Norman had one wife, she went off and died.  He found another wife a few years later.  She did things by the book.  At kale, drink kale, put kale leaves over her eyes at night when she slept.  In the morning, she meditated to classical music and did girl pushups on the rug.  She worked for one of those companies.  The new-age ones, where all the desks are built for standing and sometimes there’s a treadmill built right underneath it.  They don’t use elevators.  They have elevators for the disabled, but everyone takes the stares.  They don’t drink water out of plastic, ever.  There are plants in every corner.  The soap in the bathroom is made of tree bark, the paper towels out of repurposed cardboard.  The whole business is up this way.

Norman doesn’t live by the same codes.  He’s got a bald spot growing on the top.  His eyesight isn’t getting any better, but he won’t go to the optometrist.  He’d rather squint when reading the newspaper in the morning.  On the way home from work, he likes to stop for a burger.  Sometimes he leaves the trash in his car.  He’s not hiding it from his wife, but he’d rather not be judged for his indulgences.

He tries to stay fit.  When he sees his wife doing her girl-pushups, it inspires him knock out a set of twenty, or seventeen, before he hits the shower.  He doesn’t eat the kale though.  It makes him feel like a rabbit.  Maybe he’s allergic.

The couple set different alarms in the morning.  Norman’s goes off second.  His wife is already well into her morning practice by then.  The apartment smells like tea and a special stick that she burns.  The stick smells a little like burnt hair, but it’s good for focus, she says.  Sometimes the sticks make Norman focus on throwing those sticks out the window, back into nature where they belong.

Someone in Norman’s family gets sick, a parent, a brother, someone close.  They get through it, but not before causing ripples in the pond.  Norman gets a motorcycle.  He doesn’t discuss it with his wife first, just goes out and buys a used one with the handlebars way up high.  He doesn’t know how to ride it, but he’ll learn.

The wife shits a falcon when she sees it.  It’s as if he brought home another woman.  Norman should have covered it in kale.  Maybe she would have accepted it then.  They discuss the ramifications.  Crashing, falling, skidding, scalping, crunching, long stretches of road with nothing but the eager snores of the exhaust pipe for input.  The negotiations begin.  The rug is pulled out from under Norman pretty quick.  The wife’s a better negotiator.  He keeps at it.  Three months of lessons.  Curfew, peak-hour blackouts, no mountain roads, helmet, not just any helmet, full helmet and an outfit made of leather.  She slams the gavel.

Norman behaves.  He goes out to the garage and sits on the bike in the evening.  He makes sounds with his mouth and pulls the throttle on the dead engine.  Each lesson feels like one step closer.  He remembers the feeling from being a kid, waiting for summer.  Three months goes.  The first ride is conservative.  He’s back and she’s waiting.  There are tears in her eyes.  Her breath smells like spinach and almonds.

Maybe if Norman could get her on the back seat.  Then she’d understand.  She’d understand why the bulky helmet and the gloves, and the chest protector and the reflectors – why they’re too much.  She’ll understand why long stretches of road early in the morning or late at night are better than any guided meditation.

But she won’t get on.  Not even while the engine is off.  She sticks to her girl pushups and classical music.  She goes to work in a in a business suit, walks up the stairs, makes calls from her treadmill desk.  It works for her, her legs are good.  Firm and tanned with the line on the side.  She keeps burning the sticks and Norman keeps taking his little rides with the training wheels on.

One day, while the wife’s at work, Norman sits on the bike in the garage.  He’s wearing jeans, no helmet.  He kicks it and it’s alive.  His watch says peak hours but his right hand is a revving fool.  Then he’s out on the road.  He keeps the needle steady.  Without the bubble wrap and the visor, it doesn’t take much to feel like a bird.  Bugs crash into his cheeks, but he can’t stop smiling.  He gets it back home and parks it.

The wife doesn’t warm up to it.  She smells it on him.  It smells like exhaust and freedom.  There’s a tug-of-war every time he puts on his leather jumpsuit.  There will be trouble when he returns.  It makes him want to find longer roads.  Higher speed limits.  Smoother curves with less stop lights.  Sometimes he stops and takes the hockey pads off, puts them in a bag and ties it all to the back of the bike.  He stops again and puts it all back on before he goes home.

Then it comes to him one day.  With the gear off and the needle leaning toward triple digits, clarity comes.  The margin of error is nonexistent at those speeds.  His wife’s voice starts in his head.  The road seems to narrow.  The front wheel is hard to keep steady with that voice in the back of his mind.  There seem to be more potholes, more roadkill, traffic picks up.  Then the voice goes and it’s smooth again.

Norman gets home and asks his wife, “What’s going to happen in five minutes?”  She looks up at him from her lotus position.  “What?”

“What’s going to happen in five minutes?”

“I don’t know.”

He smiles, turns, and goes into the kitchen.  She goes back to her mediation.  He tastes some of her, makes a face, and spits it into a napkin.  He doesn’t know what will happen in five minutes either.  He understands that.  He and his wife can do all the guessing they want.  They can make schedules and write things on calendars, but they still won’t know.  It could be a tornado, or papercuts, or a fire caused by a burning stick – or nothing at all. Norman chuckles at the idea.  All the aggravation, the worry, and she doesn’t even know what will happen in five minutes. 

He drops down by the kitchen table and does nineteen and a half pushups.