Who doesn't almost die every day? I mean, anything could happen: stray bullets, accidents, tsunamis. The building you are sitting in could fall down. Your head could just explode. Today, like anyone else, I almost died. It's a nothing story: a car swerved into my lane, I braked and lost control of the wheel and for a second drove into oncoming traffic. I didn't even panic; I was calm. I tucked myself back in between those yellow and white lines and kept going. My heart rate sped and slowed down. Nothing changed but for some reason after that half of a second, the whole world looked different.

Nothing made sense to me: not the cars jogging along in their oil soaked tracks, the buildings, the people huddling on corners waiting for lights to change, not the sky. What is all of this? Where are we going? I had an overpowering urge to stop the car in the middle the freeway, and sit there until I could figure it out. I guess it's what they call an existential moment. It was like Camus came back from the dead to rewrite The Stranger and chose me as his new vessel. My hands gripped the steering wheel. I heard the rattling sounds of the old pick up. I looked out at overpasses, signs, blinkers, buses, people opening and closing doors, people standing in lines and staring into distances: unsmiling and statuesque. The sky was clouded over and nearly black. An old woman—neckless, hunched over—pivoted her upper body towards the sky, winced and spit, then limped up the sidewalk, her back round, her head level with her knees. A beetle.

A meeting with my boss and I felt like I was held together with strands of chewed gum. I used words I picked up from TV commercials: productivity and permutation. They sounded so impressive. I cleared my throat and threw him a four-syllable adjective. He swung and missed. I kicked the mound and cleaned my teeth with my tongue. I had no idea what we were talking about, but there was an inch of a rainbow forming in the cracks of the Plexiglas tinted window. He told me he's impressed with my performance. I tipped my hat and bowed. This is bullshit, I wanted to tell him, you are made of consonants and semicolons, an occasional exclamation point. I could poke my hand through you, dust away the characters and you'd vanish in the air. I was coming apart.

All day, I've been looking through people, to the backs of their skulls: dusty bones that will someday be empty of even marrow, breakable. The office manager is running down the halls in high heels, squealing about manufacturing successes in China. Somewhere on the other side of the world there is a woman mumbling curses in Cantonese, her steps echoing down a cement corridor. Both bodies are ready to burst, to dance, to kick and sing and scream. But here is the office manager, her blonde hair bouncing, her lipstick neatly replaced, her legs outpacing the rest of her body. And there are bones locked into sinewy joint tissue, thick muscle tensing and releasing, blood running in circles like ants to and from a melting flake of chocolate. We're all dead.

Not nice thoughts, I'm sorry. It got to the point that I couldn't answer the phone because if I did I was going to just let it all come out. Look at us, I'd say to the Wells Fargo Account Specialist. Take a look at us: you sitting there with your legs crossed, I bet, cleaning your teeth with the top of a Bic pen, and me—scribbling in this notebook, maybe half of what you are telling me. Do you really care about percentage rates? Go! Take off your pointed boots; they're killing your feet. Just start running. Run through the window. Find something real that you can hold onto because everything is slipping away from us and look at us, here, pretending. I'm sorry.

The office manager at the door, "Are you going to answer that?" The phone was ringing off the hook for hours. "No," I tell her. She furrowed her eyebrows and pushed out her lips. "Everything okay?" I didn't answer. I grabbed a stack of bills and straightened them against the desk, pushed a pen behind my ear. "Your shoes," I said. "What's that?" She cocked her head like a little dog. "Maybe you should take them off." She laughed, ha, ha, ha, and waved a finger at me. "Oh, you're so good to have around here." She sighed and leaned into the doorway, "What would we do without you?" I could see the veins in her ankles through her pantyhose. Her feet were swollen. I shrugged my shoulders. "Our container will be FOB Shanghai on 5/23. Can you send notification?" She said. Yards and yards of coiled wires and plastic shipped across the ocean. Nothing makes any sense. "Are you going to answer that?" She asked me.

I decided to see a movie, to take a long lunch. I wanted to find some shred of sanity. The sky was flat, black and gray, the trees leaning over in the wind. I drove to a mall. There was a theater inside. I forgot, completely, about Christmas. I walked out of my car, and could hear John and Yoko and a chorus of children chanting, "War is over, if you want it." A holiday soundtrack piped into the parking lot. A group of teenagers were talking on cell phones, wearing puffy jackets and waiting for rides. I opened the door, and was hit by the smell of sugar and plastic and cinnamon, the music tinny and blaring. There was a giant Christmas tree surrounded by video monitors playing Arthur cartoons, a child in front of each, their noses inches from the flat screens. Stores spread out in every direction like rows of cardboard puppet theaters. People were milling around, looking dazed, as if they'd lost control of their facial muscles, salivating.

I took two steps. There was an island in front of me made of cement benches, palm trees in its center. A woman sat and rubbed her feet, her arms draped over shopping bags, hugging them. A pair of old ladies leaned into each other, talking quietly. And then suddenly there was a high-pitched scream, "Daddy, daddyyyy." A small boy—his hair cut in blunt uneven chunks, his round face smeared with snot and chocolate—was walking around and around the island with his arms outstretched. The old women watched his revolutions. John, Yoko and the kids were singing, "A very merry Christmas," and no one could do anything but stare at the lost child, shocked to be temporarily driven from their shopping. The boy was pinching the air with his hands, trying to pry his father out of invisibility. He was pulling and pulling, fingers like claws, his face wet. "War is over if you want it." I couldn't breathe; I was enveloped in screaming, singing, tambourines, cinnamon and perfume and plastic, shining clothes, shining boxes, Technicolor storefronts. And all of the shoppers, gray and muted, were moving slowly in circles, sugar dripping from their lips. The little boy kept running and running.

I forgot about work, about anything else, and I drove. I drove without any intention of stopping until I could find something that made sense. It started to rain. Sheets of water banged against the windshield. My wipers were useless. I drove along the ocean road, glancing at the sea, a mass of movement—crashing and retracting. I wanted Wonder Twin powers, to freeze the whole Pacific so I could walk across and sit right in the middle. I wanted to sit there and look down at frozen fishes, at the ocean without waves. I wasn't even thinking about death anymore, just feeling that nothing was right. Everything was too fast and hollow. I turned onto streets I've never heard of before—right, then left, and then right again.

A Japanese restaurant, the sign just said Sushi. It looked like nothing. There were no other customers. A little girl in a bright pink, fur-lined, Scooby Doo jacket was playing under the bar. It was cold and damp inside; I ordered tea. There was a tank by the door full of koi fish, long and orange with white cow spots. The water was dirty. There was nothing in the tank except these seven fish, all of them fighting against each other for a better view. They seemed to be looking at me. They had thick chin hairs, like old women, their mouths opening and closing, their eyes wide. I sipped my tea and looked around. The owners were playing with their daughter: the mother running her fingernails through the girl's hair, the father leaning over the counter to touch her nose. The girl laughed. The man returned to chopping fish. The woman whispered in her child's ear. I pushed against the glass for a better view.

The tea warmed the palm of my hand. There was nothing else. The fish pressed themselves closer and I took a small, slow sip, so they could watch. This was all I had. Maybe my house had burned down. Maybe everyone I knew was dead or washed away in this flood; the gutters outside rushing like rivers. There was the acrid taste of tea on my tongue, and the sound of rain and the fish swishing against gray water. On the walls, masks of Kabuki actors were biting their wooden lips, sticking out their tongues, arching their eyebrows. They were screaming, singing, laughing in low splintered voices. The little girl hid between her mother's legs, and on the radio Bing Crosby was wishing me a white Christmas. The fish were trying to see through the thick glass, the dirty water. The waitress rested her hand on my shoulder for a second. She didn't say anything at all.