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the wind in her face, she kept up with and often passed moving traffic. She passed cars waiting at a signal, hugged the curb, and turned right before the signal changed.
    As she neared the airport and the warehouse district of the video store, she was forced onto a main street and had to pass a two-block line of traffic on an airport overpass. One car had pulled close to the curb, forcing her to slow down. She shouted, “Move over!” in Ukrainian and snaked past. In her mirror, she saw a startled woman staring through the car’s windshield.
    Back on side streets, she headed south, coasted through a stop sign, heard a horn sound and a man’s voice shout, “Hey, Natasha, wait for us!” The rush of wind at her ears had lessened, and she could hear the heartbeat flutter of chain on sprocket. Before the street to the video store, a Mercedes sedan sped alongside, keeping up with her. The voice from several blocks back said, “Hey, Natasha!” again. When she glanced sideways, she saw two greasy Mafia types in multicolored shirts, one at the front window, one at the back window, both with shoulders, heads, and arms out of the car. The one at the rear window reached out and slapped her behind.
    “Natasha! You are my dream! I’ll never wash my hand again!”
    “He is love starved for all Natashas!” shouted the young man in the front seat.
    “I eat Natashas,” said another inside. “But I think you are Kimmy. I’ve seen you before.”
    The men stayed even with her as she pedaled hard, watching side streets and alley entrances and parked cars, riding a fine line between parked cars and traffic, riding the edge of a crystal. As she approached one parked car, she saw someone inside and braked hard when the driver’s door swung out into her path. The Mafia thugs pulled ahead, shouted, and swore at the man who had opened his door. The man slammed himself inside and let her pass.
    She raced ahead, passed a slow-moving truck. When she turned onto the street leading to Viktor’s video store, a traffic signal stopped the thugs behind the truck. They sounded their horn, screaming obscenities.
    Once on the street, with warehouses surrounding her, she could see it. Several blocks ahead black smoke rose into the air where it was carried northeast by the wind toward the city.
    She pedaled harder, causing a car to skid to a stop at an intersection. A militiaman shouted at her from his patrol car. Above, a jet coming in for a landing groaned and whined as it crossed over an airport fence. But the flashing lights of the militia car and the yelling militiaman and the jet and the honking horns no longer mattered. Soon she would be with Viktor. Soon she would be standing with him outside the burning video store. She’d tell him how much she had worried and he would hold her in his arms as the flames and smoke shot skyward.
    A block away, she saw the video store was indeed the source of the fire. A series of attached buildings with flat, tarred roofs was also aflame, sending thick, black smoke into the blue sky. The video store was at the center of the inferno. Soon, very soon, she’d be close enough to see Viktor with his hands in his pockets and his shoulders raised in a perpetual shrug.
    She rode the final block, yelling, “Viktor!” But none of the gathered spectators answered.
    Mariya had entered hell, the video store blazing along with its attached buildings like a giant version of a roaring picnic fire when she was a girl. The fire so hot when her father cut slabs of bacon to put on a stick and shove into the flames and drip blackened grease onto rye bread for aunts, uncles, and cousins. The fire drying lips and eyes, beckoning her into its orange tunnels where nothing can live but fire.

    When she arrived, she tried to get closer, but a fireman stopped her. She screamed to the fireman and to a militiaman that her husband might be in the store. Behind her, she felt the heat of the sun on her neck and shoulders. A jet taking off