Bike Repair – Part 2: The Corner Café

The café on the corner had steamed windows, mismatched chairs and a jukebox that played nothing but Dutch folk songs from the seventies. Dani ordered two coffees and a plate of stroopwafels without asking, and set them down on the table between them with the satisfaction of a man who had won an argument.

"You didn't let me choose," said Rik.

"You'd have picked the strongest thing on the menu and then complained about it," said Dani. "I'm saving you the trouble."

"That's very presumptuous."

"It's very practical," said Dani, and pushed the plate of biscuits towards him. "Eat. You're shivering."

They sat for an hour, then two. The rain had stopped, and the windows steamed up, blurring the canal outside into a soft, watery grey. A man at the next table was reading a newspaper with his feet on a radiator. A little girl with pigtails was drawing a bicycle on the back of a menu.

Dani talked about his shop, the old bikes he rebuilt for students and the tourists who wanted to ride like Dutch people without knowing how. Rik talked about the thesis he was writing on urban architecture, and the professor who thought bicycles were a fad, and the bicycle he had bought secondhand because it was cheap and then discovered had belonged to a famous poet.

"Which poet?" asked Dani.

"I'm not telling you until you admit my bike is good."

"Your bike is terrible," said Dani cheerfully. "But I like terrible bikes. They have character."

"Like their owners?"

"Exactly like their owners."

Rik laughed, and realised he had been laughing for an hour without stopping.

"Can I ask you something?" said Dani, after a while.

"Yes."

"Why did you stop on the bridge? That night. You could have ridden home on the flat, or waited for the bus. Why did you stop?"

Rik looked down at his coffee. The surface was dark and smooth, trembling slightly with every movement of the room.

"Because I'd been lonely for a long time," he said honestly. "I moved here for my degree, and I've been riding home every night to a flat with nothing in it except books and a radiator that doesn't work. And that night, the tyre went flat, and I thought, this is the moment everything stops, and I'll have to ask someone for help. And I didn't want to ask. But someone stopped anyway."

Dani's face softened. He reached across the table and laid his hand over Rik's, warm and rough from the tools.

"I stopped," he said quietly, "because you looked like you'd been waiting for someone to notice you for a very long time."

Rik's breath caught. His eyes stung, and he didn't look away.

"Can I ask you something back?" he said.

"Yes."

"Would you let me take you to the boats on Sunday? The old houseboats in the harbour, with the little kitchens and the cats on the roofs. I'd like to see what you're like when you're not up to your elbows in grease."

Dani laughed, quiet and delighted. "Yes," he said. "But you have to bring a better bike, so I don't have to watch you wobble."

"Deal," said Rik.

"Can I kiss you, Rik?" asked Dani, very softly. "Here, in this steamed-up café, where the man with the newspaper is definitely pretending not to look?"

"Yes," said Rik. "And if I say stop, we'll finish the stroopwafels and go and fix your shop's broken sign instead."

"Deal," said Dani, and leaned across the table.

He kissed Rik slowly, his hand coming up to rest against Rik's jaw, the taste of coffee and caramel warm between them. The jukebox crackled into another folk song. Somewhere at the back of the café, the little girl with pigtails clapped her hands.

When they parted, Rik was smiling so widely it hurt.

"Green?" asked Dani.

"Green," said Rik. "Very, very green. Now give me another stroopwafel, and tell me about the poet who owned my bike."

"I don't know who owned your bike," said Dani, laughing. "I just wanted you to talk to me for another hour."

"Then I'm talking," said Rik, and he did, until the windows were dark and the streetlights were glowing gold on the wet canal outside.