“Dead.”
“I won’t say yet, for the story’s sake, but anyway, we already said he wasn’t, but his sports car was totaled. Doors still closed. Windows smashed in a way where they were still in their frames but you couldn’t see inside.”
“Safety glass. Supposed to do that. Must have been German- or Swedish-make. For glass, that far back, they were the best.”
“Door windows made of plastic and slashed but intact. Someone said ‘Shouldn’t one of us see what’s inside?’ but no one wanted to open the door.”
“You blame them?” shorter man says.
“No, but I said I think I should be the one since I was the other person involved—‘not that I was responsible,’ I said. ‘The other driver was — out in my lane, not that I like putting any blame on him now,’ I said — lying, lying. Actually, since I didn’t see the accident, I didn’t know at the time who was really responsible, but had a good idea. But say both of us were drunk or asleep at the wheel and in the wrong lanes — it’s possible. Or I’m asleep in my lane and he’s just drunk and in my lane. Anyway, most of me assumed I was the only one responsible, but the rest of me said to myself at the time ‘Well, who really knows?’”
“I take for granted you were the one responsible,” shorter man says, “based on what you said so far. But it is possible, if somewhat implausible — two drivers on the road drunk or asleep at the same time and hitting one another’s car, even if it’s probably happened a couple of hundred times in America this year. What do you say, expert?”
“One I never heard of but has to have happened. But continue,” he says to me. “You’re guilty, but of felonious car crashing or attempted manslaughter we don’t know yet.”
“I opened the driver’s door. There’s one man there, half on the seat, half on the floor.”
“His body in half?”
“From the waist down he’s on the seat, the waist up on the floor, his head on the pedals but still connected to the neck and the neck to the rest. I lifted him up, though knew then I shouldn’t — broken bones, that sort of thing — till he was flat on the seat. Glass in his head cut my hand in several places, but that didn’t matter. In fact it made things look better for me, I thought. A lot of blood, his and mine. Made sure to get some of it, but not too much as if I intentionally smeared it to elicit a sympathetic response, on my face and shirt. He was mumbling something. I said ‘What is it?’ and put my ears to his lips, thinking if it’s something incriminating about me I should be the first or only one to hear it, especially if he died.”
“That’s horrible,” shorter man says.
“Not only that, if he did die — and I hope it goes without saying that I was just about praying he wouldn’t — and someone asked what he’d said and it had been critical of me — I was telling myself then I’d say ‘He mumbled, nothing I understood.’”
“Even worse.”
“It was. But I’ll stop. I’ve said too much, besides all your time.”
“What’d the near-dying guy say?” ponytailed man says.
“Yes — momentum — go go go ahead — what?”
“He said ‘Other car did it, was on my side of the road.’ I said into his ear very low ‘No it wasn’t. You were, on his side, try to remember that, and we think driving without your lights.’ Sometimes since then I’ve thought — as I also thought with a Denver dentist I ran out on the bills around that time — that I’d call him and say ‘Listen, I was drunk and in your lane, so what can I do to make amends?’ And to the dentist say ‘How much do I owe you plus interest over the years?’ I did say I was sorry then to the accident guy, but inside more sorry it happened to us both and me the inconvenience of going to court and time away from paying work and losing my car in a car-required state when I was strapped for cash. But I never admitted to him my fault in the crash, and to the dentist — well, when I got a lawyer’s letter in New York I wrote back under a different name that I was the executor of my estate and that I’d died.”
“I don’t get that.”
“I’ll explain it later,” shorter man says.
“I used the apartment number and address of a not-so-willing friend and said the man he’d sent the letter to about the bill had died and if there was any money left after the settlement of a very negligible estate, his client was seventh in line. He sent a letter every half year asking if the estate had been settled, but I ignored them, so even to a few years later I was still irresponsible, since by then I had enough to begin paying the dentist back on time. Anyway, the accident guy shook his head, shut his eyes and looked dead and I held his hand — till the police came — while several people patted my back and rubbed my neck. I got a summons — that was automatic in an accident that bad, the trooper said, just as the other guy would have got one if he was even half alive at the time.”
“Wait a second,” ponytailed man says. “You got a summons at the accident?”
“I think so.”
“Colorado? Give me a second to think. No, on that there’s almost strict uniformity. You would have been told to expect one, if he didn’t arrest you on the scene, and then got it through the mail. So what the trooper might have told you was that the other man would have also got one if he hadn’t been near death and if you didn’t seem the main cause of the accident. Do you recall him measuring your tire tread marks on the road?”
“Really, I forget. Anyway, I showed up in court hangdog and without lawyer, since I thought the judge would be favorably disposed to that. And pretended, as with the psychiatrist, to be, despite my university connection, which only involved student-teaching to a master’s degree I never completed, a bit weak-minded and oversensitive to the point a few times of doing my sincerest best to repress real tears, and very unorganized and alone. I was living with a woman then but left her a block from the courthouse and told her not to give a sign in the courtroom that she knew me. I also saw there the man I hit, still with Band-Aids on his face and walking with a cane. I never asked nor found out if he’d walked with one before the accident. I wasn’t questioned in depth about driving while drunk, since I was able, when I got out of the car the second time — and because they also didn’t give me the balloon test, since the drunk driver they’d picked up before me got so incensed at what she called a divestment of her civil liberties that she punctured it with her fingernails. Anyway, I was able to make all my alcohol mannerisms and breath disappear. ‘Get stark raving sober,’ I told myself when I left the car, ‘you’re in trouble up to here.’ Impossible, I know. But about drinking, I said to the judge when he asked, ‘Yes, had a wine and a half at that party up the hill, but some yogurt before and a glass of milk after to coat it.’ Also, after I said I’m sorry to the guy for what had happened to us, he asked if I’d said anything to him when he was in the car — he seemed to remember it. I said ‘No, except for “Don’t worry, you’re gonna be all right,” while I held your hand and dabbed blood from your eyes.’ ‘Okeydoke,’ he said. ‘This is the Wild West so accidents like that can happen, just so long as your insurance company takes care of it.’ The judge advised me to plead nolo contendere and I got a twenty-two-dollar fine and they didn’t even take my license away for a day. That was it. I walked the two miles home alone in the rain because I wanted to save on the cab fare and not be seen with my woman friend. Story has a rather unuplifting ending, but what can I say? When I got back she called me a louse for everything I’d done that day, wouldn’t even run a warm tub for me and soon after that moved out, but more because we were broke and she’d just turned thirty and wanted to get married and have a child right away, while I—”