Getting My Fix

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This house I'm renting includes a mountain bike. It's nothing fancy, but it allows me to get anywhere in town within minutes. I just strap my bag across my shoulders and take off to the grocery store, the bookstore, the coffee shop, wherever. My car sits in the driveway for days at a time, my freckles are coming out in patches across my shoulders, and my legs are always a bit tired. It's a great feeling.

However, I got a flat tire a few days ago, and with no tools (or wherewithal) to fix it, I posted a plea for help on Marfalist.org. Within a day I had a couple of offers to help. The first was from a girl named Emily. Emily said she could probably fix the tire herself, so we arranged a time for her to come by the house.

When she showed up, I immediately recognized her from a poetry reading I had attended at Marfa Book Company the previous week. I had noticed Emily sitting behind me because she was wearing these eyeglasses with gi-normous O-shaped frames that would make Elton John go bananas. This is how it is in Marfa; the same faces keep popping up, wherever you go. As one of my Marfan friends told me, "The guy who seats you at the restaurant is the same guy who rings you up at the grocery store. Everyone has two or three jobs -- all of them part time or just some of the time."

So, Emily showed up - minus the Elton John eyewear, but not without a conversation piece. Over a black bra, she wore a thin, white T-shirt with the words "Fuk Nation" defiantly scrawled across her chest in black marker.

Wallflower she is not.

I welcomed her into my house and showed her my bike. She deftly analyzed the damage and commenced the task of taking the tire off of the bike to work on it. As she did this, we talked -- or rather, I interviewed her, as I often find myself inadvertently doing when I meet new people, particularly when they wear shirts that say Fuk Nation on them.

I learned that she has two undergrad degrees (one in history and another in studio art) and that she speaks fluent Russian and studied in St. Petersburg for a while. So impressive! I thought about how I attended a university whose mascot was a lumberjack and felt it best to keep that to myself.

I then asked her the question that all visitors to this town ask of full-time residents: What were you doing before Marfa and how did you end up here?

Emily, who grew up in Texas, was living in Brooklyn and working as a youth programs coordinator and translator for a Russian arts foundation in NYC. Then she kicked around in Los Angeles for a bit. On a road trip home for the holidays, she discovered Marfa and loved it. She "found herself" applying for a job at the local chamber of commerce and got it, and that was pretty much that.

I thought about where I was at her age (her age being 25). I was living in a small ranching community between San Antonio and the Mexican border and writing for the local newspaper. I had moved there without knowing anyone, because it was the only job offer on the table after graduating from college. My first front-page story was about a rodeo cowboy. We started dating soon after -- a "city mouse meets country mouse" kinda tale that involved numerous highs and lows, a marriage, a divorce and plenty of lessons learned.

What a ride, my twenties! A series of seemingly haphazard experiences that now, in hindsight, appear perfectly calculated because they led me to where I am today. In some ways, it's how I continue to see my life. It makes it easier to accept the parts that don't make sense.

But I digress...

After several minutes of chit-chat with Emily, I realized that she wasn't making progress on the tire. The bike was old and rusty, and the poor girl had toiled so much with the wrench that beads of sweat dotted her forehead. I didn't want her laboring any more on my behalf. I told her we should give it a rest and think of a Plan B.

Emily put the wrench down and thought for a moment. I wondered where Fuk Nation was on the map.

Emily was the first to offer an alternate plan. The nearest bike shop was The Bike Man in Alpine, about 25 miles away. She had a bike part that needed to be returned. Emily said she would lend me her bike rack so I could take my bike to The Bike Man and get it fixed. In return, I could take her bike part back to the shop for her. Sounded good to me.

That afternoon, with Emily's bike rack on my car, I visited The Bike Man, also known as John Elsbury. John shuffled some jobs around to work me into his schedule, and my bike was ready to go within a couple hours. If you're ever near Alpine and your bike needs attention, go see this man.

I was back in Marfa within a few hours. When Emily came by the house to get her bike rack, she invited me to have drinks with her friends. So, that evening I sat at an outdoor table at Maiya's Restaurant, sharing a bottle of Pinot Grigio with Emily and another young woman who also once lived in Brooklyn and now serves as an intern at a local gallery. We talked and laughed until the moon took its spot among the stars.

That evening I pedaled home on my rusty bike with a brand-new tire -- thankful for Emily, for The Bike Man and for life's haphazardness.