But of course he does not ask this. If he did, she’d be too startled to answer, she realizes, and so stops hoping for it. Instead he takes his eyes off the road for a second. “Shall we stop off at Bottle Grove before home?”

“Oh, that’s nice. Yes. Wait. Do you mean the forest or the bar? Or both?”

Ben laughs. “I meant one, but let’s do both. A little hike and a little drink and home.”

“OK.”

“I’ll park midway between them.”

“Yes, OK.”

His eyes stray to his device, and Rachel knows he is thinking that he’ll have to lock it up or take it with him when they leave the car. This device is so new, a model hardly available yet and so envied in the quick city. The way he thinks, with his wallet and his head, is for the most part adorable. “Or is it too much trouble?” she asks. “Do you want to get home and shower?”

“No. I mean, if you want.” He smiles at her and rewrites it. “Wherever you want. Just, you know, let me come along with you.”

She likes this, and he takes her hand and she likes this too. He has said this before, that he just wants to be with her. Tag along, is how he put it at the beginning. Go with. Go anywhere with. Stay with. Marry me, just take me with you.

They’re in San Francisco quick. Bottle Grove is hardly out of the way, particularly if they’re going there. The highway leads easily to the boulevard, and the music device slips into Ben’s windbreaker like a baby kangaroo, what do they call them? The jacket rustles against her arm, and under the eyes of the Masonic temple they walk the few blocks into the forest.

They were just here, getting married in the grove, and now they’re here, married. They go in together, not very far. The wind waits; probably some creatures are someplace, waiting, too. Joeys, is what they call them, Rachel remembers now, those little hopping things.

“It was a lovely wedding,” Ben says, as formally as a guest. “Until, I mean.”

Rachel thinks of the fight, the wife with the cinematic hairdo and the vicar who officiated, however he slipped away. Blood on the tires, but that was just something, likely untrue, she heard later from a breathless friend. The sentimental journey is less a success now. “Let’s not fight like that,” she says. “Like they did. It should be a reminder, the scene they made.”

“We won’t,” Ben says. “We wouldn’t. Ever.”

“Let’s just remember not to. Screaming at each other. Oh, Ben, it was so sad to me. You know?”

“So we won’t.”

“But really.”

“Really,” Ben says, putting an end to it. “We won’t.”