three views of a bicycle

The bicycle had lain on the side of Clifton Street for eight days. It was a little boy's bicycle, designed to look like a police car, with smart black and white varnish and a police badge painted on the seat. It had a flat tire, and the passers-by wondered if some careless boy had abandoned the bicycle, and whether he was being reprimanded by his mother.

Mr. Bentley parted the curtains of his sitting room and saw the bicycle still slumped on the curb. He remembered when he was a young boy how much he had cherished his red five speed bicycle. One day he came home to find that his mother had donated it to be melted for the war cause.

The bicycle sighed. Eight days ago he had chased a burglar bicycle down this narrow street, a routine job for a veteran cop. But a nail had been waiting to snare him, and now he lay injured and destitute. He was growing rusty in his inaction. All day he lay on his side, peering into the sewer through the grate, where the wan sunlight illuminated the yellow eyes of the rats below. On the sixth day an attractive lady bicycle passed him on the street, giving him a helpless shrug as she was maneuvered away by her driver. The bicycle missed his old life of heroism, and the sensation of cleaving the city air with his pedals.