Days ago Tandar was still in New Haven, late at night, on the street. Yale is a lot like Princeton with black steel bars everywhere, and in a bigger town, kind of a scary one. He was talking to two of his students who've been having trouble. The students live on campus, and he was walking away from campus toward his own apartment, which is downtown.
It was cold, so late, and he held his jacket wrapped tight around himself with his hands in the pockets, hunched his shoulders up to hide his head from the wind a little. The streets were mostly empty with a lot of litter blowing, and his reflection walked right next to him in all the ground-floor windows.
It was really a little like connecting the dots, the way they came together. The car was moving fast, faster than it should have been. The driver was angry and sad about something already, and he'd drunk a lot that night. Tandar was cold and tired, hurrying down the sidewalk with his eyes on his feet, and anybody watching from above could have seen them converging, like they were made for each other, and maybe could have warned him.
Tandar even heard the car a few blocks away, an instant's screech of wheels, and when he trotted out from behind a building and across the street he started to glance in that direction. But the engine was quiet, and big, and before he even saw it there was no time left for either to stop.
He hardly made a sound; he said "Oh!" His feet were knocked out from under him, and the brakes were sounding again. He spun in the air and landed tumbling, and a wheel rolled hard over his left leg, which was what hurt the most. The car slowed for a moment and took off wildly, out of sight and out of town.
After a moment of silence Tandar roused and started groaning, long guttural moans that lasted as long as he had breath. Whenever he tried to move his face twisted up, and he was weak, not even able to pull himself upright with his arms. The leg was bleeding where it had been run over, bleeding all over, and when Tandar started shivering he called for help. By that time his voice was weak. Maybe nobody would have heard him anyway.
The police are never far away in New Haven at night, but by the time they found him there wasn't much left to do. Even as the first officer scrambled out of his patrol car Tandar's eyes were gently falling shut, and Molly Garrett whispered in his ear, and he lay still.