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quarters of a million dollars. And we have the business partnership insurance, which goes to them if we both die while conducting business. That’s another quarter of a million each—”
    “Are you sure?” Jeff’s interest was intense. That’s why they were partners, after all. They had peculiar attitudes, more concerned with the structure and mechanisms than the feelings and philosophy. It was almost as if their debate over whether they could afford to die was as significant as the pilot’s efforts to land. “I thought the business policy was only for the surviving partner.”
    “No. There’s a provision—”
    Max stopped because he noticed that Mary and Lisa and the other flight attendants were tossing the shoes into the lavatories. That answered a question which had worried him, namely where could they stow them so they wouldn’t become missiles. With the shoes put away, the flight attendants began their final surveillance of belts, their chant of emergency procedures, first illustrating the crash position, and then arms akimbo to point out the exits. The teenager continued unsuccessfully to pull at his boot.
    Jeff banged Max again. “Go on!”
    “—if we die on a business trip, the widows get the money. And also—” Max smiled at Jeff. But his partner wasn’t looking. The greyhound head had fallen back against the seat, its eyes shut. “—we paid for the tickets on the gold American Express card—”
    Jeff twisted his head abruptly and interrupted: “What difference does that make?”
    “Automatic flight insurance. That’s another half a million for each of them. They’ll end up with one point five million apiece.”
    “Jesus,” Jeff mumbled, upset. “I didn’t know.”
    “Didn’t know what?” Max asked.
    Jeff hesitated, his narrow dog’s mouth hanging open. Then he barked: “We’re worth more dead than alive.”
    With a shudder and an alarming whine, the landing gear was lowered. It felt and sounded as though the floor were being removed. Jeff cursed into the noise:
    “Fuck! God damn it! I can’t take this! Fuck! Hurry up!”
    “It’s the wheels,” Max tried to calm him. But they had made an unusually loud and terrible sound. Was that an illusion? Max wanted to know much more about the how of his death. He envied all those people who would spend tomorrow morning secure at home, sipping coffee and enjoying their superior knowledge about the cause. He pictured the spate of newspaper articles based on leaks from the investigation until months later, when the final judgment of the National Transportation Safety Board would be followed by orders for the defect that produced this fatality to be repaired in all the DC-10s, luring passengers onto more planes which would fail in some other insidious way. As an architect he had come to understand that most things were made shabbily and more so with each passing day. The deterioration was first in their look; now it was in their fundamental engineering.
    Mary and her helpmates were done. She returned to get Stacy, guiding her up to the front, to the jump seats by the bulkheads. That put them beside one of the emergency exits. While they made this maneuver someone shouted:
    “Look! The airport!”
    All heads turned together in a uniform movement of hope that Max pitied.
    Jeff stabbed Max’s biceps with his elbow. “Hey! He did it!”
    Max hunkered down to get a better angle on his side view of the landing strip. Sure enough they were heading straight for a medium-sized airport. He saw spinning red lights atop a row of tiny trucks, miniaturized into toys by the perspective of their height. The presence of rescue equipment wasn’t a clue to their chance of survival: fire trucks were a standard precaution for any unusual landing. Instead of being dismayed by the sight of this wary welcome, for a moment Max believed in the continuation of his life.
    But then the captain lost control again. This time the plane tilted instead of dropped. The