Crash Into Me

Chapter I. Intersection.

I.

INTERSECTION.

LOS ANGELES.

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 determinative crunch, 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.

Francois 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.

I close my eyes as she mops my forehead, her fingers cool against my skin.

A small crowd is beginning to assemble. I can hear them. Mumbles. Storefronts opening. An irritated driver blowing his horn. The sedan-SUV mash-up is blocking traffic.

“Oh my Guhd. OhmyGuhd, ohmyGuhd, ohmyGuhd,” somebody is saying. Not her.

A peek from beneath the napkin reveals the woman from the sedan. Big hair, olive skin, tears.

“She is bleeding? This is your car? Oh Guhd, what have I done? I am calling 911.” Her voice is deep, her accent thick. Arab, I think. Or maybe Persian. No one in LA is actually from LA.

This was what Francois’s agent told us when he was sweetening the deal.

When he was convincing us to uproot everyone and everything.

That Los Angeles was cosmopolitan, diverse, a world-class city with a robust art community and all shades of the rainbow represented.

He did not mention that it was staggeringly spread out.

That it was notably segregated. That if I stayed in my neighborhood I could go entire days without seeing another person who looked like me.

If I wanted to see all shades of the rainbow I would have to get in my car. Which was now mangled in the middle of the road.

“It’s not your face,” the woman covered in coffee says.

She is fishing in her bag once again. This time she withdraws one of those microfiber yoga towels and positions it at the crown of my head, applying pressure.

Somewhere north of my hairline. It hurts.

The towel is damp. It smells like her, I imagine. Like sandalwood and expensive leather.

“That’s the good news. But this part of the head bleeds a lot. You might need stitches, and they should check you for a concussion.”

I don’t feel concussed. Not that I’m certain I would recognize how concussed feels.

But I am not vomiting, and the world is not spinning, and I have some place to be.

Furthermore, I find the American healthcare system daunting, and I’m not sure how our insurance works through the production. I should call Francois.

The sedan driver is on her phone, reporting the accident.

She is saying things like “a middle-aged woman is bleeding from the head.” A description I find unnecessarily reductive.

Although in truth, I don’t know how she could have done better.

A petite, brown-skinned, mixed-race woman, possibly forties, but doing a bloody good job of holding it together?

At home they would have called me métisse.

But here there were so many ways to botch race, probably best to avoid it altogether.

Also, at home they would have been kinder about the age.

“Lie down,” the Middle Eastern woman commands. It is then that I notice she is wearing flannel pajamas, those ubiquitous sheepskin boots, three-carat diamond earrings. A Westside mom doing the morning drop-off … and then this. “They say you should lie down.”

I balk at the idea. I feel fine and the ground is dirty.

Swan Neck reads something in my expression, and then leans into me. “I am going to look at it,” she says, before removing her massive sunglasses. It is then that I see her face fully for the first time … and it registers.

For a moment, I cannot move. I stand there silent, while she surveys the wound.

A million thoughts flooding my head. Images disjointed, faded, weathered.

Like black and whites from another era. The surf, the sand, gooseflesh on her taut belly, her hair tickling the side of my face. Her green eyes puffy the morning after.

She does not recognize me. Or if she does, she is doing a very good job of not letting on. And maybe that is for the best.

“It’s not wide,” she says finally. “You’ll live.”

“I need to call my husband,” I respond. This is how I will extricate myself. And before she or the Persian woman can protest, I pull away and venture back around the cars.

My phone is ringing in the SUV. It takes a second to locate it, on the floorboard, wedged beneath the gas pedal. The incoming number jolts me. My meeting. Right. I am supposed to be there … soon. I think.

“Cecilia. Good morning.” The lyrical accent on the other side of the line sounds vaguely like family. Soft-spoken, lilting, cultured … it reminds me of home. Wherever that is.

“Hi,” I say, and in the moment realize I can’t recall her name.

Did she say it? It’s one of the partners from a renowned art gallery that is considering me—that I am considering—for representation.

She’s one of the two women who run it, and I am impressed with them both.

They’ve amassed an enviable list of mid-tier artists, most of them women, and from what I’ve gleaned they would make a wonderful home for Cecilia Chen, photographer.

Although I am no longer certain how I will win them over, when I show up at their gallery bleeding from the head.

Especially if I can’t recall their names.

I am debating exactly how to convey what has happened when she clears her throat. “Cecilia, I hate to do this to you, as we are very much looking forward to our meeting, but something has come up at the gallery this morning that needs tending to, and I’m afraid we’re going to have to reschedule.”

“Oh,” I say. And I let it sit there.

There are sirens approaching. I assume they are for me, a waste of time and resources because physically I am fine.

I have longed for this appointment for months.

Since Francois first got the offer and we considered the possibility of leaving Paris.

Just for a little while. Two and a half years, tops.

I did not want my kids to get too comfortable in America.

I did not want to bump up against my past. But if we were going to uproot, I was going to make the best of it and dip a toe or two into the Los Angeles art world.

And that started with finding a reputable dealer.

One who may or may not be currently blowing me off for something that needed “tending to.”

“I am so very sorry. Please forgive us,” she continues. “I’ll shoot you an email and throw out some dates to see what works, yes?”

It’s not as if I have a choice. I am bleeding from the head, after all. “Yes.”

I am about to ring Francois when I notice the date on my phone.

Friday, February 13. Of course it is. My hands are shaking.

It’s the shock, I think. Or the disorientation of seeing her.

The revelation of whose life I might have ended.

It’s not a brain bleed. I’m sure. Still, I seek out my reflection in the rearview mirror, while the call clicks through and the sirens swell, and that is when I see it.

The mirror, fractured and grossly askew, and there, clinging to the bottom: a tiny clump of hair and what looks to be some kind of organic matter.

My face in the shattered reflection drains.

Streaks of drying blood stain my brow and temple.

The sleek low bun I took pains to construct this morning is now disheveled.

I dare to lift the yoga towel and a fount of dark red bubbles midway down my center part.

She was right, it’s not wide. But it looks frightfully deep.

“Dear God.”

“Oui, ma belle.” Francois’s voice is brisk, cheery. He is at the house with his young assistant going over script notes. I imagine them by the pool: him with his green juice and his running attire, looking very un-French. Her with a notepad and a smile.

“I think I’m going to be sick.”

“Qu’est-ce qu’il y a?”

The sirens grow louder still and then stop. An ambulance pulling up in front of the cars, the lights still circling.

“I was in an accident. In front of our coffee shop. In Santa Monica. On Montana. Please come.”

“Putain. Où sont les enfants?”

“They’re at school. They’re fine.”

“Are you hurt?”

“Maybe,” I say, and then, unexpectedly, I begin to cry.

“Ma belle, ma belle.” Francois’s voice is smooth over the phone, hypnotic. “Don’t move. I’m on my way.”

“Fran,” I say, as I lean back and close my eyes. “It’s Anouk. I almost killed Anouk.”

“Anouk…?” He pauses, waiting for me to fill in the silence.

“Ferrand. I just almost killed Anouk Ferrand.”