He knew every bend in the road, how fast he could take the curves—lots of practice in his father's old truck, pushing it to its endurance until it shuddered so hard he thought it would fall apart around him.
Seventy—couldn't push it much more than that, not with the sharp bend coming up—no way he could make it at seventy—the lights flooded the SL as the car roared up behind them again, slamming into them, filling the night and the close forest with the sounds of crunching metal—no warning this time, the son-of-a-bitch meant business—Dolores still fighting with the goddamn seatbelt—
The car moved up beside him—a bulky, black thing with black windows—it careened against him, bouncing the Mercedes sideways, toward the shoulder that dropped off into nothingness.
He hit the brakes just as the demon car slammed him again, metal grating against metal with a shriek like fingernails on a blackboard, whining like an animal in pain. Then it hit him, the reality, that they were going over the side, airborne, floating momentarily like an eagle, car slowly rotating, rolling like a lazy old cat that might have tumbled from a tree limb while napping. Dolores screamed, her hands outstretched toward him—
The night gyrated with firelight and shadows, flames sluicing along trails of gasoline, shimming up the trunks of trees, lapping hungrily at the thick brown pine needles carpeting the ground.
Horn blaring, the Mercedes lay like some dead armored armadillo on its back, burning wheels resembling bonfires sending up acrid black smoke that formed a cloud close to the ground. The crumpled metal groaned and popped with the escalating heat. There came a hissing, like a snake, as if the machine were breathing its last—
The explosion shook the ground. Sparks streaked into the sky and trees, drifting like dandelion fluff over the thatches of weeds and thistle before dying out. Hot waves radiated across the ground in a rush like heat from a suddenly opened oven.
Shamika had left the front door of the house open. Light and music from a Sesame Street CD spilled through the old screen door, forming a dim yellow box on the orange front porch where Leah and Sam stood, thanking each other for a wonderful evening.
"It's early yet," Sam said, checking his watch. "We could still make that movie if we hurry."
"Perhaps another time." Leah smiled and tugged her sweater more closely around her shoulders. "Besides, I need to spend a little time tonight with my son."
Sam looked around her, into the house. "I'm real good with kids, you know."
"Are you?"
"Heck, I got this way of communicating with them. Guess 'cause I'm nothing but a big kid myself at heart. Your boy play sports?"
"No." She shook her head.
"One of those intellectual types, huh? Probably spends his time on a computer."
Leah looked around, into the house. She could hear water running. Shamika walked out of Val's bedroom, his pajamas tossed across her shoulder as she moved toward the bathroom, singing along with Bert and Ernie.
"I really should go, Sam. Shamika is getting Val ready for his bath."
"I'm real good at giving kids baths." He smiled into her eyes, and Leah realized that the aspect of returning to his efficiency apartment to watch television on this Friday evening when the rest of the single world was humming with activity was as appealing to him as a stomachache. She knew the feeling all too well. The emptiness. The sounds of clocks ticking in the silence. The hours that dragged on, measured by late movies and reruns of Andy Griffith and I Love Lucy.
Leah smiled back. "All right, Sam. Maybe it's time for you to meet my son."
He hitched up his pants and slapped his hands together as Leah reached for the screen door.
Shamika came out of the bathroom, drying her fingers on a towel emblazoned with Cookie Monster. She stopped in her tracks when seeing Leah and Sam, hands falling still amid the terry folds of the towel. "Hi," she said. "You're back early." She looked around Leah, and smiled at Sam. "I was just getting Val ready for bed."
"Then we're just in time," Leah replied, removing her sweater and tossing it over the back of a chair. She kicked off her shoes and walked barefoot toward Val's bedroom. "Coming, Sam?"
Sam, the used-car salesman with two normal teenage kids back in Austin fell in behind her, rolling up his sleeves, relaying his girls' escapades in the bathtub—how Debbie once poured so much Mr. Bubble into