The Bicycle Courier – Part 2: Margin Notes

The poem arrived on a Thursday, which was wrong, and she knew at once.

It was folded in a small envelope, left at her depot with no name, only a sketch of a bicycle. Freja unfolded it in the yard, still in her helmet. The handwriting was neat and a little nervous.

Every Friday, a wheel on the cobbles, a bell, a laugh, three minutes late. I have learned the sound of one bicycle among all of Copenhagen. I am out of practice at saying things. Will you let me try?

She read it twice. Then she clipped her helmet, jumped on the bike and rode.

The city flew past: the lakes gold in the evening light, the cafés spilling onto the pavements, the bridge over the canal humming under her tyres. She took the corner on one wheel. She braked outside the shop in a squeal of rubber, and Jonas was standing on the steps, holding the green book.

"You came," he said.

"You wrote."

"I was terrified."

"It's the best poem anyone's given me." Her voice shook. She sat on the step beside him, still breathing hard. He opened the book. In the margin of the last page, he'd drawn a bicycle with two small figures riding it.

"Can I ask you something?" said Jonas.

"Yes."

"May I kiss you? I would like to have it in the margin."

"Yes," said Freja. "And if you say stop, you must write me one poem a day for a year."

"I would anyway."

She kissed him, quick and then slow, her gloved hand on his corduroy sleeve. He kissed her back with a gentle, awed sweetness, ink-stained fingers rising to her cheek. The evening sun spilled across the street, and a bicycle bell rang somewhere, bright and clear.

When they parted, both of them were smiling.

"Green?" he asked.

"Green," said Freja. "Very green."

The green book now travels between three hands. On the last page there is a new drawing: two bicycles, and a bookshop.

More romantic stories: Salt and Sugar · The Chess Club · The Glassblower's Daughter