“Good.” She seemed relieved, “They’re here.” She stood up andwalked to the front of the parking lot just as four beautiful, tricked-out Choppers, all manned by women, pulled in and halted next to the girl.“Check it out.” Angelina elbowed her friends, “Lesbians. In Texas .”

“She did some sort of magic bra trick to get it off and out of her shirt. All women seemed to know the same maneuver.”

“With such luck as this, he rode the beast in the jaunty way that she deserved, back north, seemingly back from Mexico, pulling up finally at an outlying bar-ex-saloon (they had covered the old adobe face with knotty pine, substituted big stone matades for the cuspidors) and having brought her wrecklessly this far did not park her in the little parking lot but in front of the church next door. They had lifted that face too and neonized, but it did no good, they seemed to know they had no chance against an older god, their doors were closed. Thus one could join the pagan worshipers with a self-righteous shrug, through latticed doors.”

“Forget he never wanted this in the first place. Forget he was convinced she might be clinically insane and definitely feral. The bottom line was, she ran. She didn't even stop to shower. She woke up, saw Zach lying next to her, and took to the Texas hills. Not a good sign when one was just starting out in a relationship.”

“She stood in the mirror portrait very near Margaret, close next to her, good as a mother or a friend.”

“She was the first person on either side of her family to go to college, and she held herself to insanely high standards. She worried a lot about whether she was good enough. It was surprising to see how relieved she seemed whenever I told her how amazing she was. I wanted her to feel strong and free. She was beautiful when she was free.”