=Several Windows=

The golfers dot the green landscape like grazing sheep. The muscle relaxant begins to take effect; it's unpleasant but in a mild way that's almost pleasant and that's enough these days. "An attitude of gratitude brings opportunities," the tag on her teabag informs her. She dunks the bag absentmindedly. The polish on her thumbnail needs repair.

She dreams of collapse—I mean, she fears it. At the beach, the gull looks frozen in a great cube of plastic, like an installation by Damien Hirst. The wind, however, or something, is screaming. 

She wakes up with a pain in her neck she's almost forgotten, turning towards her on the pillow like a lover grown too close for comfort. There is always someone in the driver's seat—a shape, indistinguishable, hard to make out, unless she squints hard in its direction and even then. Whoever it is curses the driver of the car ahead of them, too tentative, apparently, in the execution of what may well be an illegal left turn.

She shrinks back in her seat. She's always suspected that to be almost there is better than to be there. She rests her eyes in the meantime. She hears, but doesn't see, the stone that stars the windshield.