It was a bad year all the way through, weather-wise that is. Fall slogged by wet and gray, and the constant barrage of cold drops hammered their way through my skull reducing me to a chattering human prune. I stopped flinching at the silky hiss of cars slipping over the blackened streets behind me in the half-dark, with their lights tracing erratic trails of red and white in the glassy asphalt ahead. I don't recall a winter when we saw so much snow either, and as if that wasn’t enough of an obstacle every genius with four-wheel-drive had to demonstrate their pragmatism by zipping through the city streets like RV-cowboys out for an emergency latte and a copy of the Wall Street Journal. Most of the Nation’s Capital had been paralyzed by the succession of winter storms, not us. You take the good with the bad right? That’s part of free-living. The disposition of the entire city was for shit by March, and I began to understand why so many Swedes and Russians spend their long months of darkness searching for renewal in the bottom of a vodka bottle. We had a snow storm in April for god’s sake. Spring never really happened, as soon as the temperature broke out of the 50's the mercury fired straight up and everyone was wishing for the ice again.

I was delivering packages as a bicycle-messenger for DC Express in '96, and all of us riders were close that year. It was like the horrors of the weather gave us unassailable common ground. Each morning hailed like a new physical challenge, and those who rode them notched the days that passed like condemned prisoners approaching the final truth. Most of the time, greetings on the street amongst colleagues were reduced to a glance into the other's eyes, glazed discs burning like the red-lined orbs of a prizefighter shuffling after the hollow echo of the bell. If I had time, inside a corner coffee bar with my numb hands wrapped around the steamy promise of a few hopped-up moments of caffeine, I’d nod and share a few words with those other cold-riddled street specters. I didn't waste too many words though, because you’re wasting conversation when you're telling people about things they already know.

Finally summer came on like an open-mouthed blast from the furnaces of hell, and the difference was that I could ride almost naked but it still felt like I was wearing a soggy sweater. Exhaust hung in the sticky air like a nettled web of acid dust, peppering my skin with sooty residue I’d shower off my body in black rivers at the day’s end. Bitter cold, smothering heat, and the inevitable comments in elevators from people who felt compelled to give me some useful commentary on the weather.

One evening at base after working a scorching Friday in August, Galen Morris, told us he was getting married in two months. Most of the crew was in the garage rehashing the work week with the kind of chemically-assisted relief that reduces Mondays to a hazy possibility. I'll never forget the silence that followed his statement, dropped as it was in the midst of our reveling like a Browning sonnet read at the onset of a cockfight. Galen was our fair-haired boy, a genuine WASP pedigree with a previous life in society who by association lent a degree of normalcy to the rest of us. I think the few moments of silence was the registration of our fears that the veneer of legitimacy was being lifted from the recess we called our lives. Galen's father was a high-dollar mining lobbyist who, doubtless, did not recognize his son’s choice of occupations, and it was clear that his early years had not been difficult ones, that his life had been welded from the best of society’s tools. He retained an air of sophisticated well-ness, but without the oblivious arrogance of the well-to-do. I admired his noblesse oblige, as though his endorsement of the working class was more of a sacrifice than someone else's having been piss-poor forever. It made my choices seem more rational anyway, though it wasn’t my decision not to be included in the world of luxury, and what I fancifully called alternative was really all I had to prove my indifference to the facts of my exclusion.

I looked around the garage at the other riders, dressed as they were like urban mercenaries without a conflict, and I couldn’t imagine another white picket fence among them. The truth is that I don’t think most of us considered getting married an option. That kind of activity was reserved for people who had their shit together. There were other couriers who were hitched, but it seemed like they did that in another lifetime - like Greek Orthodox priests who took care of consummating their biological responsibilities before they tackled the spiritual ones.

"I would ride to Hell on a tricycle and deliver a package to Barbarossa himself before I’d sign on for that duty," said K-Bar, breaking the silence after Galen’s bombshell. He stood up by the open bay door where he’d been applying lube to his bicycle chain, staring down at the shiny links with the half-closed eye of a marksman. K-Bar, aka Conrad Kornelski, was a living history of cycle-messengering, a twenty-two year veteran who considered anyone with fewer than five winters a goddamned-rookie. He was an ex-marine who dressed in an assemblage of vintage army clothes and voiced obscure historical references as though they might be part of everyone else's working lexicon.

"That’s where you’d have to go to find anyone fucked-up enough to do it old man," answered, Double Ought, an inner-city rocket who was like velvet on the road, but bristled with defensive invective in speech. K-Bar crossed the grease stained concrete rubbing his hands carefully through a dirty towel.

"If you spent as half as much energy riding as you did talking you wouldn’t have to rest your nose against the backside of the numbers I out up every week," he said approaching Galen without looking at his antagonist. "Congratulations young man, I’m just saying that it isn’t a route I would have chosen." He shook Galen’s hand and gave him a solemn pat on the back.

"Hey man that's great," I joined in pumping his hand. Galen and I had been pretty close since I'd trained him two summers before. I had winced at the softness of the rookie, never expecting him to last that first week.

"Thanks Kev." He told me. "Don't worry," he said raising his hands to the rest of the room. "Call it a great excuse for a party."

A muted cheer followed. We all knew his girlfriend, Mo. She was a femi-Nazi-riot-girrl with outrageous curves and a hob-nailed attitude who took particular delight in crushing wing-tipped egos. Mo used to ride as a cycle-messenger until she took an in-house job at a legal firm a few years back, so she knew exactly what time it was. She had soft red hair that glowed gold in the sun, and green eyes you could see a half block ahead in heavy traffic. Before I knew her I used to ride by locked-down and puffed-up, like department store window trim sailing by on a draft of my own self-importance. I could feel her rush over my skin though whenever we passed. It’s funny how blatantly juvenile my social tactics could be, and how ineffective; she completely ignored me. I'm like that, all geared-up for a moment I pretend isn't there.

It’s like the way I deal with this job. I swear that every winter is my last, holding out that promise as though my destiny is waiting somewhere for me to get my shit together. I try to convince myself that I ride a bicycle in traffic everyday because of the freedom I feel. That I chose this life because there are so few real frontiers left and riding makes me more aware of living. I know that the energy which fuels me when I’m cutting across three lanes of thirty mile an hour traffic makes me feel powerful, stronger than death, and I am more afraid of not finding that power than I am of death. I am not always able to delude myself though, and I recognize how similar my job is to the rest of my life, that I am careening recklessly around corners blind to everything except the block ahead because I cannot focus on anything which is not hurtling dangerously towards me. Every time I go into the emergency room to get stitched-up or have a bone set, I feel like a twelve year old who has misbehaved, except I am thirty-two now and it's not so cute. Last fall I was laying on a metal table while a tech who was closing a scimitar grin on my forehead was lecturing me about helmets, and I could see a Peanuts cartoon on the lamp she was using through the little hole in the cloth covering my face. In it Snoopy was thinking "Ain't life a stitch?" I thought it sure is, remembering the car door that had catapulted my into the street, and that moment I knew I needed to get off the bike. But when I laughed at my belated awareness I felt a weird tugging at my scalp, and the woman pressed her hand over my eyes and told me not to move again in very short syllables.

But I always think of getting out. Sometimes I dream-up business schemes which I imagine will re-insert me into the normal lifestyle of day-timers and credit cards. Grandiose ideas I enlighten my associates with which probably sound like what they are, another half-assed toss for the ring. I’m always a couple of paychecks short of reality though, and it’s much easier to pimp my productivity riding through vehicular traffic instead of negotiating the mental commerce of real life. I can fancy myself some kind of late western hero, bolting around swerving cars and zig-zagging across town for the greater good of unknown names on envelopes. In other words, I don’t have my shit together which is maybe why when I heard about Galen and Mo I felt less grand realizing that they could focus beyond the next intersection.

We all took turns offering Galen our opinions and best wishes until he finally slipped off somewhere to smoke a fatty with Double-Ought. I left the smokey garage wondering about the strange enthusiasm we always have for finished weeks which had contributed nothing towards improving upon the last one. I pedaled up the alley examining the littered ground and matching it to the random priorities which snapped in the wind tunnels of my head like forgotten laundry. I thought of a Tony Robbins infomercial I once saw, during which he spoke of the "unlimited power within" inside all of us. I was sure I’d have more of it if I wasn’t wasting it in the streets or drowning it in Jim Beam and micro-brews. Anyway, it wasn’t what he was selling that struck me, it was how he was doing it, with a big "By-God-American" grin and a well coordinated slacks and tie ensemble which was the definition of togetherness. I've always felt that perception is the key to selling; if you look like you know what you’re doing, most people are too far into their own heads to catch on that you don’t. That’s why most idiots spend their lives on the couch begging cable TV for the answers to the good life. I mean, somehow this country was built without L. Ron Hubbard, Montel Williams or The Psychic Friends Network, but we’ve got generations of Americans now who can’t get up and crap without getting an okey-dokey from the tube. Sometimes I think the whole idea is to get everyone arranged behind the same giant carrot, which can be good or bad depending on which side of the carrot you're on.

Back in my lifetime before cycle-messengering, I had it all figured out. I was doing research at the Securities Exchange Commission and writing four-liners about blue-chip mergers, stock offerings and annual reports for the front page of a high-tech news journal out of Boston. It was the late-eighties and the cash was thick and furious. I had an expense account, a closet full of suits and I never ate at home. My girlfriend thought it was cool that someone else did my laundry, and we considered ourselves connoisseurs of obscure theater and fine country inns. I was eventually replaced by a data-base service when the human factor was trimmed from the leaner payrolls of the Bush era, and I found out it wasn’t I who’d really taken advantage of those heady years. Though I'd gleefully spent my way to popularity in every yuppie bar on "M" street, no amount of slurred networking had prepared me for another writing job, even in the world’s capital of wasted print. Margaux found a more stable lawyer-guy who owned a portfolio and what he claimed was a framed Dali doodle on a dinner napkin, and I found a cheap basement to rent in a neighborhood I would not have driven through a few years before. The transition was not easy. I had grown used to ignoring the hard edge of poverty. I was probably still a Republican when I first started riding, but that didn’t last long. There’s a brutal realism on the streets which can’t be drowned out by first-hand knowledge of the necessity of the military-industrial complex.

On that humid evening in August after I left the garage I was threading my way through the last gaggle of bumper-bound suburbanites, mulling over an old idea of starting a tour-guide business. There is an incredible amount of commerce involved in the tourist market in Washington, DC, and I’m always amazed at the bland nature of the average experience. I know people are basically sheep, but they always seem to go for the shiniest package. I’d run a different kind of guide service. Not one of those ersatz trollies stuffed with mid-westerners who never seem to figure out exactly what’s on display, but a savvy back-street prowl through the belly of the city. Of course the standard fair of monuments and cavernous marble structures would be included, but so would ribs at the Florida Avenue Grill, night tours of the National Cathedral grounds, favored bar-crawls of the soiled and delerious, and detailed accounts of the myriad debaucheries committed by our illustrious fore-fathers in the very halls of government.

Ahead of me the cars were arranged in a quivering maze of steel. Impatient drivers were still miles from home, stuck in their idling tons of hot metal in the middle of the city. I dropped my head to slip beneath the extended mirror of a stalled van and came up grinning on the other side. I was dreaming of fifties-style checker cabs converted to colorful stretches, with olympian leg-room, crazy sound systems and full wet-bars in the back. And who could better lead a genuine tour of the Nation’s Capital than couriers? We knew every short-cut and bad gin joint, all the cheap eats, and the real character and flavor of the city. It could be the hip urban experience, a wired cross-section of civilization served up by its upstart progeny. We would be anti-Martha Stewarts with bad attitudes and nose-rings, just the thing to sap a little hot air out of the cluster-fuck of brown noses for whom status quo means survival in this town. DC is a city full of modern day courtiers who have their faces lined up to the asshole directly ahead of them in a que that begins at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and winds all the way around the beltway. No one wants the cart turned over, so everyone just moves forward whenever an opening presents itself. The "DC Shuffle" I call it. I know it well.

"What’s the hell’s the matter with you people?"

You people.

Some guy was hanging out of his window yelling at me as I rode by on the double-yellow line between the stalled traffic, like my mobility was an affront to his lack of progress. I felt a warm trail of sweat trickle down the center of my back as I stood up and churned away.

"I don’t know," I hollered. I didn’t even bother to look back.

I called Galen later that night and we met in Adams Morgan for a beer. He had his curly black hair pulled back in a pony-tail and I wondered again how much trouble I’d have if I had his looks. I’m not kidding - he had a face that just stopped people cold sometimes. Purty as ary angel I crooned at him one drunken night from the back seat of his car, but I wasn’t really making nice. It could be very humbling to be with him sometimes because I knew why the women really stopped to talk to us, and I hated when they started looking around after they figured out Galen was not for them.

"So when’s the date," I asked him. Dull red neon washed the room in subdued, nocturnal tones, and light gleamed off his glasses to reflect in wavy red lines on the table top.

"We think November, but we’re trying to keep it low-key. You know, justice of the peace and a little party maybe. I don’t know. Maybe we’ll do the church thing, but I just don’t like all that hype." I noticed he was stoned, his eyes had a distinctive fuzzy pinkness, and his words were delivered soft and slow - a little crisp at the edges.

"To hell with that," I told him. "You don’t need to impress anyone by spending money." And I really felt that way. It bothers me that keeping up anymore means folks have to go into hock greasing the palms of an entire industry feeding on the union of two people.

"Well if we did anything it’d be for our parents, you know. They’d like something more traditional."

"Right, right," I said. I traced a pattern in the condensation on the side of my beer glass. "You know I had no idea you guys were that far along."

"Yeah, I’m a little surprised myself, but I’m telling you man, I know this is right."

I was nodding along as he shifted forward in his seat.

"You ever feel like its time to move on?" he asked. I was still nodding but I looked down into the bubbles of my beer.

"Since I’ve been with Jen it seems like a clear path has opened in front of my life," he said. " Like I can finally see where I’m going, and all those big questions that have been rattling around in my head aren't so important now. You know what I mean?"

I imagined myself making dinner with her in the tiny kitchen of a cottage somewhere, or looking up over my reading to watch her cross the room.

"Yes," I said. " I know what you mean."

"So what’s up with you man? You sounded like you had something to say on the phone."

I studied the room around us for a moment. It was half full already at nine o’clock, and I watched animated mouths around us discussing the important events of their day. Grave items I was certain I did not care about. Most of the clientele had the self-important look of slumming Capitol Hill staffers or their corporate shills, and I tried to reconcile them to the daytime faces that fell into practiced smiles whenever I dropped another papered appeal onto their desks. I despised their office after the working day was over, though without them I would not be employed, and I was sure that they equally reviled my after-hours social deportment. Athough we existed on opposite ends of the social spectrum, we were co-conspirators across a thin line of toleration in the same endless paper chase.

"Call me a nut," I said turning back to Galen. "Drag me out back and flay me with garden tools, but I think I have stumbled upon the answer to our future financial security."

He grinned across the table.

"Oh you’re a nutcase shorty, there’s no question. Whose flock are you after now?" His smile turned a little wickedly at the corners.

I moved to the front edge of my chair and held my hands pressed together prayer-style, but with the tips of my fingers pointing across the table at him, and my thumbs resting beneath my chin. "I want to sell this city," I told him.

"All-righty." His mouth was the only thing that moved.

"I mean I want to sell the finer points of this city, to travelers who are tired of some poindexter in a head-set telling them how great the Tidal Basin looks when the cherry-blossoms are in bloom. I’m telling you it could be very interesting if the right folks were along to explain it."

"The right folk being you?"

I pointed a finger at the ceiling and waggled it in the air between us.

"Us. We’re messengers. We are the living conduits of this town, the pulse - the rhythm - the beat. No one can touch our intimate physical knowledge of the subject. And you my friend, you would be a natural," I told him leaning back. "People love you, they take one look at your face and think: trust." I spread my hands out over the table, palms up. He was staring towards the door kind of chuckling and shaking his head but I wasn’t done, not by a long-shot. "You me and Mo," I told him and his eyes came back to mine. "Brother we would be unbeatable."

I went through my whole spiel, gaining velocity with every beverage. I am very eloquent when I like what I’m talking about. Yeah, I can see I was searching for some outside validation for my dreams, some other voice to make them more real, but that moment I was sure it could work. I won’t pretend that I didn’t think of Galen’s obvious money contacts either, I took my fantasies seriously. I felt that if I could just harness his security to my ambition, I could finally get off the ground. So I was ramming the idea right between his eyes, and it sounded good. I was liking it more and more over the course of the evening and I was thinking maybe it wasn’t just the heat and the beer. We left after a few hours and I thought I had him. He promised to speak with Mo.

I was flushed and smiling when I unlocked my bike in front of the bar. Folks were strutting along the crowded sidewalks, and the mixture of languages chased by jaunty music pouring from the open windows of numerous clubs twisted melodiously through the night air under the soft summer lights. It even felt like it was finally cooling off a bit. I wobbled a little as I rode down the street, and I liked the way anonymous neon distorted my focus, trailing my periphery in wide colorful bands. I thought of the unlimited possibilities which were available if you kept your head up. If you just paid attention.

There is a cool September breeze pushing through the open upper windows of the church. It has been a beautiful fall, everyday a climatic gem. A stunning array of flowers blankets the altar, russet-hued promises of new life in the advancing season. The minister has just asked the people present if there is anything anyone would like to share with the congregation. I’m squeezing the edge of the pew in front of me trying to dream up another church scenario, one with Bach and bells and soft white rustling, and I’m saying into the black pits behind my eyes that there is more than this, lives are worth more than the last few words of the living. But I do not want the trickle of people making their way to the front of the church to end, because I know when I walk outside, it will be over. I hate this last choice the world has made for us. I hate that it is finally beautiful outside, but everything inside is wrong.

In the front pew Mo’s face is twisted pink, her eyes are buried in ugly red veins and her shoulders jerk forward every few moments as though small currents are running through her bones. I’m looking out that open window into the sun, and I’m remembering the quick smile she gave me a month before when I pressed my mouth to her ear and told her that I longed for what they had. "What do you mean Kevin?" she'd asked softly, but her lowered eyes told me that she knew.

I hate myself for wanting it to be more, some dramatic episode that left heroes, or gave us something to pound our fists against. I squeeze my hands into balls because I can’t bear to let my mind know the truth, that there is no perfection and Galen’s life simply stopped. That it was not a gory accident, some front page story of gridlock combat or even a random bullet in the non-stop carnival of violence in this city , but the freaky nature of a bad valve in an otherwise perfect body. There was no drama. It was heartbreakingly plain, bad science that’s all. So he’s gone, and my pathetic dreams are left to me to mock my self-absorption and the empty promises I tried to sell. It's like the surface of reality expanded into my fantasy for a mili-second and sucked his memory down, closing over the receding ripples of his laughter and forever darkening his red-rimmed eyes. No one will see the great things we were going to do. No one else will ever know what he had to offer the world besides a stoned grin cut short by a closing elevator door separating him from corporate USA, where another stranger had smiled to themselves thinking: what a beautiful man, what a beautiful waste.