Cookie Crenshaw slouched even lower into the front seat and prayed to God that blindness might strike the two middle aged ladies chasing each other around and around in the empty parking lot. If one of them should happen to spot the gold and blue City of Portland shield on the driver’s door there would be no way out; she would have to dutifully motor over, examine the dinged fenders and engage in Law Enforcement.

No way out.

The two women had driven into each other and then driven each other into a high rage that had already propelled them seven laps by Cookie’s count around the two wounded automobiles. The first four laps had gone clockwise after the tall blonde driving the Mercedes and wearing a green and white running outfit had managed to snake out a leggy kick that had somehow landed somewhere near her adversary’s shin. But then the fortunes of the chase had unaccountably collapsed and the next three laps were run counter clockwise as the stocky brunette driving the BMW with a bumper sticker that said “RAQUETBALLERS STROKE IT HARDER” became the pursuer.

If there was a better place anywhere in her district to avoid police work at seven o’clock of a splendid Saturday morning in June than parked under a tree in the furthest corner of the deserted Strohecker’s parking lot, Cookie had not discovered it. And like any rational cop with pending vacation time, she had kept a close eye out. But at Strohecker’s you could turn your back on the street, sip a big thermos of coffee and make some headway on a bag of bagels with cream cheese, look down at the city or out at the perfect snow cone of Mt. St. Helens, and discover that you were finding no crime.

But as Cookie had been taught in Vietnam, in any plan the enemy gets a vote. Today, and every day before her vacation started, the enemy was random chance and it had just cast its early morning vote. With nothing demanding to do, in maybe the least likely place in Southwest Portland to require law enforcement, she happened to glance into her rear view mirror just in time to witness the Mercedes and the BMW glide together in a slow, almost balletic collision. Cookie had no idea what had allowed the two drivers to meet like this on an otherwise deserted street, and didn’t care. What caused her to nearly void a bladderful of used coffee was when both drivers pulled into the parking lot, presumably to exchange information. Because there was her patrol car, off in the corner but still out in plain sight. Then mishap lurched toward calamity when what the drivers ended up exchanging wasn’t information but accusations. The screaming started, then the chase.

No way out at all.

Cookie set her mouth in a scowl and assessed the grim possibilities. If she tried to creep out of the parking lot and then flee the scene, the movement of the patrol car would surely attract their attention. But if she stayed where she was it was only a matter of time before one of them would begin to tire, making herself vulnerable to a determined attack. And it would be just her luck that some early-rising burgher would choose that moment to pass by on the way to a Saturday morning tennis match and call the police, outraged at the sight of two west hills ladies beating each other senseless right there in front of the supermarket. And Cookie would be done for. Since God had chosen not to strike her enemies with blindness, she settled on a backup prayer. Lord, then make me invisible. Let the red and blue mouse ears straddling the roof somehow meld into the morning shadows and let me somehow just be not there. Just for now, just this once, Lord.

She tried to slump down still further in the seat but it was useless – her knees just stuck up beyond the dashboard higher than her head. Dark blue policeman’s knees. “There’s a policeman’s knees!” one of the women would probably shout. “Now we’ll just see!”

See indeed. Cookie could see. In this moment of despair, in her dread of being visible, she had a vision. It was a clear vision, a terrible vision. It was the same vision that every policemen who has ever tried to go on vacation has had. It was a vision of the Wheels of Justice. And the Wheels of Justice, as they are said to do, were grinding exceedingly slow and they were grinding exceedingly fine. They were grinding out assault complaints by crazy west hills women, grinding out court dates, grinding out postponements, grinding out more court dates, reports, citations, depositions, interrogatories, subpoenas, writs, field notes, incident reports, charts, chronologies. Grinding and slowly grinding. Grinding for days and for weeks. Grinding out the justice of the random chance that a minor collision with little body damage and no injury should escalate right up to the brink of felony assault.

And in her vision she saw that the Wheels of Justice were being turned by an arbitrary God who now threw Cookie’s own passport, and her visa, and her airline tickets, and her hotel reservations and then her scuba gear and new spear gun – threw them into the great wheels. Cookie saw her entire vacation fed into the wheels and then she saw the great mass of city bureaucracy come flying out of the other end, a great flutter of paperwork, a storm of paperwork, a blizzard of paperwork that blew down upon the blue Australian ocean and turned the water of the Great Barrier Reef to the consistency of oatmeal, choking the fish which by rights ought to have been dying at the hands of a newly-tanned Cookie Crenshaw and her new GI Joe’s spear gun, just two weeks from now.

Cookie had now made two perfectly reasonable prayers and God had answered neither. In a final effort to achieve at least the illusion of an empty patrol car, she became nearly fetal between the seat and steering wheel, though she knew that at the hands of a God otherwise occupied, it was just a matter of time. Sighing her resignation loudly enough for God to hear in the unlikely event that He was listening, she heard one of the ladies gave the sort of sudden shriek that she knew positively was going to lead to Law Enforcement. She closed her eyes for one last desperate pleading: “Blind mine enemies, oh Lord!” only this time with real conviction.

And was encouraged by the results. Both women came to a halt, panting heavily, ripped open the doors of their respective cars, brought purses out onto the hoods, extracted small cans from them, and proceeded to mace each other in the face.

Cookie had asked for blindness and had got it, and was well pleased with the Lord. Quickly she gunned her engine and disappeared around the corner, leaving the two blinded women to flail away at each other. At that moment, the police dispatcher, herself blind to Cookie’s predicament, sent her off to a wreck on highway 26.

Twice rescued from the same fate. Now that was a good omen.