Accidental meeting

Being the corner-most store on [Road's Name] main, Bookworm's Retreat has a clear view of the junction where two streets form crossroads. The junction is one of those places where motorists have absolutely no view of the perpendicular road and the traffic that is on it, until they are at the very intersection. It is also one of those places where neither of the two roads is a 'main road', and neither is the 'bigger one'. So there is a fair amount of confusion among motorists as to who has the right of way, and consequently, the intersection has seen quite a few near misses and even collisions. Luckily, none have been fatal, so far.

The victim of a mishap that occurred yesterday was especially lucky. It was 9.a.m., and as usual, Bill had left the store to me. I had just got to the Retreat, and was fumbling with the keys to unlock the door. The process of finding the right key and inserting it correctly into the keyhole was made considerably difficult by the fact that my head was turned in the opposite direction, and my eyes were focused on an attractive young woman who was cycling along the road.

She was about ten feet away from the intersection when it happened. A car suddenly turned onto the road from the perpendicular one. It was moving with considerable speed, and the driver was going on the wrong side, cutting across the corner like a race car. The driver must have slammed on the brakes as soon as the cyclist came into view, and the tires screeched loudly. The woman on the cycle swerved too, but with the car's speed and the distance between them, a collision was inevitable.

The car stopped, but not before hitting the bicycle's front wheel, and throwing its rider forward, off the bike and into the car's windscreen. It was a pretty scary sight, and it looked as though she might be seriously hurt. I dropped the keys and scampered down the three steps in front of the store, rushing to the accident site. I was worried about the fact that I wasn't well versed in first-aid, but was reassuring myself that I could call an ambulance from a hospital nearby.

My fears were allayed when I saw that the woman was moving, and she was getting off the car. The driver was also getting out of the car.

"Are you okay?!" I queried.

"Aww shhhhit," she groaned, as she tried steadied herself.

This was reassuring: she could speak, so the Broca's area of her left cerebral neural cortex was undamaged. By this time the man who drove the car had fully emerged, and he repeated my question.

"Are you okay?"

"Ow, my head. Yeah, no thanks to you, moron," was the reply.

The guy started to offer excuses for his mistake, "I'm sorry, I was -"

"Save it", she waved aside his explanation, "I'm not interested."

She bent to pick up her bike, and that was when I, who had so far been just stupidly staring at the proceedings, moved in.

"Let me get that for you," I said, quickly picking it up before she reached it.

I lifted it off the road and stood it up against the steps of the Retreat. The front wheel was no longer a wheel, looking quite like something one might find at a modern art exhibit. Meanwhile, the guy from the car had got back into his car, and drove off, probably having decided to get out of the place before his victim decided to sue. The woman looked on as he drove off, and then turned towards me.

"What an asshole," she muttered.

"Yeah, I know. But it's really fortunate that you're not seriously hurt".

She gave me a wry look. "Uh huh. What a start for my day-off," she said as she walked towards her bike.

"You're not getting anywhere with that," I said.

"How perceptive of you," she retorted.

I shrugged, grinning. "That I am... I also perceive that you could do with a cup of coffee. We can get some in the store. It's not much, just machine coffee, but it'll be fresh."

She stood rubbing her head for a moment, obviously not very inclined to take up my offer. But I'm not one who gives up that easily.

"I could give you and your bike a ride home, or wherever it was you were heading," I added. This ploy worked, and she agreed, although slightly hesitantly.

"Alright... my bike would appreciate that," she said smiling.

"I'm sure it would," I replied laughing. "Come on, I better get the store opened up if I'm to ever give you that coffee."

I won't bore you with the details of the rest of the day. It'll suffice to say, my new friend (Renee, her name is) turned out to be - err... a highly interesting person. She didn't like the coffee (it was hard for me to load the vendee very precisely). So we decided we'd rather get coffee somewhere else, next time.

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