Flash Fiction by Diane Lefer
So I was driving home about 3:00 AM. Around the clubs, of course, there are always people and cars, but near home usually there’s no one. That night, there was a car up ahead, stopped at a red light. Then this other car comes speeding up from behind, comes around me. He pulls up to the guy in front, the window comes down and out comes the gun.
That’s the second time I’ve seen someone get killed. I figure that’s what you get for living in Brooklyn.
But the only time I, myself, ever got hurt, I wasn’t in Brooklyn at all. I was trying out a different way of life, out in Denver, and sometimes dating this guy from Cheyenne. I’d drive up to see him weekends, but it seemed every time we got together, I fell down. I’d wake up with a black eye or a busted jaw and I wouldn’t remember a thing. He’d tell me, You fell down. Maybe he was telling the truth, maybe not. Maybe I really did fall down, but I’d never been so accident-prone before. So I stopped seeing him and moved back to Brooklyn.
Home in Brooklyn, at least I know what’s what.
If the road is clear, I don’t stop for red lights. I don’t talk to police. I don’t notice the license plates. I don’t draw any conclusions. I don’t fall down.
Bio: Diane Lefer’s most recent novels, Out of Place and Confessions of a Carnivore, were both published by Fomite and set during Bush’s War on Terror. She is the author of three story collections, including California Transit (Mary McCarthy Prize). Diane has worked with asylum-seekers on both sides of the US/Mexico border, men on parole, youth affected by the criminal in/justice system, and vulnerable kids in Bolivia and Colombia. Lately, memories of her NYC hometown keep coming back though she now lives in LA with a cat and without a car and where her only phone is a landline. See her books in The Yard’s Bookstore.
Cover Photo by: pexels/Charles Parker , Edited by The Yard
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