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. . . .

At least the bicycle wasn’t seriously damaged; Marya insisted upon walking it down the remainder of the hill. Her heart was still pounding and she couldn’t seem to get her breath but she didn’t want any more of Gregory’s assistance; she didn’t need it.

GREGORY LED THEM to a Holiday Inn where Marya could use the women’s room. She didn’t want to think how she must look—an adult woman with her jeans torn and bloody at the knee, her hair wild, her face dirty, a glassy sheen to her eye. Marya Knauer, humbled and brought low as she deserved. She wondered that people did not stare at her in pity.

Gregory chided her for being so angry, so stubborn. She ought to be grateful, he said, she wasn’t in an emergency room stretched out on a table.

Yes, said Marya sullenly. She knew.

He told her to wash the cuts thoroughly, and to dab on some antiseptic; to bandage them up carefully; then to lie down and rest, even if it was only for five minutes. She’d had a considerable shock after all, she might have died. . . . He would be waiting for her in the coffee shop.

Yes, said Marya, limping away.

At the fleshy-pink door of the ladies’ room Marya turned to look back but Gregory had already left the lobby.