Читаем Fall and Rise полностью

“No, but I said I think I should be the one since I was the other person involved—‘not that I was responsible,’ I said. ‘The other driver was — out in my lane, not that I like putting any blame on him now,’ I said — lying, lying. Actually, since I didn’t see the accident, I didn’t know at the time who was really responsible, but had a good idea. But say both of us were drunk or asleep at the wheel and in the wrong lanes — it’s possible. Or I’m asleep in my lane and he’s just drunk and in my lane. Anyway, most of me assumed I was the only one responsible, but the rest of me said to myself at the time ‘Well, who really knows?’”

“I take for granted you were the one responsible,” shorter man says, “based on what you said so far. But it is possible, if somewhat implausible — two drivers on the road drunk or asleep at the same time and hitting one another’s car, even if it’s probably happened a couple of hundred times in America this year. What do you say, expert?”

“One I never heard of but has to have happened. But continue,” he says to me. “You’re guilty, but of felonious car crashing or attempted manslaughter we don’t know yet.”

“I opened the driver’s door. There’s one man there, half on the seat, half on the floor.”

“His body in half?”

“From the waist down he’s on the seat, the waist up on the floor, his head on the pedals but still connected to the neck and the neck to the rest. I lifted him up, though knew then I shouldn’t — broken bones, that sort of thing — till he was flat on the seat. Glass in his head cut my hand in several places, but that didn’t matter. In fact it made things look better for me, I thought. A lot of blood, his and mine. Made sure to get some of it, but not too much as if I intentionally smeared it to elicit a sympathetic response, on my face and shirt. He was mumbling something. I said ‘What is it?’ and put my ears to his lips, thinking if it’s something incriminating about me I should be the first or only one to hear it, especially if he died.”

“That’s horrible,” shorter man says.

“Not only that, if he did die — and I hope it goes without saying that I was just about praying he wouldn’t — and someone asked what he’d said and it had been critical of me — I was telling myself then I’d say ‘He mumbled, nothing I understood.’”

“Even worse.”

“It was. But I’ll stop. I’ve said too much, besides all your time.”

“What’d the near-dying guy say?” ponytailed man says.

“Yes — momentum — go go go ahead — what?”

“He said ‘Other car did it, was on my side of the road.’ I said into his ear very low ‘No it wasn’t. You were, on his side, try to remember that, and we think driving without your lights.’ Sometimes since then I’ve thought — as I also thought with a Denver dentist I ran out on the bills around that time — that I’d call him and say ‘Listen, I was drunk and in your lane, so what can I do to make amends?’ And to the dentist say ‘How much do I owe you plus interest over the years?’ I did say I was sorry then to the accident guy, but inside more sorry it happened to us both and me the inconvenience of going to court and time away from paying work and losing my car in a car-required state when I was strapped for cash. But I never admitted to him my fault in the crash, and to the dentist — well, when I got a lawyer’s letter in New York I wrote back under a different name that I was the executor of my estate and that I’d died.”

“I don’t get that.”

“I’ll explain it later,” shorter man says.

“I used the apartment number and address of a not-so-willing friend and said the man he’d sent the letter to about the bill had died and if there was any money left after the settlement of a very negligible estate, his client was seventh in line. He sent a letter every half year asking if the estate had been settled, but I ignored them, so even to a few years later I was still irresponsible, since by then I had enough to begin paying the dentist back on time. Anyway, the accident guy shook his head, shut his eyes and looked dead and I held his hand — till the police came — while several people patted my back and rubbed my neck. I got a summons — that was automatic in an accident that bad, the trooper said, just as the other guy would have got one if he was even half alive at the time.”

“Wait a second,” ponytailed man says. “You got a summons at the accident?”

“I think so.”

“Colorado? Give me a second to think. No, on that there’s almost strict uniformity. You would have been told to expect one, if he didn’t arrest you on the scene, and then got it through the mail. So what the trooper might have told you was that the other man would have also got one if he hadn’t been near death and if you didn’t seem the main cause of the accident. Do you recall him measuring your tire tread marks on the road?”