Intensity

afraid, never. With this woman, however, he has been unsettled more than once.
        A few steps into the room, he halts, getting a grip on himself. Now that he is inside again, he doesn't understand why killing her seemed to be such an urgent priority.
        Intuition.
        But never has his intuition delivered such a clamorous message that has left him this conflicted. The woman is special, and he so badly wants to use her in special ways. Merely pumping two shots into the back of her head or sticking the screwdriver into her a few times would be such a waste of her potential.
        He is never afraid. Never.
        Even being unsettled like this is a challenge to his dearest image of himself. The poet Sylvia Plath, whose work leaves Mr. Vess uncharacteristically ambivalent, once said that the world was ruled by panic, "panic with a dog-face, devil-face, hag-face, whore-face, panic in capital letters with no face at all-the same Johnny Panic, awake or asleep." But Johnny Panic does not rule Edgler Vess and never will, because Mr. Vess has no illusions about the nature of existence, no doubts about his purpose, and no moments of his life that ever require reinterpretation when he has the time for quiet reflection.
        Sensation.
        Intensity.
        He cannot live with intensity if he is afraid, because Johnny Panic inhibits spontaneity and experimentation. Therefore, he will not allow this woman of mysteries to spook him.
        As both his breathing and his heartbeat subside to normal rates, he turns the rubberized handle of the screwdriver around and around in his hand, staring at the short blunt blade at the end of the long steel shank.

    
        The moment Vess entered the kitchen, before he spoke, Chyna sensed he had changed from the man that she had known thus far. He was in a different mood from any that had previously possessed him, although the precise difference was so subtle that she was not able to define it.
        He approached the table as if to sit down, then stopped short of his chair. Frowning and silent, he stared at her.
        In his right hand was a screwdriver. Ceaselessly he rolled the handle through his fingers, as if tightening an imaginary screw.
        On the floor behind him were crumbling chunks of mud. He had come inside with dirty shoes.
        She knew that she must not speak first. They were at a strange juncture where words might not mean what they had meant before, where the most innocent statement might be an incitement to violence.
        A short while ago, she had half preferred to be killed quickly, and she had tried to trigger one of his homicidal impulses. She had also considered ways that, although shackled, she might be able to commit suicide. Now she held her tongue to avoid inadvertently enraging him.
        Evidently, even in her desolation, she continued to harbor a small but stubborn hope that was camouflaged in the grayness where she could not see it. A stupid denial. A pathetic longing for one more chance. Hope, which had always seemed ennobling to her, now seemed as dehumanizing as feverish greed, as squalid as lust, just an animal hunger for more life at any cost.
        She was in a deep, bleak place.
        Finally Vess said, "Last night."
        She waited.
        "In the redwoods."
        "Yes?"
        "Did you see anything?" he asked.
        "See what?"
        "Anything odd?"
        "No."
        "You must have."
        She shook her head.
        "The elk," he said.
        "Oh. Yes, the elk."
        "A herd of them."
        "Yes."
        "You didn't think they were peculiar?"
        "Coastal elk. They thrive in that area."
        "These seemed almost tame."
        "Maybe because tourists drive through there all the time."
        Slowly turning and turning the screwdriver, he considered her explanation. "Maybe."
        Chyna saw that the fingers of his right hand were covered with a film of dry mud.
        He said, "I can smell the musk of them now, the texture of their eyes, hear the greenness of the ferns swaying around them, and it's a cold dark oil in my blood."
        No reply was possible, and she didn't try to make one.
        Vess lowered his gaze from Chyna's eyes to the turning point of the screwdriver-and then to his shoes. He looked over his shoulder and saw the mud on the floor.
        "This won't do," he said.
        He put the screwdriver on a