I know what you’re thinking. You’re going to say if it was you, you would have stayed. Maybe you would have panicked and taken off but you think you would have gone back and done the right thing. “The right thing.” That comes up a lot but here’s the thing about the right thing; it’s a bit subjective. The world is a different place when you’re young, the boundary between right and wrong is fuzzier. And I was very young.
On top of that, it wasn’t even my fault.
Devin came by, we were sitting in his car thinking of what to do. His phone rang and he said he had to meet someone. “You drive,” he said. We changed seats and I drove while he gave directions. At one point he told me to pull over. He tilted the mirror on his side so he could watch the sidewalk behind us. We waited a few minutes, “There’s Jay,” he said, or “Here comes Jay,” something like that.
Devon got out, opened the back door for the guy; then walked around the car and got in behind me and told me where to go. It was weird, I was in the front, the two of them in the back. I was trying to listen without listening, sneaking peaks in the mirror out this Jay dude.
He nearly caught me at one light, but I quickly shifted my glance to the road ahead. That’s when I first saw the biker. He was way down the road, coming toward me, swerving and changing lanes, passing cars on his side if they were double parked or just driving too slowly for his liking. Careless and fearless as a messenger, but he wasn’t a messenger. He had fancy biker clothes; splashy, highlighter colors.
The light changed and I started to drive. I lost the biker when he ducked back into his lane, where he belonged. A second later I had to straddle the centerline to get around someone who was double parked. No biggie until the driver hopped out without looking. I cut left to avoid him. That’s how it happened. I swung wide of the guy from the van at the same time the biker decided to pass a slow car on his side. I hit the brakes, but it was too late.
I saw his bike tire fold as it came into the front of the car. Suddenly, he was bouncing across the hood and into the windshield. Then everything froze. He was right at the window; helmet cracked and sideways; sunglasses broken, falling off his face. Blood where he had bitten through his lower lip. He looked right at me, right through me. He has blue eyes. Tiny cracks spider webbed across the windshield as the blood trickled from his mouth and nose. The car behind me crashed into me and the biker jolted to the ground, his blue eyes staring into nothing.
I heard horns, brakes, people yelling but only one thing that mattered.
“Drive,” Devon said. “Go normal but drive away. Now.”
“I didn’t do anything wrong,” I said. Devon put his hand on my shoulder from behind. “I know,” he said. He looked at the Jay guy, “But drive.”
A few blocks later near a subway Devon told me to pull over. Jay hopped out and Devon moved up front to drive.
In front of my house Devin told me, “It wasn’t your fault. Just, don’t do anything. Don’t tell anyone. It’ll go away.”
There was a big fuss right after it happened. I was scared. A lot of promises were made about finding the driver in improving bike lanes and crosswalks and cameras. People talked about the accident for a while. Someone said the biker was a computer geek who lived in Park Slope or an engineering student from France. I heard he was a local shopkeeper who was married and had two kids. Someone told somebody he worked on Wall Street. No one really knew. I always wanted to tell them that he had blue eyes but I didn’t.
Soon everyone kind of forgot about it.
It was a few months before I saw Devon again. He had a new car and we took a drive along the Belt Parkway with the windows down, my hand windsurfing against a backdrop green water glistening against the blue sky.
“Ride’s nice,” I said.
T. Francis Curran lives in Westchester, NY.