Act Two, Scene the Second
The other car had already come to a stop.
There was no contact between our cars, no horn blaring. No exchange of insurance information. There was only bright light and a deep breath.
I finished my illegal u-turn in the small space between the Ghost Car from Nowheresville and a parked car on the side of the street. He made his left onto that one-way street.
That’s what happened: I didn’t see a car right behind me as I checked the rearview for an admittedly dangerous crossing of a double yellow line near the top of a hill over which I couldn’t see. But as I moved a little bit to the right of my lane, just before making my turn, it seems that a car from maybe half-a-block back made its way up to the light. I also believe that the driver of the other car (a brown sedan, I still say) saw me moving to the right of our lane and assumed I was going through the light – a logical thought – at which point he could forget about me and, in the absence of oncoming traffic, make his left safely onto the one-way street.
I can’t be certain of the timing of it, if he was in more of a rush than I give him credit for, if our near-hit was OUR fault rather than merely mine. But when all was said and done and written up in blog form, I made the wrong move and was happy to get out of there alive and severely lucky not to have damaged neither car nor driver nor passengers.
Collected, I kept to the plan and drove the three of us very… slowly… down the slight decline, towards the empty, parked police car, the diner and a distant Manhattan.
And in an instant, from behind me, blue and red lights filled my eyes as sirens wailed like wolves into the October night.
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