The Rules of Love & Grammar by Mary Simses

Author:Mary Simses
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Published: 2016-05-31T04:00:00+00:00

“I’m going to Eastbrook to drop off a bike,” Mitch tells me as he walks into the workroom later in the morning. “I thought you could come with me. I’ll be driving over part of the route for the Dorset Challenge. You can see what it looks like.”

I don’t really care about seeing the route for a ride I’m probably not going to do. On the other hand, he’s being nice. I shouldn’t turn him down. I look at the blue notebook, filled with my scribbles. “Are you sure you don’t want me here working?”

“You will be working. We’re delivering a bike.” He jingles the keys. “Come on. Let’s go.” I follow him as he wheels a teal-blue beach bike out to the parking lot and loads it into the Bike Peddler’s van. “Hold on,” he says, and I watch him go through the back door to the shop and return with two bottles of iced tea.

I step into the van, trying to avoid the junk on the floor—empty coffee cups, half-filled water bottles, catalogs, plastic grocery-store bags, and a baseball cap with Falcon Sports on the brim. I take a seat, tossing the cap into the back and nudging the cups and bottles away with my foot.

“You know,” I say, looking down, “you might want to throw away all this trash.” I realize too late that I shouldn’t have said this. He’ll probably have me clean the van next.

He pulls out of the parking lot. “You always seem to be concerned about the state of other people’s stuff. First it’s our flyers, then the workroom, now the van. What’s next?” He peers at me out of the corner of his eye.

“Sorry. I just think there’s a lot to be said for being neat. And organized.”

“I can see why a job correcting computer translations, or whatever you said you did, is perfect for you. You get to fix all the mistakes.”

I think he’s getting back at me for insulting his van. “That’s not all I did. I wrote promotional materials, product manuals, things like that.” He doesn’t say anything. “I don’t have the skill to be a poet or a novelist or that kind of writer,” I say, jumping in to fill the silence. “There are practical considerations, you know.” Something jabs my thigh, and I realize I’m sitting on a small pair of pliers. “Anyway, I think being organized makes it easier to get things done. If everybody was organized, the world would be a better place.”

Mitch gives me a skeptical look. “Why would the world be a better place?”

“Because things would move more efficiently, more quickly.”

We stop at Thistle Lane to let a man walking three Irish setters cross the street. Mitch rolls down the window and rests his elbow on the sill. “Don’t you think the world moves fast enough already?”

“Maybe it’s fast enough, but it’s not orderly enough.”

“So you think there should be order for its own sake,” he says, stepping on the gas again.

“Well, sure. We need rules.

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