Crasher by Joseph Kim

Crasher

by Joseph Kim

For J.G. Ballard, who’s simply smashing

____________________

I hit her with a light double-tap: boom-boom. Nothing major. Still, a whole rear-end will need to be replaced. Nothing is cost-effective anymore. I remain where I am, seat-belt fastened. And there she is! Alighting from her car—radiant and enraged, even more beautiful then when I saw her at the last intersection. She taps on my window. I roll it down.

“Are you blind?” she asks, fuming.

"Sorry,” I say. “I guess we better exchange phone-numbers.”

She points to the parking lot of a strip mall at the next block.

“Follow me in there,” she says.

“Okay,” I say, heart racing.

The light turns green. I follow her. I would follow her anywhere.

We park and the pens and paperwork start to flow. She gives me her driver’s license and provider card. Her name is Susan. She is 5’6”, 120 lbs., lives in an apartment, and she wears corrective lenses—contact lenses apparently.

“Do you have stigmatism? That’s what I have,” I say, adjusting my glasses.

She glares at me. “Well, it looks like you need a new prescription. This is so totally your fault.”

“Yes, I know.”

Then she gives me her phone number. And I give her mine.

“I’ll call you,” I say as she’s walking back to her car, shoulders knotted.

She turns, her eyes squinty. I smile and wave. She gets into her car and pulls out, tires screeching. I think about Accidents of Fate. I think about how nothing’s an “accident” when you plan it, how as a driver I control the Fate of Love. Susan…Susan…Susan… I’ll call you tonight, send flowers tomorrow, and one day I will show up on your doorstep begging you to go out with me…just once…just once…just once…

Last week it was that Brunette in the Mazda convertible—I smashed her brake-light just as she was twirling a strand of hair out her window. Before that—the blonde in the Porsche whose door I dented. And before that— the mini-skirted beauty in the 4X4 whose tire I punctured and so on and so on…

In the last six weeks, my premiums have quadrupled. I’ve had to switch providers eight times. My car is a heaping wreck, mottled with primer spots and putty, dents and scratches, the bumpers have fallen off, the doors don’t open and the hood looks like a Ruffle’s potato chip. And if you were to look at me from behind you’d see an exoskeleton of duct-tape keeping the trunk closed and the tail-lights from disintegrating. But then again, Passion—real Passion always leaves its mark.

I smile when I think of all the beautiful women I’m finally getting to meet. My lines have been crafted over a landscape of disrepair: “Oops, sorry” “Golly, I didn’t see you” “I feel terrible… it’s my fault” “Chiropractor’s are expensive. Let me give you a backrub” and “Here’s my driver’s license and telephone number. Call me. Please.” My lights barely shine, but my engine is always running. I like to say to them, in my head, right before the moment of impact: As a walker, I am invisible to you. But as a driver, I am the wrecking ball into your heart. Stuff like that.

My tactics have yet to win me a bona-fide date. But the odds are in my favor. You can roll only so many snake-eyes.

I’m at 4^th and Broadway when I spot another one. I have never done two in one day, but there’s always a first time. She’s taking a right down 5^th gaining speed. I press down on the accelerator, my whole car jangling like a set of keys. Behind me, I hear the tailpipe fart. You can make it, I tell myself. Don’t let her out of your sight. She’s a beauty – a redhead, slender and svelte. I’ve never slammed a redhead. I need her. I’m driven.

I cut the corner, spot her cruising down the next block. I’m getting closer… closer when suddenly my head is flying towards my already cracked windshield. I hear the sound of broken metal breaking down. I slow to a stop, my rear wheels scrapping against a buckled frame.

I’ve just been hit.

I step out of the car, furious. I spot the redhead now three blocks away, disappearing from my life. I approach the car whose front-end is steaming. I can taste blood, blood from the cut on my forehead. I walk up to the driver’s side of this whomever and scream, “Are you fucking blind!?” Not caring if the person behind the tinted window is a man twice my size or packing a gun. I’m so pissed.

The window rolls down—the person is twice my size. She must weigh 300 pounds, probably more. She’s like some kind of giant Michelin woman stuffed inside a VW bug. And her face—it’s pitted and scarred. How many accidents, I wonder, has she been in? Her eyes gaze over me—her intent is clear.

“Oh my!” she says, “We better exchange phone numbers!”

And then she puckers her lips.

All I can do is feel the horror.

____________________

Joseph Kim is over-sensitive, over-zealous and over-the-top. He's also just a human trying to survive a ridiculous world. A bay area native, he is currently a grad student and hopes one day to maybe find the cure to Evil. Or failing that, just find a nice deserted island somewhere to live. He also admits that when he sits down to write he feels like chemist in a room full of volatile ingredients -- "You never know what's gonna happen. It might be good or could just well blow up in your face." Despite numerous burns to his physiognomy, Mr. Kim continues to go to the "lab" and has so far avoided setting off a thermonuclear detonation.