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pressed the gas down. The high rises passed, the parkland, gas stations, quaint little enclaves of brick cafes. They all went by in a vague, peripheral jumble. Michelle’s large eyes glowed with determination. Her lips turned upward in a determined smile.
Yes
, she thought.
    And then she hit Dead Man’s Curve.
    That’s what the locals always called it. The newspapers called it that sometimes too. It was not a very original name, I guess, but it was accurate enough. Here, just at the city border, the road swept left in a long, wide sudden arc. The speeding traffic wheeled round it in a seemingly endless swing onto the parkway, with nothing but a gas station car lot to the right where the turn reached its apex. Lots of carshad spun out of control there. There’d been two fatals on the very spot within the last year and a half. Michelle hit the curve at full speed, her mind elsewhere. She was squinting, with only one hand on the steering wheel, while the other massaged her belly.
    At the height of the bend, the Datsun’s rear tires lost their grip on the road. Michelle felt the back of the car fly wide behind her. She jerked awake, afraid, swung the wheel in the opposite direction—just the wrong thing to do. The car zigzagged violently and, as the road continued to curve, the Datsun sailed on straight ahead. It jumped the curb and skimmed over the sidewalk into the car lot. The stretch of asphalt there was slick with runoff from the gas pumps. The Datsun started to spin. It seemed to pick up speed. Michelle wrestled desperately with the steering wheel. It had no effect. The car came full around. The white wall of the gas station garage grew huge in the windshield.
    Michelle let out one high-pitched scream: “Please!”
    The car smashed headlights-first into the wall.
    Michelle was fired out of her seat like a rocket. She smashed into the windshield and the glass exploded. Her flesh ripped apart by the impact, her bones snapping like twigs, her bowels and bladder releasing, she lost consciousness. Her body thumped onto the crumpled hood like a laundry sack. Her blue blouse was quickly soaked with red.
    She lay there, still, as smoke and steam hissed up around her.

3
    I t was almost 10:00 A.M . when Bob Findley got the call at the city desk. He set the phone down and sat for a moment, gazing out at the quiet room. It was a vast maze of brown desks with tan computer terminals rising from them. It was lit with a bland, hazy light by the fluorescents hidden behind the white plastic panels of the ceiling.
    Bob took a deep breath, arranging his inner self. He was not sure, at first, how he wanted to react. Findley had a reputation for self-control and that reputation was very important to him. He was both young and in charge of the place and he wanted the staff to see him as the ultimate in calm. He never raised his voice or spoke faster than he could reason, especially in an emergency or under deadline. He liked to make quiet, ironical remarks in the midst of chaos so that anyone who was feeling frantic would trust he had the situation well in hand. Most of the time he did have it in hand. He was a good city editor. Smart, knowledgeable. A little inexperienced but ready to listen to advice. If anything, I guess, some of us sometimes wondered whether he wasn’t a little
too
contained. He had a round, pink, boyish face and it would grow bright red when he was angry, even as he went on speaking in his gentle tones. Some of us sometimes wondered whether it was just going to blow right off his neck one day like a pricked balloon.
    But along with appearing calm, it was also important toBob to be nice: caring, he called it. He was very caring. He worked hard at it. He even managed to look the part somehow: slender, soft-bodied, soft-featured under a bowl of brown hair. Always in a pressed shirt—a blue workshirt or a dressier pink—with a cheerful tie and no jacket; slacks. Casual, but serious; thoughtful; nice. Caring. His