I.INTERSECTION.
LOS ANGELES.
FEBRUARY. 2015.
It is her neck that I see first.
Long and poetic, a whisper of beauty. Unexpected at the side of the road on a midwinter’s morning. A weekday, at that.
Winter is curious here. Sunny and sixties and warm. Rain on the rarest of occasions. And yet the people are all bundled in down. I’m not certain I’ll get used to it. This nonweather weather. This identical dressing. This new life.
But there she is, faintly ethnic, with her graceful neck—wearing a stylish trench, which is decidedly not down—making her way to the street side of her shiny black electric vehicle. Much sleeker than mine. I assume she has no kids. No wrappers jammed in the door handle of the back seat. No cleats, no balls, no pointe shoes in the rear. Not with that neck.
From across the intersection, I watch as she hitches the driver’s door open. She is juggling a cup of coffee, an oversized handbag, a yoga mat. The light changes and I pull up parallel to her and catch her eye. Through my sunglasses, through her impossibly large ones.Is she vacating the spot?She nods, the faint hint of a smile. And in that moment, I think I may know her.
I hear the noise before I feel the impact. A keen screeching, a determinativecrunch, and then what sounds like my mother’s voice. Yelling something not quite discernible in Jamaican patois. My SUV lurches once. And then a second time. Careening sideways into the open car door. Pinning it back against the wheel, an angle that seemed impossible a second before. There is glass shattering and metal twisting and coffee on my windshield. I hear the Jamaican expletives again. “Jeezum Peace!!” It takes a good moment before I realize: The person yelling is me.
At first, I don’t see her. I imagine she’s fallen, trapped, her neck crushed between her car door and my fender. I imagine the worst. But when I glance back through the rear-vent glass, she is there. Standing between our cars, by her back door, mouth agape, shaking. Alive. She must have stepped aside at the last moment. I have not killed her. I have not killed her.
My sunglasses are no longer on my face and my handbag and all its contents are on the floor. My phone, which was resting in the cup holder, is not there. And yet the announcer on NPR drones on about Aleppo as if nothing has happened here on Montana Avenue. As if I just did not almost end a life. And then I realize the engine is still running.
I turn off the car, unbuckle the seat belt, and step out into the street. There’s a gold sedan wedged into the rear left side of my new secondhand car. François and I had spent days picking it out the week following Christmas. Black, Lexus, hybrid, seventeen thousand miles, good for carting kids to and fro, roomy enough to hold my equipment.
A woman is at the steering wheel of the sedan. Late thirties, I think, from the little I can see of her face. A pouf of thick black hair, sculpted eyebrows, dark glasses. Her hands are covering her mouth. The airbag on her passenger side has deployed. There are two harness booster seats in the back. Empty. She is lucky.
“Are you okay?” I mouth.
She nods. And then she begins to cry. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”
I can’t hear her, but I can feel her anguish, her guilt. “It’s okay,” I say. “It’s okay.”
But even as I say it, I realize it might not be true.
I make my way around the front of my car to see the damage I have done to the other vehicle. The door is mangled and off its hinges. My fender seems to be the object holding it in place. There is glass everywhere. Tiny fragments spilling like water from her window, leaving angry shards behind in their wake.
The woman I might have killed is now standing on the sidewalk, just in front of the café… trembling. She is clutching her yoga mat and handbag, but her coffee is covering her trench, her athletic top, her white Converse sneakers.
“Are you all right?”
She shakes her head. She is tall, five nine, maybe. Enviably thin. The kind of body I have always coveted. No hips. No boobs. Her skin is a cool caffe latte. Up close, she looks to be my age. Barely discernible lines at the corners of her delicate mouth, a faint horizontal pair sweeping her forehead. Her dark hair is wet, a wavy bob. I cannot determine if she has just come from her yoga class or is on her way.
“Are you hurt?” I ask.
“No. No. I’m not hurt. I just need a moment.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’m fine,” she says, and I detect the hint of an accent.
And then, moving closer to me, she gasps. “You are bleeding.”
I feel it then. A dull throbbing. Something moist on my forehead. I’d assumed it was perspiration, but it’s dripping now. On my brow.
My hand flies up and I reel at the wetness. “My face…”
My voice is low, but not low enough, and I am embarrassed that in the midst of this spectacle and wreckage and what could have been the loss of life, I am having a vain moment. And Swan Neck is witnessing it.
“Tip your head back,” she says, reaching into her bag to pull out a tissue.
