Halfway down the stairs the radio station in my head (at which Cygnet is the official DJ, thanks to the mixtape she sent me) switches from Primus to EBN-OZN:  "So I'm feeling really cavalier, and I say 'now call me, if you want to...yeah.  Call me, if you want to.  So she rang me up, and she says, 'Hey!  Do you wanna go out?'  Ha!  Do I wanna go out!"  I feel like I'm momentarily ahead of the goo in my brain, and I like it.  If I slow down the pink cloud's going to catch up again, so I swish through the kitchen, barely touching the floor.  I grab an apple, my glasses, and Dr. Zheng's keys out of the fruit basket as I go past it and then I jam right on through the dining room, the ballroom, the foyer, and out the front door.  I'm going for a drive.

It's snowing, just a little flurry that's probably going to continue for some time and the calendar in my head tells me that it's the middle of November.  Where did the year go? Dr. Zheng's car is a Saab 9000 Turbo, which makes me happy even though it's painted either silver or white, instead of red like Saabs are supposed to be.  The door handle obeys my fingers with a light but expensive double click, and then I'm inside, smelling that crisp leather-smell, that Saab-smell.  The pink cloud recedes even more.  The Saab-smell clears my mind and I want to drive.  And, for the record, the car is silver, not white.

Where to go?  It doesn't matter.  I want to drive, need to drive, to go, to move, and the key turns, the car gives a little shudder--kwith-thithvrrrrmmm--and comes delightfully alive.  I squeeze the cold steering wheel and let the wonderful living mechanical feeling vibrate through me.  The low Saab exhaust-burble makes me smile.  The car will know where to go, off through the snow.  I hope Dr. Zheng put on snow tires.  Probably not.  I could ask him, seeing as how he's on the porch yelling, yelling my name in a pink cloud and tinted glass-muffled voice like a curious backward echo--"...lexi?  lexi get out of there, you shouldn't..."

Silly old Dr. Zheng's shouting is unimportant, though.  I hate it when people shout at me.  I lock the doors with my elbow and feed Cygnet's tape to the player.  He yells too much; I'll listen when I come back.  If I come back.  Will the fuzz let go of me long enough for a decent drive?  My left foot wiggles on the clutch, right on the gas.  So far, so good.  Right hand on the e-brake, push the button to release, then on the shifter.  Left on the wheel, resting lightly, not clutching.  This is the position I belong in, this is the first thing that's felt right in weeks, in months, in all this swish-clicking time since Ren died.  I put the Saab into gear and it gets a lot easier to think, to see from here, yes indeed it does. The tape is just starting that EBN-OZN song, which is why it fell into my head; I sing "A E I O U sometimes Y," and back up.

Gravel crunches and clatters against the underside of the car as I swing it around in a reverse J-turn that's not as graceful as it could be because I haven't been practicing.  The pink goo trapping my thoughts surges briefly, then falls completely away as the world spins around the car.  The falling snow is getting heavier and it makes the air look opaque.  I shift from reverse to first, reach out by instinct and twist the knob that my fingers touch, and there are lights.  In the lights, I see my gate, not as fancy as the Packards' gate and rusted permanently open.  I put my foot down and the Saab listens, after a customary hesitation.  Turbos always lag a bit, and Saabs are notorious offenders.  Ren and I have a Saab somewhere, painted properly cherry red and named Spirit of Indulgence, because Ren bought it on a complete whim.  And Molly has a Saab, too, a convertible.  Also red.  Good karma, that is.

I give the car a little bit of foot and Dr. Zheng's Saab launches, faster than I remember Saabs did.  The engine catches the rev limiter and then we're out the gate and bouncing across cold dry asphalt, hurtful bright light and a blaring horn as something--a pickup truck, a heavy-duty diesel grumble--blurs past, a hairline miss.  Yeep, I didn't see him!  I spin the Saab in a half-circle to complete the avoid, and it stalls.  Whoops.

Dr. Zheng is running down the driveway in his expensive little Italian shoes, still yelling my name.  I restart, get the car pointed in the right direction, and the Saab charges forward again, faster still on the harder surface, needle climbing and yellow lines running under the car, delightful feeling, fast, white-frosted air and trees and mailboxes flashing by in silhouette.  I can feel the road through the steering wheel and I can talk to the car with my hands and feet.  It's delicious, oh goodness it's delicious, grounded flight, one of the best sensations in the world.  This is what talking with Ren was like, what being with Ren was like, each of us knew what every little motion meant and responded and we were both in control at the same time.  There's less pink fuzz around my thoughts now, in fact it seems to almost be gone except for a wriggling sort of dopey feeling like Dramamine.  And there's snow coming out of the sky now, too, big blurry polka-dots of it.  Snow!  Yes, snow!  I can hear my laughter mingling with the car's.

I drive aimlessly and fast.  A left turn, a right turn, then straight for a while.  The roads are mostly straight up here.  The Dramamine-y feeling doesn't go away, and sometimes my reactions are muddy, a half-second slower than they should be.  That will just have to be fine, since I can't do anything about it.  If the road gets twisty, I'll slow down.  Dream Theater is singing and I sing along to sharpen my brain.  Clouds roll by, and I roll with them.

The sheep comes as a complete surprise.

I clip over a little rise at about sixty and there's a SHEEP standing in the middle of the road and looking back at me. 

A sheep? 

Here? 

How doesn't matter; I'm closing on it too quickly for the question of how.  Too quick for the stupid thing to run, in fact too quick for it to react at all.  My foot pops off of the gas, a reflex, and I dodge past it on the left.  As I go past I get a glimpse of an open gate, a dog running down the drive toward the sheep, a farmhouse that looks old enough to be handbuilt, and maybe someone sitting on the porch.

Then things get interesting.  I'm not completely right with the swerve; my reflexes haven't caught up to my brain and I swerve out way too far, right across the lane and into newly fallen snow.  I fight the wheel as the handling gets greasy, stay off the brakes even though I'm going too fast.  There's a rumbly sort of scrape beneath me as a strip of fresh snow turns to ripped-up brown grass under the car.  I overcorrect back onto the road, a hundred feet past the sheep, dog, gate, and house, still going too fast to touch the brakes and too far sideways to steer, and then just like that I'm off the right side of the road at a bad angle, too fast too fast ohhwww and a hard bounce, world spinning banging around the car, lights on snow telephone pole tree road dirt tree and STOPPED looking up at mostly sky. 

For a moment I think there's another ghost in front of the car, but it's only falling snow and steam swirling, making a dancing pattern in the lights.

Oh, poop, I just wrecked Dr. Zheng's car.  Somehow, though, I don't feel badly about that.  Not sure why.  Have I turned into a sociopath?

The Saab is quiet, stalled, cocked at a wrong wrong wrong angle in the ditch.  It's not coming out under its own power.  I've done this before and am pretty familiar with the process.  At least the airbag didn't pop.  "Sorry, Saab," I tell the car. 

Now, there's the mystery of the sheep to solve.