Michael Malan

Fender Bender

I was driving home and a woman ran into me. She pulled
out of a side street and—wham—her car smacked into
mine. The front of her car was badly damaged, but there
wasn’t a scratch on my new pickup. The cop who arrived a
few minutes later was skeptical. “Are you sure your car hit
his?” he asked the woman. She nodded, like this sort of
thing happens all the time. “It’s just not my day,” she said.
The cop bent down and looked at the side of my truck with
a magnifying glass. “There’s no evidence of damage,” he
said to me. “I know,” I said. “Isn’t that amazing. It’s like I’m
blessed in some special way.” “So there was no accident
and I can’t report one,” the officer said. “But what about my
car,” the woman said. “Look at those dents.” One headlight
was hanging from its socket. “Sorry,” the cop said and got
on his motorcycle and rode away. I turned to the woman.
“Let’s have a drink,” I suggested. We walked to a pub,
drank two bourbons straight-up, then wrapped our arms
around the bartender and held him over our heads like
muscle men. Two customers we thought were dead got up
from their stools and did the hokey-pokey. Police officers
everywhere pressed their ears to the ground. An alarm
went off in the Bon Vivant.