His jacket flapped out behind him, the hot wind blew his hair flat, and he thought for a few steps he might make it. The lights weren’t far, he was a good runner; but his jaw throbbed with every move and the pain radiated into his ear and eye. It blurred his vision and the lights on Nostrand looked hazy and further away than ever. He was slowing down, they were catching up. He was in shock, and even though he knew that one of them had jumped on his back and stabbed him as he fell, he didn’t feel the knife cut, or any pain. It was like a punch, nothing worse. He sank forward, face down, and felt more blows; on his back, shoulders, buttocks. He knew one of them stabbed him in the neck. He also knew that he was dying. He had a sudden vision of his father and wife, in the kitchen a block away, making a kugel to celebrate coming home. He could see their hands and the Pyrex casserole they used. He could see the light golden noodles, and raisins and nuts. He could see the old linoleum on the kitchen floor that he and Hawkins had laid years ago, and the curtains. But he couldn’t see anyone’s face. He kept his eyes open, trying. The blood was pouring, the weight was off his back, and he heard the boys running. He knew he should pray, but he couldn’t remember any prayers; he tried to keep his eyes open, but they closed involuntarily; and just before he lost consciousness for good, he dreamed that he and his wife, Rachel, were back in Minnesota, in the million-­acre wilderness park that stretched across Canada to the edge of the Arctic, to Siberia for all he knew. They’d gone there in the summer, two New York Jews, used to taxis and subways and noise; used to doormen, porters, janitors, handymen. And they’d carried a canoe for three miles through the pine woods. They laughed and complained, they were sore and sweaty, and just when they thought they’d never come to the end, the pines thinned and they stood on the bank of an empty lake that was smooth, dark, and silent, like ink in a well. They set the canoe into the shallow water, dipped their paddles in the still surface, and glided away from the shore. Adam felt free and at ease; Rachel lifted her paddle smoothly out of the water, looked at him over her shoulder, and smiled.