Paul Juhasz lives and writes in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, where he soon will graduate from the Red Earth Low-Residency MFA in Creative Writing program at Oklahoma City University.
Just Missed
By Paul Juhasz
I kneel down on the chessboard-patterned floor of the mall food court, noticing my shoe is untethered. It will take me somewhere between 2-5 seconds to retie the laces.
Two seconds means I miss colliding into that man wearing a light-blue windbreaker despite the searing August heat. He’s a serial killer, concealing an axe-blade, fresh from the whetstone, in his pocket. An axe blade he will now bury into the skull of someone other than me.
Three seconds ensures I do not strike up a conversation with William, an entrepreneur looking for a partner, waiting in line at Panda Express two people (now) in front of me. When his start-up goes public, he will be on the cover of Forbes. I will still be putting bottles of vitamins into padded envelopes.
At four seconds, I miss the drunk driver running a red light on my drive home. Instead, he will crash into a Honda Odyssey, killing a young mother and one of her daughters. The surviving daughter will resent it when her father re-marries. Her step-mother, however, will encourage the daughter’s talent for painting, will beam proudly at her first exhibit at the Robert Klein Gallery.
Five seconds costs me a meeting with Heather, who would have been sitting at my usual table at the Starbucks three blocks from my apartment, where I will drink my white chocolate mocha alone, not aware that Heather was the woman I was really supposed to marry.
The shoe once again tethered, I go order my General Tso’s with fried rice, then walk to Bed, Bath and Beyond, where I will buy a mirror for the bathroom, living this life instead of myriad others, a boundless parcel of lives just missed.