– It’s a fucking chop shop.

Paul kicks a milk crate full of pedals.

– Bike thieves suck.

Andy bends and lifts his own bike from where Timo dumped it on the floor.

– That’s a movie.

They all look at him.

Paul starts picking through the pedals.

– What the fuck are you talking about?

– The Bicycle Thief. It’s a movie we watched in Humanities.

He’s inspecting his bike, searching for outward signs that Timo has ridden it. Marks he’ll have to avoid looking at for fear that they’ll remind him of what a dildo he was, not locking up his bike.

George lifts the edge of a blue plastic tarp to look at whatever is tented beneath.

– They show movies in Humanities? Fuck, why didn’t we take that class?

Paul chucks a rusty pedal at Andy’s foot.

– Because we’re not super mutant brains like your mutant brother.

Andy ignores the pedal, clutching both the brake levers on his handlebars, making sure the action has stayed springy in the two hours the bike was gone.

– It’s not that brainy of a class. Just reading and talking and stuff. Writing a few papers.

George shakes his head.

– And watching movies. Only movie we ever got to see was the car crash movies in Driver’s Ed.

Hector is squatting next to a snaked pile of chains. He finds a broken one and unclasps the master link, leaving himself with two lengths, neither the perfect eighteen inches he prefers.

He chooses the shorter of the two and drops the other.

– It is a good movie?

George stares at him.

– It’s a bunch of people who got creamed on the highway.

– No, the movie Andy’s talking about, the bicycle thing.

Andy remembers the movie, the way it made him feel.

– Yeah, it’s, you know, it’s sad, depressing. But it’s a good story. Black and white. It’s in Italian. You have to read the subtitles.