Just as she thought herself fortunate that the pavement along this stretch was smooth, the asphalt gave way abruptly to concrete. Now there came potholes, creases, ruts, small ravines that made the bicycle bounce wildly. Her breasts had begun to ache with the strain, her teeth rattled in her head. I’m going to be killed, Marya thought.

Behind her Gregory’s shouts had grown faint. She was pulling away from him—speeding faster at every second—now hunched low over the handlebars like a racer, her hair whipping back and her eyes flooded with tears. Panic numbed her. Her bowels constricted. She tried the hand brakes in desperation: the left, the right, tentatively, then a little harder, both together, perhaps too hard—her tires skidded on the pavement—and when she released the brakes she was going as fast as before.

I can’t stop, Marya thought. This speed. This flight. I can’t stop except to die.

Then she was off the road, hurtling along the rutted shoulder, screaming for help, sobbing—

She fell—was dragged along for several yards—panting, whimpering with pain—

Then it was over. The flight was over. Marya crawled away from the overturned bicycle amid old beer cans, broken glass, tall oil-stained grasses. Her right knee, her entire leg . . . there was a bleeding gash in her leg. . . . She sobbed helplessly, pressing her knuckles into her mouth. Oh God the pain, the incredible pain, had she broken her leg, and her right wrist? . . . What was she going to do? . . .

Gregory crouched over her, comforting and scolding. Marya Marya Marya Marya. God damn it, Marya. You might have killed yourself, Marya. He had his little first aid kit in hand; he knew what to do. Marya saw that his skin had gone dead white—she’d frightened him as badly as she had frightened herself.

Gregory spat hurriedly into a tissue and tried to get the worst of the grit out of her lacerated knee. There was a six-inch tear in her jeans; he ripped it a little farther. Marya lay helplessly back on the gravel and watched his fingers, her head still spinning and her eyeballs loose and seared as if they had nearly flown out of her head. The wound was bleeding freely. Both her wrists ached; and several of her ribs; her right elbow had gone numb. . . . No less than you deserve, Marya thought calmly.

She saw that Gregory would be promoted, and not she: she would remain in town as a wife: if she was very fortunate.

“I should have broken my neck,” Marya said angrily. “It would have solved all my problems.”

“Our problems?” Gregory said lightly.

He was winding a long strip of gauze around her knee to soak up the blood. His fingers moved deftly, a little roughly. He tried to joke with her. To tease. It looked as if she had been trying to race the traffic. Forty-five miles an hour, maybe fifty, he’d never seen a bicyclist going quite so fast. . . .