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Showing posts from November, 2012

Strangers

We both pull a foot back up to the curb, calculating the narrowed opportunity for dashing across the street. The oncoming cars do not lurch forward. They are not as impatient as us. I look quickly to the traffic sign, for the little LED pedestrian guy. He's flashing red. I look back to the traffic, at the headlights pulling ahead, and acquiesce. "It's not worth it," says the woman who had gauged her traffic-defying potential beside me. "This would be the night we slip and fall," I say, shaking my head. Cars snake across our intersection. "That would be an awful way to go," she says. This strikes me as funny, for some reason. "Yeah," I say. "I'm hoping to give my people a better story to tell at my funeral." We're both peeling back the beginning of a laugh.  Her voice is chiseled, textured. The caliber you wouldn't want firing threats or reprimands. "I read about an actress who took a bunch of pills