CHAPTER 1
The sickening crunch-thud of metal on metal startled William out of his reverie, but not in time to avoid running his Camry, albeit gently, into the bumper of the blue Saab in front of him. He slammed on his brakes, of course, but whacked the Saab nonetheless. The Saab was available to be whacked by virtue of its having been plowed into on its front passenger side by the world’s largest and most ancient Cadillac, thus producing the sound which had, however belatedly, alerted William.
He sat for a moment in his stalled Camry, heart pounding, and assessed the situation. The driver of the Saab was getting out, slowly. She was a young woman, with blonde hair, blue jeans, and big sunglasses. She walked around to the front of her car, peered at the point of connection, and then stood looking at the Cadillac, which was lodged firmly into the entire right front end of her car. The impact had pushed the Saab firmly into the opposite lane, and cars coming from that direction were now stopped, unable to get around. The Cadillac had come in from a small side street, or maybe even an alley, dead-ending into Primrose, which everyone was now blocking. The big old car clearly hadn’t even stopped.
The blonde’s hands were on her hips and her lips were tightly pursed. No one had yet emerged from the Cadillac. William noticed all of this numbly, and then finally thought to pay attention to himself.
His seat belt had caught him, saving him from smacking his nose into his own steering wheel. In fact, the impact had been so slight that his airbag had not deployed. Assuming it even worked. It was not something that had ever been tested. Anyway, he felt unhurt. Nothing was bleeding, anyway.
I should get out and help, he thought, but didn’t move. Then, after a minute, another thought wandered into his stunned brain. Oh, I’m a witness. Followed a little later by, Oh, not just a witness, but a participant. Insurance. Cops. All that. Right. But he still didn’t move.
Now the passenger door of the Cadillac slowly opened. A tiny old lady scrambled out of it, saying something to the blonde woman that William couldn’t hear. The blonde woman pushed her hair up out of her eyes with an impatient, raking-fingers gesture, and responded angrily to the old lady. She was now holding a cell phone, and intermittently speaking into it and to the old lady, seemingly at random. Then they both turned to look at William’s car.
Finally, William came fully to his senses. Okay, he’d just been in an accident. It wasn’t his fault, and he was a secondary character at best in this little drama, but he’d been involved nonetheless, and he needed to follow this through. His heart was now starting to beat more normally. He unbuckled his seat belt and opened the door.
But his legs were trembling as he set his foot on the pavement. He stood up, steadied himself against the car door for a moment, and then walked up to the front of his vehicle.
However slight the impact, it had been enough to drive his front bumper rather firmly into the Saab’s rear bumper. He leaned over a moment and studied the point where the cars connected, and then walked up to the two women.
“I didn’t see you!” the old woman was exclaiming, shrilly.
“Well I was right here!” the blonde said. There were two spots of color high on her cheeks, and a flush of red on her neck and chest area, which William could easily see, due to the extremely low-cut white blouse she wore.
Then he shook his head, clearing his vision of flushed cleavage, and stuck his hand out, sort of halfway between the two women, in a vague gesture of friendliness, hail-lady-well-met. “Hi, I’m William. That’s my Camry.”
Both women stopped and sort of stared at him. Neither said anything.
In the oncoming lane, a black SUV was trapped directly between the right front flank of the Cadillac and the red sedan behind the SUV. As the red sedan was similarly wedged between the SUV and the traffic behind itself, a stalemate quickly evolved. The driver of the SUV, a florid, heavily-jowled man in his twenties, began to lay on his horn, adding to the general chaos and unreality of the scene.
William, the blonde, and the old lady all stared at the SUV driver. Whereupon he stopped honking his horn, rolled down his window, and yelled, “Get those cars out of the road!”
William glanced back at the terrible mess that was the front end of the Saab, and then the significantly less terrible mess that was the front end of the massive Cadillac. Then he looked back at the SUV driver and said, “I’m not sure we can do that right now. You might have to turn around.”
Both women looked at William again, as if he had made the most profound and far-reaching statement of all times. The SUV driver, on the other hand, let out a string of barely logically connected cuss words more suitable for the San Francisco 49ers’ locker room after a devastating overtime loss than a small, previously peaceful side street at three o’clock on a sunny Wednesday afternoon.
William took a few involuntary steps back from the vitriol of the jerk in the SUV and glanced away. His gaze rested on the house, directly across from the alley, in front of which this entire business was taking place.
It was a hideous house, painted at one time many years ago a sort of Pepto-Bismol Pink, now mercifully faded to merely Disgusting Dirty Little Girl’s Sweater Pink. It was a typical post-turn-of-the-last-century bungalow, with a completely inappropriate boxy 1950s addition plopped on top of it, making it a two-story house in a working-class, one-story neighborhood. The weedy, overgrown yard showed some signs of having been recently raked, and some weeds pulled, though whoever had done the work had given up near the edges, and a big pile of detritus sat near the walkway. The disproportionately large front picture window had been cleaned, although imperfectly, or perhaps the glass was just stained from many years of neglect and lack of love. A handwritten “For Sale by Owner” sign was forked into the hard dirt of the yard, near the sidewalk, standing slightly askew.
Just the sort of house Audrey would fall madly in love with, William thought, with less than perfectly reverent respect for his wife.
“Hey, MOVE THOSE FUCKING CARS!” the SUV driver shrieked, his ruddy face turning purple with rage.
William looked back at him and shrugged.
Finally, the red sedan behind the SUV managed to back into a driveway, turn around, and make its escape. The SUV driver, now liberated, rolled up his window, slammed his vehicle into reverse, and laid rubber on Primrose Street in his haste to exit.
In the quiet that now reclaimed the street, William, the blonde, and the old lady regarded one another. “You came flying out of that alley,” the blonde finally said, though with a low and apologetic voice. “I didn’t see you until you whanged into me.”
The old lady looked sorrowfully at her enormous car and then back at the blonde. “I’m sorry. I didn’t see you.”
At some point in here, William became aware that he could hear a siren in the distance. As soon as this thought formulated in his head in a conscious, articulate sort of way, a black and white city police car turned the corner from 25th Street onto Primrose, and parked in the spot recently vacated by the black SUV. It sat there for a few long moments, in the way that cop cars do, as the cops behind the tinted glass gather themselves, or radio in, or get their paperwork organized, or whatever they do.
The siren was silenced, but the cop car engine stayed on.
“Thank god,” the blonde said, brandishing her cell phone vaguely in the direction of the old lady. Oh, she must have called 911, William thought. His mind was still somewhat logy, and his thoughts were coming slow. He wondered if he might not have been injured after all. Had he hit his head? He felt a tremendous relief at the sight of the cop car. Now he didn’t have to be in charge.
Not like he’d been all that much in charge to begin with. Or, at all, really. But now he totally didn’t have to be, which was good.
The door of the cop car opened, and a thin clear-faced uniformed policeman got out, holding a half-size clipboard or notebook or something. Jeez, he looks about fourteen, William thought.
The cop came over to the small gathering at the impact site. He looked at the two mangled cars, and then up at William, and said, “All right, what happened here?”
The blonde woman grew noticeably rigid, then stepped between the cop and William. She pointed at the old lady. “She ran into my car.” She accentuated her words by pointing at the old lady and the Cadillac with stabbing motions of her strong, bony right index finger. “He then rear-ended me.” Stab, at William’s chest, almost hitting him. He flinched back, again, slightly. “He was following too close, of course, but she flew out of nowhere.” She stabbed again at the old lady, who stood her ground, quavering a little as old ladies can do, but not budging from her turf.
“All right, slow down, tell me exactly what happened,” the cop said. He glanced at William again, but William gave a small, don’t-ask-me shrug, whereupon the cop looked politely at the blonde woman. “This your car?” He indicated the blue Saab.
“It was,” she said, bitterly. “Looks like a pile of junk now.”
Suddenly, William’s legs folded under him and he slowly sank to the pavement.
When he woke up, he was lying stretched out across the long, soft back seat of the Cadillac. The old lady was standing nearby, and looked over sharply when she saw him move. “Are you all right?”
He sat up, slowly, his hand to his forehead. “I guess so. What happened?”
She smirked, and reminded him of his grandmother on his mother’s side. A bitter old woman, disappointed by life and all its inhabitants. “You fainted. Dead away on the pavement, just like that.” Then her face softened and she was no longer Grandma Brooks. “The policeman and Beth carried you here.”
“Beth?” He rubbed his forehead, and pushed his hair back, which reminded him of the same gesture by the blonde woman, a moment before the old lady answered.
“The owner of the blue car. The one I collided with.” She smirked again. “Though why she’s coming down this street anyway…” She trailed off.
William peered out of the door of the Cadillac. The cop car, and the blue Saab for that matter, were both gone. His Camry had been driven or towed or pushed to the side of the street, out of the way of traffic. Which, indeed, was sparse, as it usually was on this narrow side street. How long had he been unconscious, anyway?
The old lady followed his glance. “Yes, we moved your car. It’s out of the way. The policeman wanted to take you to SF General, but I convinced him that you’re fine.” She leaned in close to him, exuding old-lady scent—perfume, dust, faint sweet decay—and fixed him with a rheumy brown-eyed gaze. “You are fine, aren’t you?” It was almost not a question.
He drew back a bit from her imposing presence. Which had nothing to do with her height—minimal, five-two at best—or her apparel—faded blue track suit, dingy white Keds, fake gold earrings. But presence she had, and it frightened him. “Yeah…I mean, of course, yeah, I’m fine, I’m okay.” He straightened his shirt, which had become rumpled in her back seat. “What…um…?”
“What happened?” she finished the question for him. “Traffic accident. Plain and simple. Happens all the time.” She fixed those creepy dark brown eyes on him again. “Fender-bender. No harm done. You’re fine. Go on home now.” She waved a vague hand at his Camry. “Go on, get along with you. I have things to do.”
Obediently, he rose from the back seat of the Cadillac, walked to his own car, got in and, after a few minutes taking stock of himself again, drove home.
Audrey was in the kitchen, drying the butcher knife. She had just cut up a pineapple, and put most of the chunks in a large Tupperware for the next few breakfasts, although she was chewing on one as she worked. “You’ll never believe what happened to me,” he said to her, sitting down heavily in their one kitchen chair.