before the puking began. Just enough time to  chit-chat, diagnose the bike and get home to my cool, dark bathroom floor.

             “You have fuses?” he asked.

            “Yep.” I showed him my tiny glass fuses I always kept in my jean jacket pocket.

             “Give me a couple,” he said. Roberto stood in a circle of tools;  three motorcycles deep in friends’ bikes. He had cute flirty orange 70’s Honda in his kitchen (he built if for an ex-girlfriend) and lots of clown paintings on walls. His house looked a lot like mine, with rusty 1950’s blenders and vintage aprons for curtains. Roberto was a dark cloud boy; an ex-junkie with permanently greasy fingernails and a quiet Bad Santa sense of humor. We talked about motorcycle like they were lovers.

            “It was love at first sight. I drove her straight off the showroom floor from Scooteria in SF. Honda in SF right off the lot. The name on her title was “Grace Landing.” Seriously. That was the name of the lady who left it sitting in her garage for over ten years while she collected dust, which is why I had every cable, wire, carb and clutch replaced. New battery. When I first got her, she died on Folsom five times so I’d push her all the way to the Hansen brothers. She took a lot of work and cash to get going. When she finally ran, she started in the fog, hail, rain and even snow. Every day. Every night.  I slid on wet cardboard on hills, I leaned down too far, stalled out on the occasional steep hill, but I never dropped her and she never dropped me.”           

            Roberto nodded and tinkered with a bike he built from scratch. It was matte black with no ignition, no mirrors.  Grace Landing stood next to it. He got her started.

            “I think I finally built the bike that’s going to kill me,” he said, smiling at me then his bike.

       He had a patch over one eye from rogue metal dust that flew in his eyeball while welding his bike. I didn’t know how to respond, but I admired his drive. 

      A year later, I sold Grace Landing to a hipster over 4th of July weekend in LA, when I was a few hundred short my rent. The buyer was a hipster and it was his first bike. He could afford to pamper her.  I’ve sold the clothes off my body for a burrito. I’ve sold lap dances, my own company, the touch of my skin, but selling Grace Landing was the only time in my life I regretted selling something I loved.

              I didn’t realize that until it was too late. 

Smoke by Brian Perkins

    It’s Christmas and I think about Roberto and  Grace Landing. I still look for her on the road, at the BBQ joint on Angeles Crest highway, in parking garages around LA and on Sunset Boulevard. I thought I spied her on the street and waited for the owner to arrive for a few minutes, then bailed, fearing I’d seem like a slimy stalker.

             Roberto didn’t get killed by the bike he built. He shot himself in the heart with an ak 47.

A while later, his bike showed up at my friend’s shop. I bought it, but never got it running. The guys at the shop worked on it, gave it a new battery, tinkered around with it for months on my dime. They tried to start it with the wires, but it was mocking and quiet like Roberto. “I’ll take that one instead,” I said, pointing to a puttering brown 1974 CB 450 Honda, which I still have. When I look at it I think of Roberto sometimes and wonder if he was looking out for me, that he didn’t want me riding his bike. Fucker.