Fine Structure

by qntm

But when the Jeep's head gasket gives up the ghost, and Mark has no choice but to declare their vehicle legally dead, they both get good and angry at one another. They were enjoying the experience of being further from civilisation than most people ever get to be, racing down the bumpy, barely-maintained "road" at sixty miles per hour with rocky sandy scrub surrounding them and the most glorious waltz of stars overhead (until a week ago neither of them had even seen the Milky Way, with naked eyes or otherwise), but that enjoyment was keyed to the fact that if everything went sideways they could, at any time, elect to leave the wilderness immediately and indefinitely. Sally, fiftyish, has been married to Mark, fiftyish, for long enough that she can recognise the pattern of their argument. She quietly short-circuits it by skipping to the end, the point at which everything that can be said has been said, she is no longer cross, and she is in a position to dispassionately address the problem. Without a resisting force to rail against, Mark soon calms down too, and they begin to discuss what they are going to say when they radio the emergency services for a pickup.