Escrow

We worked well into the night, we had a TV in the office and we had some guy that wanted to do business with us bring us beer. Our office was in the back of an industrial park, surrounded by auto body shops. It wasn't designed for drop in business. The only window was by the front door, and it was easy to lose track of what time it was, gone missing in the flicker of fluorescent light.

Around one in the morning my partner and I left to drop some documents off at the escrow office. The streets were deserted. I got out of the car, three large manila envelopes in my hand. They were too large for the mail slot, I was bending them, lengthwise over on themselves, trying to get them in the door. Look at this, my partner said. Back up Diamond Bar Blvd a car was moving down towards us. It slowly drifted out of its lane, to the right, across the adjoining lane, bouncing up the curb and into a light pole. It hit the pole with the front quarter panel and flipped over, landing on its hood and skidding out into the middle of the intersection.

Across the street some people were walking across an all night restaurant and we saw them start dialing a cell phone. My partner and I ran out to the car in the intersection. We heard a girl crying. A fire hydrant had been knocked over and cold water was spraying up into the sky, raining on us. Steam was rising off the car.

We went to the driver's side and no one was in the seat. We saw a pretty Korean girl up against the back seat, laying sideways. She was wearing a leather skirt and heels. I had a leather jacket on and reached my arm in the open window, brushing the glass shards from the edges of the window. I tried to find the door handle. I saw the feet of the driver. Is everyone okay? my partner asked. The girl was still crying. We walked around to the other side. The driver had been flipped out of his seat sideways, and was crouched, right side up in an upside down car. The passenger side window was broken and the driver's ass was sticking out. His wallet was partially out of his pocket. It was thick with bills. I stopped. My partner and I looked at each other, then looked back, up and down the empty intersecting streets, then back at the wallet.