Pink Sandals

     He fell from the sky and landed on the unforgiving sidewalk in front of her. He was no more than twenty yards from her new pink sandals. There the man lay, still and face down, one arm curved behind his back, the other raised to the side of his head. His legs sprawled in unnatural directions. A narrow stream of garnet blood escaped his scalp and crept through a crack in the sidewalk.

     Several pedestrians ran to see him while others dialed 911 on cell phones. The woman in pink sandals pushed past her disbelief. Her confusion matured to nausea, the rising magma of a volcano about to erupt. She propped her upper body against a nearby wall as her legs weakened and gave way. She shifted to a hands and knees stance, and the sour, milky-tan contents of her stomach forced its way from her mouth. Wiping her chin with a white cotton sleeve, she slowly rose to her feet, shaky but intact. Her green Gucci purse lay on a tuft of weeds next to the same impartial sidewalk that accepted a human life just seconds before.

     She tried to resist looking at the man – yet an invisible force turned her face toward him. She heard it repeatedly in her head . . . the deep thud of his landing. Had she felt his impact under her feet? She wasn't sure. Her senses had blended, and they left her with only a shocked and shaken core.                                                                                                                              

     A crowd surrounded the man. Death had come in seconds, and the world carried on around it . . . stared, shook its head with a tsk, tsk, tsk. Sulfuric exhaust fumes lingered in the air. Traffic had not slowed. People hurried to live their lives.

     In her pink sandals, she sat on a nearby bench. A small brass plaque, mounted to the top wooden slat caught her eye. “Dedicated to the City of Shreveport by the Caddo Parrish Garden Club.” She played with the irony that a community club dedicated a city bench in the name of flowers and city beautification – on a pathway that now played Show and Tell with a dead body. Where was the sense that life had held just moments before?

     She'd not noticed from where the man had come. He just - was. She cupped a hand over her eyebrows to shade the early afternoon sun and looked up to where the man had come from. There was a platform suspended between several heavy ropes. He was a window cleaner.  The platform hung level with the third floor of the law building - her law building. If she had lingered at the deli for lunch, the man might have fallen on top of her. It was a simple matter of timing. The window-cleaning platform stood motionless, suspended, with no operator.

     She could not squelch the sound or the image of his landing from her mind. The memories took occupancy there and unpacked their bags to stay awhile.

     Police officers partially dispersed the crowd, but the pink-shoed woman saw the dead man’s legs through an opening in the crowd. She could not bring herself to stand. Her thighs were gelatin, and she did not trust them; so she stayed seated. Someone in the gathering pointed to her, and an officer approached. He asked if she had witnessed the accident, and she nodded mutely.

The uniformed man sat on the bench beside her, and after several questions, he returned to the group of bystanders. She mustered the voice to answer his basic questions. Some she answered with a mere nod of her head.