Opaline Bar and Brasserie at Washington D.C.'s Sofitel Hotel was too crowded, so I'd gone out to find another breakfast spot. I wasn't dressed for the autumn morning chill—the temperature must have dropped 30 degrees from the day before, when I'd arrived in the city for an event—so after walking a few blocks, I started back. Time to pack and get over to Union Station for my New York-bound train, anyway. I could eat at the station.
I stood at the corner of H Street and 15th Street, waiting for the crosswalk signal. The late-morning rush-hour traffic flew north on 15th. The light changed, the walk sign said go, and I began to cross, looking down, somewhat distracted, as I often am. Then—a thud; someone screaming, “What the fuck have you done?!” and an awful sight: a black pickup truck, and the woman it had slammed into as it spun left from H Street into the crosswalk, unconscious on the pavement, her coffee spilled by her side. She was broken and clenched. Her nose bled. I'd never seen anyone killed in front of me, but she looked dead.
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