Russel was small by any measure of a man except personality. Whether the fault of genetics or just a lean diet during his youth, he'd never grown taller than five foot one, or heavier than one hundred twenty five pounds. He didn't blame anyone for his being short. That was just facts. For feeling small, though, he blamed the whole world.
When he happened upon the bike at an automotive trade show, Russel knew he had to have it. Russ wasn't much of an enginehead -- he went to the trade show mostly just to look and to try a few pick-up lines on booth girls, worth the price of admission in his mind -- but the bike looked exactly what he'd waited his life for. The cowling was sleek, sharp in places like an ancient weapon, contoured exactly as a body lying supine waiting for his to fill the space on top and complete them both. It promised to dissolve him. "Lethal," he mouthed, tracing the shape of the bike with a hand an inch above its sacred surface. He spread a down payment over two credit cards and a post-dated check.
He fell in love with the anonymity of the helmet, relished the impunity with which he snaked around slower vehicles. He could thread a needle at one hundred miles per. Nothing could touch him. Even the expensive sports cars were clumsy by comparison. They were all too big.
A pickup truck with a broken tailgate got the better of Russ as he tried to blaze past it. When it left him behind, the bike sped on riderless for over three hundred yards, as though it had never really needed him after all.
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