A MAN NAMED JOE Sonya Feibert I met a man named Joe last night. I met Joe because he was riding my bike as I walked home after work, bikeless. It was dark and the desert air was cold by the time I left the brewery and prepared for a longer journey home than I’d hoped for. Movement out of the corner of my eye caught my attention. A bike, and the person riding it, came into view. I zeroed in on my water bottle nestled in the metal holder on the bike bar. “Hey!” I shouted in that moment of realization. “Hey...that’s my water bottle.” Joe hesitated for a moment. He slowed. He rolled over to me. “I think that’s my bike,” I said. “I found it,” he said defensively. “Okay.” “I don’t want any trouble,” he said. “Okay. Thank you for inding it.” “It was unlocked.” That was fair. Rushing to work after a soccer game in the park, I hadn’t locked my bike. That detail slipped my mind until we were closing for the night. The realization hit me around 10 p.m. I’d stayed busy enough all day, passing out beers and cleaning the brewery, that I hadn’t given my bike a second thought. I ran outside to look at the bike rack. No surprise, but the little bit of hope I’d had vanished: my bike was gone. Too embarrassed by my carelessness, I didn’t say anything to my coworker. I would walk home. It was ine. It would be ine. And now, here was my bike in front of me, with someone else straddling it. “Thank you. Thank you so much. I thought I’d never see it again,” I told Joe. Joe got of the bike. He wheeled it to me.
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