That goddamn Buick screamed around the corner with its rusted chrome hubcaps shooting off like flying saucers from Plan 9 from Outer Space. Talia’s face and her yellow whiskey eyes came to me in that frozen millisecond like an old 3D image in a ViewMaster. I can’t remember what she said when she left me the night before, but there were those eyes from the day we met four years ago, and that’s what I saw as the tires smoked skidwild across the asphalt, and the cracked tri-shield hood ornament narrowed down as a laser reticle focused on its target, which was me. But I was late because Talia took the alarm with her when she left, and I had to take the commuter train, which was delayed that morning by a single minute due to a signal malfunction.
And in that single minute I had left behind my folder of incorrect BTU/h and face velocity specs, turned back to retrieve it, noticed I sat in gum, tried to peel the Doublemint residue from the ass creases in my ruined pants, cursed the late train’s engineer, the Belfort Transit Authority and all other government municipalities, the lazy shit that left a wad of chewed gum on my seat, and Wrigley’s for selling it. Now I was over a minute late and half jogging down 9th Street toward my office to present the faulty specs in that folder to my rigid boss and her impending disappointment, when that Banff Blue Buick lost control around the corner and missed me by an angel’s wispy hair with me just standing there like a pathetic lamppost imagining Talia’s face. The car plowed through a defunct newspaper rack and straight through the front wall of Delacroix Grinds Coffee. The front doors shattered like a kaleidoscope nebula of sparkling glass that crunched grotesquely under the feet of the drunk as he staggered out bloody and confused from behind the wheel. He could not grasp the twisted metal, the oil, smoke, steam, and terrified screams as he bent over and wretched on the morning’s lone casualty, Delacroix, in his now baggy apron after Lap Band surgery to heal his self-image, even though customers always left reviews saying that he was truly special and one of the last good guys. Talia would never leave a review for me like that anywhere, on account of the arguing, Stiizy, my third AC sales job in a row, and the silent weekends over the last year. The concussed crowd began to realize what had happened as they emerged like brick-dust zombies, covered in tiny diamond shards from the front door glass, which looked strangely beautiful and prismatic in the morning sun. Had I been a minute earlier, maybe it would have been me getting plowed over, maybe Talia would have forgiven me again and we would get back together for the millionth time, but I knew then she was never coming back, and Delacroix died right there under the weight of those shocked stares, the drunk’s tearful refusal to accept blame as he ran from the scene, and the still spinning front axle of that goddamn Buick.
Image A Red Buick from Pixabay.com
