The Collective(58)

He stops jogging. “You.”

He did see me that night. I wasn’t imagining it.

“Who are you? Why are you following me?”

I don’t know what to say. For a second I’m embarrassed, but then I remember who he is. I think of that woman on our page, a sister. My sister, her daughter killed by this plastic surgeon’s carelessness—a cruel, callous man, she said, who had never apologized, never paid. Her daughter gone forever. Cancer didn’t get her. But you did. I hear myself say, “Were you visiting her grave?”

He stands perfectly still. “You’re one of them. You’re sick. You’re all—”

A big pickup truck roars through the intersection and runs down Dr. Duval, crushing him beneath its wheels.


MY THROAT FEELS very sore, which tells me I screamed. But I can’t remember doing it.

I can’t move, and when I finally am able to take a step, it’s as though I’m pushing through water. My legs shake. My lips tremble. It’s very hard to breathe.

By the time I make it to the middle of the road, the driver has backed up and gotten out of the truck, and she’s kneeling beside Dr. Duval. He seems to have gone between the truck’s wheels rather than under them, but it doesn’t matter. Blood pools beneath his body. His mouth forms a word. “Cla . . .” And then his eyes go as still as glass.

The pickup truck driver has gray-streaked dark hair that hangs in her face, and she wears tan corduroy pants, now stained with Duval’s blood. Her build is sturdy, her movements practical. She puts two fingers to his neck, feeling for a pulse. Thumps his broken chest hard with both hands, then feels for a pulse again. She shakes her head. “I didn’t see him coming.” She says it like an incantation, her voice low and melodic. “I didn’t see him coming.”

My own voice returns, but it sounds weak and tinny, as though it’s coming from somewhere else. “We have to . . . Don’t we have to . . . to call . . .”

“He just jumped in front of my car. I didn’t have time to move out of the way. You saw it.” She brushes her hair out of her eyes and turns her face to me, and it’s as though we’re all members of the same repertory theater, Dr. Duval and me and this steely-eyed woman—I’m Susan, she had said to Wendy and me—and we’re all starting work on a new play. The one about the plastic surgeon stepping into traffic. “You saw it, sister.”

“Yes.” I feel numb, but I know my role. I understand. “I’m the witness. I saw it happen.”

Susan removes a phone from her pocket. “Where were you going?” she says. Running lines.

“A grief-counseling support group. At St. Frederick’s. It was supposed to start at nine.”

“You pulled over to make sure you got the address right?”

“Yes.”

“Then you see this crazy man, running into the middle of the street.”

“I . . . I saw him . . . walk right in front of your truck.” My gaze travels up the length of the streetlight, the security camera at the top. What did it capture? A woman on her phone. A man hurrying into the middle of a two-way street then stopping abruptly. A truck driving through an intersection on a dark quiet night. A woman rushing out of the driver’s side, doing everything she can to help . . .

“I wasn’t even speeding,” Susan says. “Speed limit is forty-five. I was going forty-four.”

I look at his face. He had mouthed a word, just as the truck made contact with his body. A name, I think. His mouth is still open from the end of it. Claire.

He killed a woman’s daughter and got away with it. This is what needed to happen.

Just like Shawger and Kimball and Blanchard and Krakowski. He was no better than they were. He was no more human.

Susan dials 911, and when the operator answers, her voice goes an octave higher. “Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God. I think I killed him. Help me. Help me, please. Please let him be alive.”

I can hear the operator’s voice through the phone, asking the woman who exactly she killed.

“I don’t know. He just . . . Oh my God.” She starts to wheeze. “I . . . I have asthma.”

“It’s okay, ma’am. Take a moment. Now tell us your location.”

She grabs an inhaler from her coat pocket and puffs on it audibly. “I’m on . . . on Woodlawn Ave. . . . in front of Beth Shalom Cemetery. He just . . . He ran out in front of my car. I can’t believe this. Hurry, please!”

“Can he speak?”

“No.”

“Is he breathing?”

“I don’t know!”

“We are on the way.”

“Okay . . . Okay . . .”

“Is there anybody there with you?”

She takes a deep, shuddering breath. “Yes,” she says. “Yes. I . . . A woman. She’s still here. She saw the whole thing happen.” She bursts into sobs, then glances up at me. Her eyes are flat gray dimes.


DR. DUVAL IS dead. The paramedics know that instantly. As we wait for the police, they turn their attention to Susan, who tells them haltingly that her name is Vicky, but can’t seem to get out much more. “I . . . I think she’s in shock,” I tell them as Vicky starts to shiver. One of them grabs a blanket from the ambulance and wraps it tightly around her shoulders, talking to her in measured tones. “Can you breathe all right?” he says as two cop cars arrive, sirens blaring.