dropped envelopes by the dozen into the corner mailbox three weeks ago, almost late but close enough for Christmas; close enough is the way he likes it, always has. He refuses to look at his watch; he knows it has all taken too long -- clever but not clever enough to take up the slack between the car and plow; he curses the driver perched on his stool in some two-bit diner, sipping coffee spoiled with milk, a greasy doughnut ringing his finger, his boots running snow, puddles forming on the linoleum, streams wider than the shoelaces binding his leggings, twisting toward the door, urging him up and out. He hears him brag on about the weather, the way he blasts it off the roads, how he's beaten his own record already: only five back roads to go, and the snow coming so fast he may forget about them and start over from the beginning -- no one in his right mind would travel those others on such a night anyhow. He tastes a second cup of coffee hot in the back of his brain, trying to suck it down; he moves his eyes to the rearview mirror, hoping he is wrong, planning to see the glaring lights of the plow picking him out of the night, but he sees only a few flakes of glass left on the flat tin backing. He leaps within himself, remembering the car top, clawing the air toward the tire, finding its blaze dead,