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mean, it wasn’t totally comfortable, but …”
    “Roger and I don’t know anyone else. If it wasn’t for you, we wouldn’t know where to begin looking.”
    “I won’t be able to ask him again, though.”
    “Never mind, we’ll worry about that later. We’re flush now and I’m putting the kids to bed early tonight.”
    “I’ll bring it by later when I see you.”
    “Thanks again, Gwen, for everything. You’re a great friend.”
    Gwen took a few breaths to clear her head and focus. She’d have to save the trail walk for another time. She wrapped the remains of the joint in a tissue and zipped the tissue and pack of matches inside an inner pocket in her purse. She put the bag back over her shoulder, returned to her car, checked her teeth in the mirror, and drove back along Route 157, the road a series of wide switchbacks on descent, the sun bright through her windshield. She kept two hands on the wheel and the stereo on scan, hoping for a good song. She rounded a curve and suddenly a car appeared right behind her. She heard the bass of its stereo blaring and the growl of its engine. The driver edged out across the double line as if to pass, then pulled back behind her bumper.
    Her heart pushed against her throat, but she maintained course and speed, stayed calm, and held the wheel firmly. She’d been in this situation before, she could handle it.
    When the road straightened, the other car pulled out again and accelerated, defying the double yellow line, flashing past, windows dark as night. It cut back into the right lane and braked into the next turn, a long arcing curve with a wide cinder shoulder and a rusted guardrail on the ridge side. She must have been looking far ahead along the curve, to where the car that passed hers had disappeared around the bend and into the shade cast by a stand of roadside trees. It must be going so fast to be gone from view already. And then a new movement in the sunlight brought her focus in closer and another car was there, a different one, oncoming, right in front of her—a heartbeat from head-on.
    Gwen wrenched the wheel to the right. The other car struck her rear quarter panel with a shuddering bang, sending her car into a spin. Her body pitched but her seat belt held her in place. She stared out the windshield. She felt motionless, as if the roadand the shoulder and the road again and now the trees moved in a slow horizontal pan in front of her while she remained in place clenching a steering wheel that would not respond.
    Then the view through the windshield became mottled shades of dark. A flash of sun, shade again. Then another loud bang—and this one hurt.

A Growing Market
    John Wilcox, up from the mother ship in Jersey, watched Brian, not the slides. Ryan Garcia, the CFO, and Jennifer Stallworth, legal counsel, sat back in their chairs, nodding as Brian clicked through his presentation. Seated at the far end of the table, Teresa Mascetti kept watch on the reactions in the room. She’d helped Brian with the presentation and knew it as well as he did; the few times he veered from his prepared talking points he could see her inhale and get this stricken look on her face, as if he’d whispered something dirty in her ear.
    Brian stood to the side in front of the room and clicked a remote to move through the slides.
    “The target market is growing with no end in sight,” Brian said, as his next slide came up, a bar chart showing the increasing weight of American adults over the past ten years, with ten-year projections added on. In place of simple colored bars to show the data, Brian had found a graphic of a belt, with the buckle in the middle representing median weight and the length of the belt growing longer with each successive year as average weight increased.
    Teresa drew a breath. Brian wondered if he’d offended her. He’d added that slide just this morning, although it wasn’t necessary. Everyone in the room knew the market situation.
    “Looks like my