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form the kind of commitment required for marriage. Most people who knew her agreed that it was not any deficiency in Mary that caused her relationships to fail but, rather, it was simply that she longed for a relationship so wholeheartedly that it terrified the men who came in contact with her.
    “Will you just be quiet for a minute and let Carol put in a word?” remarked Jane. Turning to Carol, she continued, remarking condescendingly, “I’m sure there are many dreams Carol had for her life that Harvey has squelched.” She stared at Carol expectantly.
    Carol paused, sipping the last of her drink noisily as she thought about it. The conversation was becoming a little more intense than usual, but Carol thrived on the attention. It was, perhaps, the glue that held the three together, that Mary and Jane were content to discuss Carol’s life. Mary’s issues were, although more real and pressing than Carol’s, rather tedious and impenetrable, and Jane, on the other hand, never wished to discuss her problems. “I’m not really sure,” Carol admitted at last. No squelched dreams appeared to come to mind.
    “You see that,” said Jane. “Harvey has her so engrossed in his life that she doesn’t even know what she wants anymore.”
    “Jesus Christ, Jane!” Mary exclaimed. “Is that what you call women’s liberation? To simply blame everyone else for everything?”
    And in the next instant their friendly luncheon had become a heated debate between Mary and Jane about what feminism was and was not, and when the meal was over Carol left the café more than a little tipsy and considerably less than content. Usually these little gatherings cheered her, but this time she came away feeling depressed. Suddenly the emptiness of her life seemed to spread out before her in a wide expanse of nothingness that left her feeling desolate. What was there to look forward to?
    She got into her car and drove, but she didn’t want to go home. She set out on the highway heading south, her destination for the moment undecided. She felt an overwhelming sense of dissatisfaction with everything. Was it possible that Harvey had squelched all her dreams? Why couldn’t she remember any dreams? All her thoughts and wishes had, for as long as she could recall, been connected to shopping, or getting her next corrective surgery, or attending her next party. But what did it all mean? Wasn’t she supposed to have a purpose that extended beyond making herself happy in the moment?
    Her melancholy was abruptly interrupted by an unfamiliar and eerie awareness creeping over her, even as her car simultaneously began veering inexplicably off to one side of the road and out of her control. Little by little her consciousness registered the sounds of crashing metals and breaking glass, and she could feel the sharp and shocking—yet peculiarly unreal—punctures to her flesh. Even as she comprehended these things, which appeared to be happening in slow motion, there was a violent rush of chemicals flooding through her bloodstream, giving the situation a supernatural effect that removed, for the moment, all terror, and put in its place an almost detached curiosity in the events as they occurred. At length, other cars rushed in all around her, and Carol felt her vehicle being slammed and twisted in all directions.
    Once the initial uproar of the crash was over there was mostly silence, except for vague whimpers and occasional shouts, none of which Carol could make any sense of. She perceived only that the initial rush of comforting chemicals to her bloodstream was quickly wearing off and that they were being replaced with a very intense fear. She felt wetness all around her, and concentrated on not thinking about what it was. She focused all her energies on listening attentively; painstakingly assessing the noises around her, not in an effort to make out what they were, but searching for one distinct sound in particular. She waited single-mindedly for what