It could have been a tree trunk or some large animal and not a person that made such a solid thunk against the hood of the car. The sensation of being stopped by something so material, something so there drove it home for her: Oh no. No good. Her cell phone was dead. She remembered this quickly, almost instinctively—Chris had unplugged the battery the night before, and there had been no time to charge it that morning. “Get a car adapter already.” He had said it playfully, and she knew he was trying to apologize in his own small way. She had been in a good mood that morning. She even blew him a kiss. “I’ll survive.” The body had flipped into the air like a lazy acrobat, up and over, arms and legs waving in super-slow motion before it hit the road. It seemed vulgar, really, the force with which it cracked against the pavement. No modest cut to black, no relieving pan away from the impact—nothing but mass, gravity, and physics. She sat with her skirted thighs sticking to the leather seat and her un-shoed toes pressed to the brake. The engine purred steadily on the narrow, two-lane road, and through the open window something feathered was crying, cackaw, cackaw! Come on, Skippy, no one’s pressing the rewind button. She forgot to put the car in park; it rolled forward as she picked her foot from the brake; she slammed it down again, tried to turn off the ignition; the keys jammed in place; she swore and jerked the transmission to its proper position. It was hot. Why did she have the windows down, anyway? Her right foot was still bare; she needed her other shoe. It was jammed somewhere beneath the dashboard. Tick-tock, Skippy, tick-tock...but she needed her other shoe. Imagine, stepping from the car to make a rescue but then having to turn back because the asphalt burned your feet. Or because the rocks were sharp. Imagine. She stretched across the driver’s side of the car, the parking brake cutting into her stomach. Shoes, Skippy? You only own four pairs because you can’t be sure the rest weren’t made in sweat shops. Remember? Christ, this is brilliant. Save the children in China, leave the poor bastard you hit to rot in the street. It was lodged in the upper left corner of the dash and the car floor; she grasped it by the heel and pulled, and heard it scrape against an exposed edge. Shit. Patent leather. She examined the scratch, turned the shoe over in her hands. Suddenly she did not want to put it on. It was hot. Too hot. The sun would bake her feet with all of that shiny black leather. Jesus, Skippy! What the hell is wrong with you? Put on the goddamn shoe! She pushed her toes inside; the bottom of her bare foot felt slimy against the spongy padding. She did not have to look for the body when she stepped from the car. It lay perfectly centered between the two lanes of the road, spread out like an oversized starfish. Face up—this was a relief. There was everything that mattered, full frontal and exposed, and it wasn’t so bad, really. Not as bad as if the face had been ground into the pavement and her imagination. But the eyes were open, and she did not like this as much; the irises were dark brown and stared persistently at the crumbled front bumper of her car. Marvelous. Let’s just stand here. Hello, Mr. Corpse, good to meet you. Was it a corpse? Yes...yes, she supposed it was. How did that happen? Not the dying, of course—that was more or less obvious. Somewhere in the last few minutes she must have regarding him as a person, but now it was a corpse. When did that happen? Maybe when you bulldozed the poor guy, even though he might have had a pulse while you were fishing around for your goddamn shoe. Now she was confused. This was not how it was supposed to go; she had it all planned out in her head before, the times when she passed highway patrol cars as they pow-wowed around a smoking mass of twisted metal. She’d slow a little (but not too much, she couldn’t stand those obnoxious rubber-neckers), just long enough to see if the poor souls were still in their vehicles. You could never be too sure, and you always had to be prepared; the next time some car smashed into the median, you might be the first one to see it. You had to be prepared. Red Cross first aid: survey the scene, ABC’s, call 911. Brilliant. And if no “A”, “B”, or “C”, go straight to “stare like an idiot”. At least go through the motions like you care, for Christ’s sake. A car engine rumbled in the distance. Someone was coming. The realization shook her a little; the road and the dead-looking trees seemed less out of focus. Someone was coming. She was here, the body was here, and someone was coming. Stay. Yes, stay. She could do that. All she had to do was stay, and then she wouldn’t have to stand in the road anymore, all alone with the body and her car. I don’t know there, Skippy. What were you doing when you hit him? Talking on your cell phone...not so legal, is it? No. No it wasn’t. They don’t just toss those bodies into coffins, either. They’ll do an autopsy, and they’ll find out...they’ll find out that you waited a good five minutes before you got out of your fucking car. You’re not exactly the innocent bystander. Oh dear. Yeah. Oh dear. The body would be heavy. She knew that even before she gripped the blood-stained flannel shirt and pulled. It shifted slightly to the side, then resisted; the splayed arms and legs acted like parking brakes, and rather than rolling like the nicely behaved body-cylinder that she had imagined, it flopped stubbornly back onto the pavement. The head lolled to the side, and the brown irises now fixed her with a sort of dull, plaintive stare. The mouth was slack; a thin river of pink froth trickled from the corner of the cracked lips, coloring the collar like a strawberry-milkshake stain. Her nails were broken, the back of her blouse was soaked. That body’s not going anywhere, Skippy. Time for plan B. The engine sounded painfully close. Any moment now she’d see the car coming over the top of the hill. The road ahead was flat and straight; even if she drove away now, they’d see her in the distance; they’d see her plates, they’d call the police, the police would find the enormous, blood-stained dent on her hood. Come on, Skippy. You can’t leave. The body can’t leave. But you can sure as hell hide it. With what? The car, you idiot! The car. Of course. She squatted awkwardly in her skirt, grasped one wrist and draped it across the chest. She did the same with the other, and now the body looked like it had been prepared for some crude open-casket ceremony, the arms crossed haphazardly in half-assed piety. Somehow she was in her car, and the tires were rolling over the pavement, and the body disappeared from view of the windshield. She flinched as she lost sight of it, anticipating the crunch of limbs beneath the massive weight, but it never came. She braked, opened the door, and stepped out just as the turquoise sedan came rolling down the hill. She could not bring herself to look under her car. Instead she walked around the back, crossed her arms, and waited for the driver to slow. “Got yourself into some trouble?” he squinted through the tiny crack he had opened in the window, pulling his lips up over his chalk-white teeth. No sense wasting perfectly good air conditioning, she knew, and under any other circumstances, she would have disliked his miserliness intensely. But not now. No, siree, not now. She smiled. “A little, but I’ve called my husband.” The driver nodded and pulled away; the exchange had happened without him so much as coming to a complete stop. Should have just left it in plain sight. The prick wouldn’t have even noticed. She watched as the car grew smaller in the distance. Somewhere in the trees, the bird was still at it: cackaw, cackaw! Not bad, Skippy, not bad at all. No, not bad at all. She looked down, and saw the hand jutting from under the car, the fingers curled upward as if cupping an invisible tennis ball. The arm must have fallen from its position when she drove over it. Well, look at that. Guess he didn’t notice. Guess he didn’t. Or maybe he just didn’t care. She looked at her watch. She was late for work. | 
