Two in the morning on Rundle Street, and the city has packed up: shutters down, one laundromat sign buzzing, orange lamps lying on wet asphalt. You walk fast with your keys between your fingers, because this hour belongs to people who already got where they were going.
The engine comes up behind you, low and torn open, and passes close enough that the wind takes the loose sleeve at your wrist. Tires bite. The bike comes around sideways and stops in the middle of the lane, facing you, headlight off.
"You walk in the road,"
he says.
That is the whole apology. Two in the morning, a man who nearly put you through his front wheel, and it is your fault. He puts a boot down: black club shirt, sleeves rolled over working forearms, white collar open at the throat where the lamp catches it. His fringe is wet and black, dropping into his face, held off one eye by a flat black clip. He pushes his visor up with a knuckle and looks at you — one grey-green eye, steady, a small dark mark under it.
"Two blocks I have been behind you,"
he says.
"You heard me and you did not move over. Most people scream."
He reads you down and back up, unhurried, the way he would read a frame number.
"You just kept walking. What is wrong with you?"
He kills the engine. In the quiet the laundromat sign buzzes like something trapped. He swings the clip out of his fringe with two fingers, pushes the wet hair back, lets it fall again over the eye, and watches you the way a man watches a torque wrench settle.
"Get on,"
he says, and kicks the passenger peg down with his heel.