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at them out of the
future and Kelly Kelleher swallowed hard regretting now she had not brought a
drink along for herself thinking, Am I ready?
    Like
a mirror broken and scattered about them, the marshes stretching for miles.
Kelly supposed they were lost but hesitated to utter the word for fear of
annoying The Senator.
    Am I ready?—it's an adventure.
    In
the jolting car they did seem immune to any harm, still less to a vehicular
accident, for The Senator was driving in a way one might call recklessly, you
might say his judgment was impaired by drink but not his skill as a driver for
he did have skill, handling the compact car as if by instinct
and with an air too of kingly contempt, so Kelly was thinking, though they were
lost, though they would not make the 8:20 p.m. ferry after all, she
was privileged to be here and no harm could come to her like a young princess
in a fairy tale so recently begun but perhaps it would not end for some time,
perhaps.
    The bright flat moon, the glittering
patches of water so very like pieces of mirror. A jazzy tempo to the radio music now and the beat, the beat, the beat of the
surf out of range of their immediate hearing but Kelly believed she could hear
it half-closing her eyes gripping the strap at her shoulder so hard her
knuckles were white.
    Raising
her voice without seeming quite to raise it: "I think we're lost,
Senator."
    The word Senator lightly ironic, playful. A
kind of caress.
    He
had told her to call him by his first name—his diminutive first name—of course.
But somehow just yet Kelly had not been able to oblige.
    Such intimacy, together in the bouncing
jolting car. The giddy smell
of alcohol pungent between them. Beery kisses, that tongue thick enough to choke you.
    Here
was one of the immune, beside her: he, one of the powerful adults of the world, manly man, U.S. senator, a famous face
and a tangled history, empowered to not merely endure history but to guide it,
control it, manipulate it to his own ends. He was an old-style liberal Democrat
out of the 1960s, a Great Society man with a stubborn and zealous dedication to
social reform seemingly not embittered or broken or even greatly surprised at
the opposition his humanitarian ideas aroused in the America of the waning
years of the twentieth century for his life was politics, you know what
politics is, in its essence: the art of compromise.
    Can
compromise be an art?—yes, but a minor art.
    Kelly
had thought The Senator had not heard her but then he said, with a mirthless
chuckle as if clearing his throat, "This is a shortcut, Kelly." As if speaking to a very young child or to a drunken young woman,
slowly. "There's only one direction and we can't be lost."
    Just before the car flew off the road.

 

    She heard the single expletive
"hey!" as the car skidded
into a guardrail skidding sideways, the right rear coming around as in a demonic
amusement ride and her head cracked against the window a red mist flashing
across her eyes but she could not draw breath to scream as the momentum of
their speed carried them down a brief but steep embankment, an angry staccato
tapping against the car as if dried sticks were being broken, still she had not
breath to scream as the car plunged into what appeared to be a pit, a pool,
stagnant water in the marshland you might think only a few feet deep but black
water
    was
churning alive and purposeful on all sides tugging them down, the car sinking
on its side, and Kelly was blinded, The Senator fell against her and their
heads knocked and how long it was the two of them struggled together, stunned,
desperate, in terror of what was happening out of their control and even their
comprehension except to think This can't be happening, am I going to die like this, how many seconds or minutes before The Senator moaning "Oh God. Oh
God" fumbled clawing at the safety belts extricating himself by sheer
strength from his seat behind the broken steering wheel and with fanatic
strength forcing himself