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around a corner that wasn’t there; then one of them moved up directly above the other. It came down again hard, on the wrong side, and began blinking.

Three
    A smell of spilled gasoline: when Saul opened his eyes, he was still strapped in behind his lap-and-shoulder belt, but the car he sat in was upside down and in a field of some sort. The car’s headlights illuminated a sky of dirt, and, in the distance, a tree growing downward from that same sky. Perhaps he had awakened out of sleep into another dream. “Patsy?” he said, turning with difficulty toward his wife strapped in on the passenger side, her hair hanging down from her scalp, but, from Saul’s perspective, standing up. She was still sleeping; she was always a sound sleeper; she could sleep upside down and was doing so now. The car’s radio was playing Ray Charles’s “Unchain My Heart,” and Saul said aloud, “You know, I’ve always liked that song.” His voice was thick from beer, Chablis—whatever they had had to drink—and cigarettes, and he knew from the smell of the beer that this was no dream because he had never been able to imagine concrete details like that. No: he had fallen asleep at the wheel, driven off the road, and rolled the car. Here he was now, awake but unsober. At least this road was remote and unpatrolled. A thought passed through him in an unpleasant slow-motion way that the car was upended and that the ignition was still on. He switched it off and felt intelligent for three seconds until the lap belt began to hurt him and he felt stupid again. No ignition, no Ray Charles. His mind, which had eased itself into oblivion for Mad Dog’s party, returned to a sort of homeroom anxiety, as it moved slowly down a dark narrow alley-way cluttered with alcohol, fatigue, and the first onset of shock. Probably the car would blow up, and the only satisfaction his mother would receive from this accident would come years from now, when she would tell people, at the point when they were all through reminiscing about Saul, “I
told
him not to drink. I told him about drinking and driving. But he never listened to me. Never.”
    “Patsy.” He reached out and gave her a little shake.
    “What?” She opened her eyes.
    “Wake up. I rolled the car. Patsy, we’ve got to get out of here.”
    “Why, Saul?” She looked at him with displeasure.
    “Because we have to. Patsy, we’re not at home. We’re in the car. And we’re upside down. Come on, honey, wake up. Please. This is serious.”
    “I
am
awake.” She blinked, twisted her head, then looked calm. Her opal earring glittered in the light of the dashboard. The earring made Saul think of stability and a possible future life, if only he would normalize himself. Patsy smiled. Saul thought that this smile had something to do with guardian angels who, judging from the evidence, flew invisibly around her head, beaming down benevolence. “Well, Saul,” she said, turning to look at him carefully, “are you all right?”
    “Yes, yes, I’m not hurt at all.”
    “Good. Well. Neither am I, I don’t think.” She reached tentatively toward the ceiling. “This isn’t fun. Did
you
do this, Saul?”
    “Yes, I did. How do we get out of here?”
    “Let’s see,” she said, speaking calmly, in her usual tone. “What I think you do is, you release your seat belt, stick your arms straight up, then lower yourself slowly so you don’t break your neck. Then you crawl out the window, the higher one. That would be yours.”
    “Okay.” He held his arm up, then unfastened the clasp and felt himself dropping onto the car’s ceiling. He pulled himself toward the side window. When he was outside, he leaned over, back in, and extended his hand to Patsy to help her out.
    As she emerged through the window, she was smiling. Disasters didn’t appear to have the power to alienate her from life. “Haven’t you ever rolled a car before, Saul? I have. Or one of my boyfriends did, years ago.” She was