“Man, I love speed,” Laura said.
“I hate it.”
“I like to move, streak, fly. Hey, maybe I was a gazelle in a previous life. You think?”
Chyna looked at the speedometer and grimaced. “Yeah, maybe a gazelle—or a madwoman locked away in Bedlam.”
“Or a cheetah. Cheetahs are really fast.”
“Yeah, a cheetah, and one day you were chasing your prey and ran straight off the edge of a cliff at full tilt. You were the Wile E. Coyote of cheetahs.”
“I’m a good driver, Chyna.”
“I know.”
“Then relax.”
“I can’t.”
Laura sighed with fake exasperation. “Ever?”
“When I sleep,” Chyna said, and she nearly jammed her feet through the floorboards as the Mustang took a wide curve at high speed.
Beyond the narrow graveled shoulder of the two-lane, the land sloped down through wild mustard and looping brambles to a row of tall black alders fringed with early-spring buds. Beyond the alders lay vineyards drenched with fierce red light, and Chyna was convinced that the car would slide off the blacktop, roll down the embankment, and crash into the trees, and that her blood would fertilize the nearest of the vines.
Instead, Laura effortlessly held the Mustang to the pavement. The car swept out of the curve and up a long incline.
Laura said, “I bet you even worry in your sleep.”
“Well, sooner or later, in every dream there’s a boogeyman. You’ve got to be on the lookout for him.”
“I have lots of dreams without boogeymen,” Laura said. “I have wonderful dreams.”
“Getting shot out of a cannon?”
“That would be fun. No, but sometimes I dream that I can fly. I’m always naked and just floating or swooping along fifty feet above the ground, over telephone lines, across fields of bright flowers, over treetops. So free. People look up and smile and wave. They’re so delighted to see that I can fly, so happy for me. And sometimes I’m with this beautiful guy, lean and muscular, with a mane of golden hair and lovely green eyes that look all the way through me to my soul, and we’re making love in midair, drifting up there, and I’m having spectacular orgasms, one after another, floating through sunshine with flowers below and birds swooping overhead, birds with these gorgeous iridescent-blue wings and singing the most fantastic birdsongs you ever heard, and I feel as if I’m full of dazzling light, just a creature of light, and like I’m going to explode, such an energy, explode and form a whole new universe and be the universe and live forever. You ever have a dream like that?”
Chyna had finally taken her eyes off the onrushing blacktop. She stared in blank-faced astonishment at Laura. Finally she said, “No.”
Glancing away from the two-lane, Laura said, “Really? You never had a dream like that?”
“Never.”
“I have lots of dreams like that.”
“Could you keep your eyes on the road, kiddo?”
Laura looked at the highway and said, “Don’t you ever dream about sex?”
“Sometimes.”
“And?”
“What?”
“And?”
Chyna shrugged. “It’s bad.”
Frowning, Laura said, “You dream about having bad sex? Listen, Chyna, you don’t have to dream about that—there are lots of guys who can provide all the bad sex you want.”
“Ho, ho. I mean these are nightmares, very threatening.”
“Sex is threatening?”
“Because I’m always a little girl in the dreams—six or seven or eight—and I’m always hiding from this man, not quite sure what he wants, why he’s looking for me, but I know he wants something from me that he shouldn’t have, something terrible, and it’s going to be like dying.”
“Who’s the man?”
“Different men.”
“Some of the creeps your mother used to hang out with?”
Chyna had told Laura a great deal about her mother. She had never told anyone else. “Yeah. Them. I always got away from them in real life. They never touched me. And they never touch me in the dreams. But there’s always a threat, always a possibility…
“So these aren’t just dreams. They’re memories too.”
“I wish they were just dreams.”
“What about when you’re awake?” Laura asked.
“What do you mean?”
“Do you just turn all warm and fuzzy and let yourself go when a man makes love to you… or is the past always there?”