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tires, tipping it forward for an instant. The steering wheel spun through my hands, I struggled for control, the tailgate window imploded, plastic cracked, metal tore with a banshee shriek, and I could no more regain control than I could vaporize the big rig with a well-chosen magic word.
    I spat out a number of well-chosen words, but none of them was magic.
    I’m not quite sure of the subsequent physics of the encounter, but somehow the Explorer turned its starboard flank to the ProStar+ and briefly stuttered violently sideways. More windows burst and the SUV noisily cast off pieces of itself, like one of those lizards that can escape by shedding at will the tail that is in the teeth of its attacker. Then, with the indifferent majesty of a freight train rolling on its rails, the big rig rumbled past, and the Ford was forced off the road, across the graveled shoulder. It plunged bow-first down a long, grassy embankment. It ricocheted off a boulder, off an ancient ficus tree, tipped, rolled, and slid on its roof about fifty feet until it came to rest where the shore grass transitioned to sand.
    I wondered why the air bag hadn’t deployed. But then I realized that a vehicle belonging to professional criminals might have been modified to make it not only faster and easier to handle but perhaps also to remove from it any features that might hamper them in a slam-bang pursuit with police hot behind them. Besides, they weren’t the type to worry about collision injuries, any more than they would employ a BABY ON BOARD bumper sticker even if they turned from bank robbery to kidnapping.
    Happily, the safety harness kept me from harm, although now I hung upside down in the inverted vehicle, with the ocean vista above my head and the blue sky under my blown tires. I might have taken a little while to savor this unusual perspective if I hadn’t smelled gasoline.

Three
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    AS I CLIMBED THE MEADOWY SLOPE TOWARD THE COAST Highway, I expected the Explorer to burst into flames behind me, but it merely lay in ruin, belly exposed as if it were some sad beast soon to be a meal for carrion crows.
    By the time I arrived at the summit and stood on the shoulder of the road, the ProStar+ was long gone, as were the other cars and trucks that had been in the northbound and southbound lanes when the cowboy had attempted to murder me with an eighteen-wheeler. Blacktop receded into sun-baked silence, still and lonely, as if the rest of humanity had vanished from the planet while I’d ridden the runaway Ford to the shore.
    Some of the people in those vehicles must have seen what happened, yet none stopped to ascertain my condition or to offer assistance. The world howls for social justice, but when it comes to social responsibility, you sometimes can’t even hear crickets chirruping.
    Engine noise drew my attention to the north. A car appeared in the distance, and the closer it came, the longer it grew. When itstopped on the side of the highway, in front of me, it proved to be a black superstretch Mercedes limousine.
    The front tinted window on the passenger side powered down, and when I bent to peer into the limo, I discovered that the driver was a pixie. Standing, she might have been an inch short of five feet. She could see over the steering wheel only because she was perched on a firm pillow. Elderly, slight but not frail, she wore her white hair in a Peter Pan cut.
    “Child,” she said, “you look in need of something. Are you in need of something?”
    I could see nothing to be gained and all kinds of complications that might arise if I mentioned the thoroughly wrecked Ford Explorer on the beach below.
    “Well, ma’am, I need to get south in a hurry.”
    “South where?”
    “I’m not quite sure.”
    “You don’t know where you need to go?”
    “I’ll know it when I get there, ma’am.”
    She cocked her head and regarded me in silence for a moment, and I thought of a cockatoo, perhaps because of her white hair and the birdlike