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I see Stuart and transform into fate's receiver. A quick button-hook puts me directly behind him as God's camera swings about, U-turning to track my play. CFL rules fourth quarter third and goal - all of a sudden I've got the ball.

Here walks the man who yanked me off life's predictable path, held my naive complacent head under dark waters forced me to breathe it in inhale suck back the broken dream. Eleven years past, eleven empty cycles. I still drown every day.

He moves across an intersection, long sidewalks bracketing imported chrome, midday traffic a-snarl and a-blare. A spike of caffeine-hyped adrenaline makes me unsteady uncertain I feel like a wobbly giant as I step onto asphalt too high and in danger of collapse. My legs threaten to betray me they want to go AWOL head for the fence but I force them back in line.

Seeing him again now being so close is even more intense more painful than I imagined. Toxic old anger percolates up through stony soil, anger at him at the lawyers and the doctors the paramedics the police. Mostly at him: She's gone he's still doing business taking vacations investing in RRSPs planning a future still moving and shaking as if nothing ever happened.

Fair? Not in my lord's Big Book. Eye for an eye it says, mine for yours.

I have a nine-inch hunting knife in my jacket pocket a real nice Russian one with an exotic back-curved blade and custom-made Kraton grip. It bumps heavy against my side charged with kinetic potential, sum more than its parts. Just like a truck a dog an inert slab of wood, deafdumb&blind until given purpose.

Stuart squirrel-hops up onto the opposite sidewalk, eager bright-eyed capitalist rodent. We're downtown, his turf, nine blocks of dense commercial towers crowded streets where legions of suits snag cabs power-lunch trade handshakes business cards and backstabs, stiff busy men doing the corporate Macarena.

I'm out of my element here a backwards farmer wandering the big city. Did I come looking for him? Hunting him? This isn't the first time I've roamed these streets but this is the first time I've actually seen him since the trial. I'm here he's here and that's enough for now the rest will fall into place.

***

I visualize the Event a lot, the intersection and placement of time and objects, spatial distances, locations, physics, random percentiles. A fluke really a one-in-a-billion what-are-the-odds improbability like getting whacked by a stroke of lightning in a cave or surviving a war only to die coming home. Suspiciously improbable you start to believe someone everyone must have had a hand in it, her death linked by chaos theory, conspiracy.

The accident got a tidy four-line squib in the local paper fourth page but the coroner's report was a butcher shop mess. Massive blunt-force trauma, instantaneous death, as if anything in life happens so fast. It replays mercilessly my imagination painting details sharper each pass.

***

Three key players, four if you count the dog. Yes let's not forget the goddamn ownerless nameless pointless canine, as much a part of it as much to blame as anything else, the catalyst or I guess you could say dogalyst. So Truck Driver Dan and Stuart and Stray Dog and my wife Madison - a quadratic equation of destinies.

The intersection itself: a four-way, stoplights on all sides. About two miles from where we lived. Busy part of town lots of video stores and pizza joints a few nightclubs some small businesses, satellite suburban sprawl.

Late afternoon. Truck driven by Dan crests a small hill loaded with scrap lumber scavenged from a nearby construction site. And the wood isn't secured isn't tied down or anything just two hundred pounds of oversized toothpicks loose teeth bouncing around in the truck's rusted flatbed. Plus he's speeding doing 75 in a 50 hurrying home thinking about grilled steak cold beer maybe the movie of the week.

In front of the truck, Stuart in his SUV, approaching the intersection on a green light about to go amber. Going a little fast himself but running late has to pick up his daughter at daycare his son at school. And he's got a cell jammed in one ear wife reminding him don't forget garlic bread and better stop at an ATM, soccer registration fee tonight, cash-only. A too-busy guy, way too distracted to notice little things like overloaded pickups or stray dogs.

To the right of all this comes my wife. Cautious not speeding paying attention she nears the intersection. Maybe the radio is on maybe she's humming along with it singing some bland pop song.

Toggle back to Stuart and Stray Dog. This is a pivotal moment it's where Stuart loses control. It doesn't matter his attention is scattered like breadcrumbs, he could be driving with his eyes shut could be drunk asleep dead for all I care so long as he stays in control. When you're in control you don't flinch every time some homeless mutt decides to play chicken with traffic. But Stuart flinched he hesitated fumbled the big play. Lost control.

And that's why I blame him.

So he jerks the wheel jams his brakes tries to stop but still runs the dog over right over its neck breaks it and drags the beast with him leaving behind a long smudge of brown fur between snaketrails of screaming rubber. Truck Driver Dan swerves to avoid the unfolding disaster kisses fenders with Stuart then slaloms up onto the sidewalk sluing sliding losing control too. The truck's zoo-bar grill punts a mailbox through a pharmacy window.

Freeze the replay right there spin the viewpoint center again on my wife in her small blue econo-car. At the corner now light turns green and she starts to turn right. The action is already taking place to her left maybe she hears the squeal of tires maybe she even hears the crunch of Stray Dog being tumbled like laundry under Stuart's bumper. Does she hear? Does she sense the brain-dead Event rushing at her? I hope not. I hope she never saw heard realized or felt a thing.

Press play the truck is sideways now plowing over parking meters sending pedestrians scrambling for doorways. Stuart exits the scene stage left SUV spinning into the path of oncoming cars and he's already crying bawling for the damn dog's lost soul unaware of another soul a hundred feet away about to be hammered smashed wrenched from reality.

Rear end of the truck slams into my wife's car, driver's side. Wood flies sailing every which way. Except one piece a splintered 4x8 beam thirty-seven pounds of pine doing mach 8 just like it was aimed right at her like the Event had been lying in wait all her life. The popping smash of safety glass, a final thud.

***

I imagine alternate versions of that day where she drops her keys getting in the car spends ten crucial extra seconds adjusting mirrors anything so long as it offsets the timeline enough removes her from the moment. The Event. Life before and life after, both beginning at a single crystalline point, two horizons spreading out from one axis, no past or future just separate wedges of time, temporal parentheses.

Living afterward, moving on, is difficult. Impossible. Memory, a bipolar projectionist who doesn't care what you watch just mixes the good reels in with the bad and lets them run. It's a home-movie marathon too, years of footage going all the time night and day sometimes hurting sometimes helping but mostly hurting. Gets distracting gets in the way of everyday life makes it hard to concentrate.

Lost my job not long after, late too many times at first then stopped showing up altogether. Started going to church a lot instead a Protestant church near my house and I'm Catholic but it didn't really matter I was just there for the salvation. That was around the same time I bought the knife began carrying it around with me everywhere.

It's really all just a simple matter of blame. An accident a routine everyday traffic mishap I know it was nobody's fault but at night in empty silence waiting for a wife who never comes home someone has to be responsible.

I blame the unknown person who abandoned the dog. I blame Truck Driver Dan and all truckers who ever lived. I blame the truck's manufacturer and every person who had a hand in its assembly-line construction. I blame city planners for designing and building the intersection. I blame them all, everybody. Blame blame blame say it ten times it becomes a non-word a primitive jungle chant. Everyone's to blame.

Mostly I blame Stuart.

Truck Driver Dan died six years ago, myocardial infarction resulting from ischemic heart disease. A few weeks after the funeral I visited his grave and wept a good hour before smashing the headstone with the tire iron from my car. No retribution from the dead no due just hollow fury as all blame transferred to Stuart slid over without missing a beat.

Existence measured in fragments some so short so commonplace they get lost in the crush. You don't think of those little moments when they're happening, life's too dynamic too immediate for that. They return unbidden, flashes in dreams: her smile, her tears, dressed in forgotten clothes, laughing at forgotten jokes.

My wife my love my Maddie always always said good morning to me every day, more reliable more consistent than faith. I knew she meant it but I don't know if I ever told her how much it meant to me. Mornings aren't good not any more, afternoons worse, nights charred black.

This darkness my darkness deserves to be studied deserves an entire psychiatric department or its own wing of a treatment center. It eats me has probably already devoured me and left behind this empty staggering puppet-shell. Useless doctors: I know as much about depression as they do, more, anxiety manic-depression dysthymic disorders all of that but nothing none of it scratches the surface comes even close to defining the black depths of my loss my emptiness, the primal hunger of my rage.

***

The Securities & Exchange building is just around the corner. Stuart works there. I'm only twenty feet behind him my nerves strung tighter than a nun's ass. Haven't eaten since breakfast drank four coffees smoked too much and my stomach twists like a gymnast, growling expectantly, food blood something anything.

Two windows are opening, one pre the other post. Point where they meet is very near and supernova bright. Blinding. I pick up the pace take longer strides but my legs still won't cooperate. People must see me a lurching shambling old clerk headed back from one-too-many.

And now I'm there right beside him. He's changed a lot, a strung-out version of who he used to be. Only five years older than me somewhere around forty-five but he seems ancient like he's pushing eighty. Not all that healthy-looking either must have lost twenty-five pounds. His flesh sags. Same mawkish moustache same hair yet now veined with grey. And those dark circles - did the man ever sleep? Not a frisky squirrel after all, just a tired old badger carrying a load. His dark suit expensive but out-of-style has that slept-in look. White shirt clean but wrinkled, tie crooked, brown leather wingtips scuffed.

He notices me, glances up. Primeval timeworn eyes register nothing, no surprise no shock no split-second panic. Like he's been waiting for this moment too waiting and wanting to see me. I feel disappointed. We slow to a stop, two wound-down toys staring at each other.

"My God, Mark, are you okay?"

Says my name says it like we're friends old buddies. And asks if I'm okay - actually means it! Okay? Okay.

"We ... Carol and I ... and the kids…"

Carol. His wife. His still walking still talking still breathing wife. His kids. We never had a chance to have kids we were waiting until we got a house.

" …didn't know how to contact…"

I'm going to do it, I'm going to pull out the knife, sink it in his heart his throat impale him on it.

"…wanted to help…"

I do it. I take out the knife. He sees it looks at it in an odd way as if I'd just botched a routine magic trick and even that doesn't faze him. Like he's some fucking paragon of guilt. Like he deserves it. He does.

I'm short but stocky, he's taller but gaunt non-threatening a storm-tossed ship all broken masts and torn sails. It doesn't take much to force him off the sidewalk around the quiet corner of a building. Swift motion a lift of my wrist and steel slips above his shirt collar nicks him slightly close shave but he doesn't blanch doesn't even seem to care. Barren eyes super-glued to mine, welded to them. He sees something senses a chance at atonement an end to nightmares and I start thinking maybe he wants this as much as I do. Maybe more.

Perception sharpens the moment. I'm on a cliff looking down walking a wire over nothing. The center of Event a non-point on a plane of circumstance where scraps of time whip by peripherally like dead leaves. One step forward one back, two endless hallways converging.

A single drop of blood squeezes past the blade becomes a rosette on his collar.

"Please." His voice my hands legs everything's trembling. "Please help me."

Knife at his throat and he wants my help. Help not mercy. My help is fatal. Kill him to help him to help us both ease private agonies, balance events.

He turns his head a bit exposes more of his neck. Lamb.

"Help me."

Stark realization: we are both broken he and I, life -changed and lessened. Blade dips down slips in my fingers. Let it go, everything, cold fusion of emotions deleted right out of my programming, gone lost I'm empty.

Blood on his shirt just a little he's holding out both hands, ever the supplicant, beseeching: "Why won't you help?"

He's too close now I just want to get away from him. Need to.

Turn back around and head for the busy street. My steps feel less jagged I pause at the curb balance myself time the cars then run, dodging lunch-hour rush across four lanes. Horns and curses erupt around me.

He calls my name. Glance behind and isn't he following.

Loud horn very near quarter-turn right I'm face-to-bumper with a speeding delivery van. No time to sidestep tired airbrakes squealing big soft tires crunching loose stone.

I'm hit with a blue gust of spent hydrocarbons. Van grinds to a halt less than a foot away I can feel heat radiating from the engine smell hot oil. Driver big guy with a little moustache leans out yells, "Buddy, are you insane? Get the hell off the street!"

Before I can reply or even move more tires shriek beside me. Full-body flinch I try to collapse inwards roll up like an armadillo. Muffled thump, loud bang, van's driver curses in shock. Event.

I know; without looking, I know.