Hudson and W Lawrence

It was Friday night and he just got out of work, a ritzy restaurant where he's required to wear a tux. Nobody really cares much for him, he's just a bus-boy, not that customers have any interest to talk to the hostesses or waiters, but at least they had more standing than a lowly busboy. On top of that, nobody pronounces his last name right, which starts with two jarring consonants and finds its origins from Russia. His parents immigrated from there.

As soon as it was midnight and his shift was over, he untied his bow-tie leaving it dangling at his neck, got into the driver's seat of his 2002 gold-colored Honda Accord, and called his girlfriend. "Hey, I just got out of work. I'm driving over."

"Okay," she responded. "See ya soon Chris."

He drove quick, popped in a CD that blared fast rock music - a screaming lead singer soaring his voice over a hyper drum-beat and spastic guitar chord. For Chris, this was like putting his life on fast forward so he could pickup his girlfriend and be at the party faster than his car or even his rock track.

And when he was going the wrong way down a one way, he sped up as if that made it okay, as if going fast as a blur would allow him to allude the cops. It was a residential side street. Cars were parked on both sides of the street, creating a narrow gauntlet for him to run. That's why he didn't see the stop sign, because there wasn't meant to be any cars driving this way, because the stop sign was at the other side of the intersection. It was a small intersection, one that looked like any other middle-of-nowhere tiny side-street intersection stranded in American suburbia. Who would have known that my car would drive right into his path as he darted into the intersection?

The whole of his car crushed towards him as his air-bag blew out. My car's passenger side door was completely collapsed inward, and my front-right tire skewed, my car began humming an eerily low grumble, as if pained and weeping over the realization that this could be it - its 12-year life was coming to an end and this was as far as it could keep my company.

And I find myself wishing: "if only I had gone to the bathroom before I left the coffee shop, or if only I had talked to Lai Ying 1 minute longer on the phone before I left, or if only I had woken up 10 second earlier in the morning, or if only I'd decided to get gas before driving back home, then maybe Chris would have darted past me, in front of me or behind me, but at least not into me, then our lives never would have collided at the intersection of space and time merely labeled as Hudson and West Lawrence.