Crossing Random: Chapter 1: Hot and Dry

Crossing Random

Michelle L. Gamble

Dedication

There is no greater love than that of your children. To Cole and Cambria – you are the true loves of my life.

“Trajectories aren't linear. Life's just a roller coaster. If you're getting a chance to do cool stuff, and it's varied stuff, just enjoy it. I guess I'm a believer in the randomness of life rather than it being a linear trajectory or an arc, a consistent smooth arc, towards anything.” ~ Riz Ahmed

Chapter 1

Hot and Dry

“I believe life is an intelligent thing: that things aren’t random.” ~ Steve Jobs

Hot and dry – that was how the weather felt on that day on October 17, 1989. Becky Chiron, a corporate marketing executive, worked from home four days a week and went into the corporate headquarters in San Francisco one day a week. She prized her telecommuting position, which back in those days was rare. She had a full workstation setup in her home office and enjoyed the luxury of wearing a robe all day as she worked on marketing campaigns. She had grown to hate commuting to work even the one day her supervisor insisted on seeing her face-to-face. She had learned to accept the minor inconvenience as long as she got her four days in.

Today, she had been stuck in meetings until nearly 5:00 pm even though most of their clients were based on the East Coast and she had started her day at 6:00 a.m. She felt the achy fatigue and soreness in her back after having been stuck for three hours on a conference call with their prized client, a Post-It knock-off based out of Malaysia. The contact, Zao Tsing had blathered on and on about their new line of pink and day-glow green stickers in his broken English. Half the time, Becky strained to hear him and understand him. She found herself sitting at her modern black desk with the view of the Bay Bridge folding papers into origami animals. She was particularly talented at folding cranes. She became good at origami in college after she saw Edward James Olmos’s character Gaff folding them in the original Blade Runner.  A boring day in accounting class often amounted to a zoo full of origami characters. Sometimes she even put them in greeting and thank you cards for others to enjoy. It was her “signature touch”, one might say.

She wasn’t a materialistic woman and rather than buy the typical BMW or Mercedes, she had chosen a black Honda Accord that got great gas mileage for a sedan. She was driving east on highway 80 toward Berkeley. She was a stunning brunette with piercing almost yellow eyes with brown flecks in them. One might think she had the eyes of a cat. She was medium height at 5’5” with a rare perfectly proportioned, hourglass figure. Her voluptuous breasts she kept slyly hidden under her many suits so the men in her office might keep their eyes on hers versus her chest; however, sometimes their eyes wandered in that curious gaze anyway.

She glanced in the rearview mirror at her dried-out, chapped lips. She pulled at her black Dooney and Bourks bucket purse and slipped her hand in the front pocket. She wanted her chap stick. She couldn’t find it, and turned on the air conditioner even though most days in San Francisco were cool and/or cold. This was one of those Indian Summers though – the kind where one might forget it was fall. She had even gone out to Bodega Bay the weekend before in a pair of shorts and a light, flowing blouse with tiny denim flowers embroidered into it. It was a dry heat, the kind the Central Valley was famous for not the Bay Area. She prickly and annoyed – her lips hurt.

Traffic was fortunately quite moderate as she began her crossing of the famous Bay Bridge, the very same one she could see from her office window. She was hot. She turned up the air conditioner and pulled her suit jacket off, tossing it on the passenger seat with her purse. Then she leaned forward and slid her CD of the Fine Young Cannibals’ song “She Drives Me Crazy” into the player.

She drove in her usual distracted manner already quite familiar with the route. Her mind wandered to a new apartment she had been looking at in Marine County near the headlands. She wanted a prized Pacific Ocean view, and she had found this quaint house built in the 1960s with a second-story apartment facing the ocean. She signed. The rent was $2,000 a month for a one bedroom, one bath. She envisioned placing her beautiful mahogany desk in the northern-facing corner where she could leisurely gaze at the water – that is, when the fog had lifted.

She was roughly halfway down the bridge when she looked around. She frowned and turned off her music. The air was thick with an eerie, almost spooky quiet. It was like a muffled sound and everything seems to energetically shift. Things from that second on moved in slow motion. She heard a second loud cracking, high-pitched almost deafening squeal and her car seemed to lurch forward in its own accord. The silence hit and then – BANG, CRACK and chaos. Everything moved slowly and methodically, as the car just ahead of her seemingly disappeared on the horizon. She felt a surge of adrenaline and without thought she slammed on the brakes. It was at that very moment she felt an uplift sensation, surge and shake. She panicked uncertain of what was going on.

She looked frantically around. People’s cars all stopped and some seemed to be tossed about as if the metal machines were mere playthings for the Gods. She saw a mother jump out of her mauve minivan with two small, blonde children in tow. She moved back and forth, screaming, “Help!” The little children cried and sobbed and screamed, “Mommy!” Another older, bald man in a black suite seemed confused as he wandered aimlessly, as if he knew not where he was going or what he was doing. Then a mere moment later and a second cracking, jolting crash and debris blew up into the air almost like ash from a fire.

Becky sat in her car. The shaking seemed to go on forever. People were now running around and rushing the western direction to get off the bridge. The shaking stopped. Becky looked forward and then backward and forward, as her eyes settled on the blank horizon in front of her. She slowly, carefully opened her car door. With great fear, she walked very slowly forward and gazed at the shock of her life. Her front tires were mere inches away from a huge gap in the Bay Bridge, the pier 39 panel had dropped. A wind gusted up through the opening and blew her backwards so her hair flew up and over her head and knocked her down. And there she sat with her designer Gucci shoes; one fallen off near the edge. There she sat, still, quiet, still… she heard not another sound.