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from Zhulyany Airport roared, shaking the ground and air and even the handlebars of her bicycle. The militiaman had placed his pudgy hand on hers and said, “We will wait here. He must have gone for help when the fire started.”
    The heat from the fire and from the bicycle ride without a cool down made her feel faint. She took the water bottle from her bicycle and gulped half the water, preparing herself to pull Viktor free of the flames when he appeared at the doorway. But the doorway was the mouth of Satan.
    She tried to pull away from the militiaman so she could go around to the alleyway behind the buildings, but the militiaman held her in place. As she stood watching the flames, she was aware of being jostled by onlookers. At one point, her bicycle was being pulled from her until the militiaman at her side yelled at someone and pulled her and the bicycle closer to his side.
    She felt dizzy and squeezed the handlebars of her bicycle. Another militiaman who said, “It will be all right,” held her up by her other arm.
    As she watched, several firemen in masks pushed their way into the video store with hoses spraying like fans. The flames at the doorway changed to steam and smoke. Behind her, another jet was taking off, shaking the ground as if to say, “I don’t give a damn about you down there. I’ve got important passengers.”
    After the roar of the jet faded, all was surprisingly quiet. Traffic had been detoured, and the sirens had stopped. Even the roar of flames had stopped. As she stood between the two militiamen, Mariya thought now she would hear Viktor call to her. His cell phone did not work, and he had gone to a phone booth. He would call her cell phone, and it would begin ringing in her bicycle bag. Or he would come back to the fire and see her in the crowd and call to her. She scanned the onlookers for Viktor until a sigh, as if they had seen fireworks, arose from the crowd.
    When she looked back toward the building she saw water spouting from several hoses putting out the roof fires. The spray from the hoses had created a fountain as if to celebrate the extinguishing of the blaze, as if to celebrate Viktor’s arrival at her side.
    But Viktor was not there, and the building hissed at her like a serpent, or like the sizzling of bacon at one of those childhood picnics when her father made the fire too large and her mother complained and complained.
    The cardboard sign taped to the inside of the front window— “Adult Books, Magazines, Videos”—smoldered and burned. The window cracked and fell out onto the ground in crooked, uneven shards. The rush of air from the missing window rekindled the fire, and heat swept across the crowd, making them back away as several masked firemen rushed in with hoses to relieve the ones who had run out of the store when the window broke.
    When Mariya heard one fireman yell to another that there were two bodies inside along with a car, which might explode, she passed out.

    She came awake in the backseat of a militia car. Onlookers outside the car stared at her with strange, sad-happy faces. Sad when they looked at her, happy when they glanced to one another. To her, the faces said, Thank God it was you, not us .
    Someone yelled, “Hey, Natasha!” and when she looked in the direction of the voice, she saw the two thugs who had hung out of the Mercedes sedan during her ride. The men waved and smiled.
    The militia car started, and she felt the blast of warm and smoky air on her face from the ventilation system. When the militiaman in the seat next to her reached over and started rolling down the window, another militiaman outside shouted.
    “Wait!” The militiaman was holding her bicycle. “What about this?”
    A child’s voice said, “Ride it, and save gasoline,” and this made everyone laugh.
    It was a comic scene, the fat militiaman holding onto her violet bicycle while everyone laughed at him. Viktor would have enjoyed the scene, would have laughed like hell and