She was stunning, take-me-now-Lord beautiful as she
slid out the new Mercedes SL roadster at Eddie Smith’s
Arco across the intersection, sheen of nylon, endless legs,
smiling directly at Bill Hagerty in the Roseburg Timber
Company pickup, her hair like honey spilled on the
heat, smiling directly and with complete congruent
understanding at the blood swelling Hagerty’s veins, his
nostrils flaring at some phantom fragrance wafting
across the baked expanse of asphalt between them, their
eyes meeting with a flash of clear purpose. And thus
seized, Bill Hagerty smashed into the rear end of an ’89
Trans-Am stopped at the light in front of him, glanced
off as he wrenched the wheel, hit the curb, nosed up, and
impaled the company Ford on a fire hydrant.
Flushed through the sprung door on the geyser of
water erupting through the floorboards, Hagerty dis–
located his shoulder, cracked two ribs, fractured the
pinkie finger on his right hand, and the EMTs were
concerned about brain damage as they lifted him into
the ambulance, for he kept reaching out with his good
arm, moaning, trying to hold the trashed possibilities,
the raw promise of that glorious woman in the new
Mercedes, now purring into the distance.