Intensity Read Free Page A

bitten by hordes of mosquitoes but were hardly aware of them, mesmerized by the sight below them, gazing through the driver-side windows of the submerged vehicle.
        "It was twilight," Chyna told Laura, putting into words the images behind her closed eyes, "so the headlights were on, still on even after the Mercedes sank, and there were lights inside the car. They had air conditioning, so all the windows were closed, and neither the windshield nor the driver-side window had shattered when the car rolled. We could see inside, 'cause the windows were only a few inches under water. There was no sign of the husband. Maybe he was knocked unconscious when they rolled. But the old woman… her face was at the window. The car was flooded, but there was a big bubble of air against the inside of the glass, and she pressed her face into it so she could breathe. We stood there looking down at her. Woltz could have helped. My mother could have helped. But they just watched. The old woman couldn't seem to get the window open, and the door must have been jammed, or maybe she was just too scared and too weak."
        Chyna had tried to pull away, but her mother had held her, speaking urgently to her, the whispered words borne on a tide of breath sour with vodka and grapefruit juice. We're different than other people, baby. No rules apply to us. You'll never understand what freedom really means if you don't watch this . Chyna had closed her eyes, but she had still been able to hear the old woman screaming into the big air bubble inside the submerged car. Muffled screaming.
        "Then gradually the screaming faded… finally stopped," Chyna told Laura. "When I opened my eyes, twilight had gone and night had come. There was still light in the Mercedes, and the woman's face was still pressed to the glass, but a breeze had risen, rippling the water in the canal, and her features were a blur. I knew she was dead. She and her husband. I started to cry. Woltz didn't like that. He threatened to drag me into the canal, open a door on the Mercedes, and shove me inside with the dead people. My mother made me drink some grapefruit juice with vodka. I was only seven. The rest of the way back to Key West, I lay on the backseat, dizzy from the vodka, half drunk and a little sick, still crying but quietly, so I wouldn't make Woltz angry, crying quietly until I fell asleep."
        In Laura's Mustang, the only sounds were the soft rumble of the engine and the singing of the tires on the blacktop.
        Chyna finally opened her eyes and came back from the memory of Florida, from the long-ago humid twilight to the Napa Valley, where most of the red light had gone out of the sky and darkness encroached on all sides.
        The old man in the Buick was no longer in front of them. They were not driving as fast as before, and evidently he had gotten far ahead of them.
        Laura said softly, "Dear God."
        Chyna was shaking uncontrollably. She plucked a few Kleenex from the console box between the seats, blew her nose, and blotted her eyes. Over the past two years, she had shared part of her childhood with Laura, but every new revelation-and there was much still to reveal-was as difficult as the one before it. When she spoke of the past, she always burned with shame, as though she had been as guilty as her mother, as if every criminal act and spell of madness could be blamed on her, though she had been only a helpless child trapped in the insanity of others.
        "Will you ever see her again?" Laura asked.
        Recollection had left Chyna half numb with horror. "I don't know."
        "Would you want to?"
        Chyna hesitated. Her hands were curled into fists, the damp Kleenex wadded in the right one. "Maybe."
        "For God's sake why?"
        "To ask her why. To try to understand. To settle some things. But… maybe not."
        "Do you even know where she is?"
        "No. But it wouldn't surprise me if she was in