One Half Hour

Half Hour.

One half hour before Christian was hit by the white, silver trimmed 1984 Chevrolet Monte Carlo, he was sitting bored between his little brother and mother as she talked to her friend Mary about how the President of their school's PTA was driving her crazy sending out emails and calling twice a day acting as if she were a dictator, not just another mom with not enough to do, and even though he felt too old he used one of the three green crayons the waitress gave him to color on the piece of paper with a poorly photocopied picture of a pirate ship that said "Pirete's Cove," misspelled with nothing on it that seemed cove-like which he's seen once when they went to see Nana in Florida and they had gone out on the Catamaran to the Keys looking for Mermaids in the cove on an island that was so small he could run all the way around it in just a few minutes.

One half hour later as the Monte Carlo turned into the yellow striped crosswalk at the intersection of Montana Boulevard and 22nd Street, its tires made no noise but the impact of the small boys body against the black-smeared bumper was a clear, sharp thwump that turned heads for several blocks in either direction anxiously away from their latte's, chicken caeser salads, Christmas/Hanakah/Kwanzaa shopping excursions, and the commercial photo shoot on the sidewalk outside Angelica's Couture among the nonseasonal dresses and airy thin Hermes scarves, the photographer not noticing the image he captured of Christian's brown right shoe suspended in the air over his young model's thin, ivory white shoulder some 30 feet from where the Monte Carlo screeched to a halt.

One half hour before getting in his car, Emir was laughing in a booth in the back room at Canter's Deli on Fairfax wishing he had not gotten the piece of apple pie but eating it anyway in spite of the hard time Goran and David had given him for his ample stomach which bubbled up through his blue cotton blend oxford shirt and over the top of his tan straight leg Docker's. He ate the ice cream that melted next to it even though he knew it would make him phlegmy and almost certainly make him snore and his wife would ask if he had eaten dairy; he knew that he couldn't lie to her, couldn't even try, she could see it a mile away like the time before they were married and he slept over at David's because he was so drunk he couldn't get off the couch let alone sleep and she had known he wasn't at his mother's house. She knew and he promised himself he would never lie to her again and on their wedding night as they made love in his mother-in-law's guest house, he promised himself he would always be faithful as he struggled to push the image of his wife's best friend touching his thigh with her foot at the reception dinner.

In half an hour, on the ground as he wailed, staring at the limp body of Christian cradled in the arms of his mother, a woman so calm so peaceful she could have been a painting a Raphael, a Michelangelo, a perfect Pieta, as he stared the snot and fear poured from his body, and the engine of the Monte Carlo purred so lightly, he kept it in good shape, always did the right thing, changed the oil used good gas, and so it purred but he didn't hear it for the pure sound of anguish that shot forth from his heart at the speed of life.

©2009 alan caudillo

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