The Crossroads

Holly Feldman was running late for her pilates class.  The stop light on Sunset and Fountain always took forever to turn green.  She flipped down her mirror and re-applied the new Laura Mercier gloss she had purchased from Bloomingdales the day before.  It was a perfectly subtle shade of poppy.  Adding new beauty products to her collection was one of her favorite pasttimes.  With a satisfied glance, she flipped the mirror back up and tapped her well-manicured fingers on the steering wheel to the Maroon Five song playing softly from the satellite radio.  She really needed this pilates class.  Her nerves were on edge ever since that second date with the lawyer.  "He likes me, of course," she thought, but some unspoken doubt in the back of her mind told her she could be just the flavor of the week.  The dating game was getting a bit old after three years of failed flings.  She was content being alone, she told herself, but men were nice to have around, nonetheless.  Especially when they had money.  She smiled to herself as the light turned green at the thought of yet another prospective source of second-hand income.  Just as she was halfway across the intersection, her lipstick fell from the seat and startled her....

Manuel Suarez was on his last three dollars, about to cross the crowded intersection in the direction of his favorite liquor mart.  A 40-oz would do him a world of good, what with this heat and his faulty leg giving out on him again.  This neighborhood had changed so much in the last few years.  All his old corner buddies had moved closer to downtown.  He had been invited to follow suit, but something held him back.  Maybe it was the old night club, Los Globos, the epicenter of his glorified youth.  He liked being around that frantic energy, even if the crowd had changed.  Some of the original bouncers were still there, along with a few old homies who, like him, had fallen into hard times.  They'd gather around the shaded parking lot in the early morning hours, drink their 40's, and reminisce over old times.  Manny sighed as the walk sign flashed; nostalgia was a cunning friend he had lived with for many years now.

Screeeeech!  BAM!  It happened before anyone had time to notice.  The old, limping Mexican man had appeared out of nowhere and caused a Mercedes to collide with a Range Rover in the middle of the crosswalk. 

The crowd began to assemble as a distant siren blared.  Whether it was coming to this scene or another was unclear.  The wreckage was a destructive mass of crushed metal and bloody splayed limbs.  Holly Feldman lay shallowly breathing her last breaths, her manicured hands stretched out only inches from the dirty, crusted fingers of Manuel Suarez.  They were almost touching.

A young art student passing by on the way to her favorite coffee shop stopped as she spotted this unlikely proximity of two broken bodies, intersected by fate and impending death, and thought to herself, "everybody bleeds the same."