Nude Men

weren’t paying attention for a moment, and suddenly you don’t understand what’s going on anymore. I go back over the events I have just lived, to figure out if there’s a logical link, you know, cause and effect, or anything similar. The visit to the doctor, the news that she may get well, the happiness and plans for the future, the decision to get ice cream, exiting the budding, Sara’s question, the crossing of the street, Sara’s question again, the yellow car driving right into her. I get it: There’s nothing to get.
    Sara’s fist is clenched. I unclench it. In her palm lies the coin. I take it and dig my fingernail into it, hoping to hurt it, before putting it in my pocket.
    Sara’s dead eyes are open, aimed at the sky. Although they are not aimed at me, she is looking at me out of the corner of her eye, I know. “I’m serious, Jeremy. So, do you think?” she does not say, but her eyes are still demanding the answer from me. She still wants to know, even now.
    “I don’t know,” I tell her, holding her hand. “When you’re eighteen and I’m thirty-six. It’s a possibility.”
    Now the voice in my head is repeating something else: “You didn’t even brake. You didn’t even brake,” over and over again. I go up to the woman of the yellow car, who is crying.
    The interrogation:
    “You didn’t even brake,” I tell her. She just stares at me startled, so I say, “Why did you hit her?”
    “It was my fault,” she says. “I wasn’t looking.”
    “What were you looking at?” I ask, sensing that this question is tremendously important and that its answer will help me understand everything. “What were you looking at?”
    “I don’t know. What does it matter?”
    “It matters a lot. I must know what you were looking at.” She remains silent. Maybe she does not recall, because of the shock of the accident.
    “Perhaps if you look back at the street,” I suggest, “you might remember what caught your eye.”
    Finally, she says, “I didn’t forget.”
    “So you know.”
    But she does not say more.
    I try to reassure her: “Don’t feel bad about telling me. I know that whatever you were looking at, it was probably a stupid thing to look at. Anything would be stupid when it kills someone.”
    “I saw a man in a second-floor window.”
    “And?”
    “He was not dressed.”
    “Not at all?”
    “No.”
    She means he was nude.
    She goes on: “He was watching something outside, very intently. I was curious to see what he was looking at, so I looked.”
    “What was it?”
    “Just a bird perched on a lamppost. The man must have been staring at it because it was blue, which is sort of uncommon for Manhattan. I’m sorry.”
    How relevant to my life. I can imagine that this woman of the yellow car must be ashamed that such a stupid, stupid thing has killed my daughter (I say daughter because that’s who the woman must think Sara was). Well, it wasn’t our parrot who did it. No parrot of mine. No parrot of Sara’s. The parrot was part of Sara. Accusing the parrot is like saying she killed herself.
    As for the nude man, of course, I would have preferred it if the woman had been looking at a bald man. Then I could hate bald men, not nude men, which would be more tolerable emotionally because I have a lot of hair, whereas I am the type of man who is not almost never naked anymore.
    Well, that should certainly please people who think nude men brought on all the misery and insanity in this poor little girl’s life, you moralist shits. They even killed her. Nudity is dangerous, you’re gloating. I told you so, you’re gloating. When little girls do naughty things, they get punished. Very good turn of events indeed!
    “Where were you going?” I ask the woman of the yellow car.
    “To the veterinarian.”
    I glance inside her car. There’s a dog in a box.
    “Is it sick?” I ask.
    “Yes.”
    “Is there a cure?”
    “No.”
    “So why were you going to the doctor?”
    “To have him put to sleep.”
    “I had a dying pet, and I would never have put it to sleep.”
    “What animal was it?”
    A little girl, I realize, is what I’m talking about. I’m about to tell her she should get fishes, but change my mind. Fishes die more easily than anything else in the world.
     
    * * *
     
    T he ambulance comes. It takes Sara. I ride in it too. And the doctor comes also. He wants to help me in case I don’t feel well mentally or emotionally.
    In the ambulance, I shout to the doctor,