Eight assistant professors competing for a single position, eleven assistant professors competing for two positions. . . . Interviews by the departmental committee and the Dean’s committee and the Provost’s committee. . . . Endless bibliographic lists, and excerpts from work-in-progress, and embarrassed requests for letters of recommendation from scholars at other colleges. . . . Isn’t it all degrading, Marya and Gregory and the others in their position were always saying to one another, isn’t it humiliating, numbing, banal and tedious and as real as, what?—death?—or merely a protracted debilitating illness? Difficult not to resent and eventually despise those who are sitting in judgment on you, Marya thought. She wondered if the bitterness was primarily because all her judges were men; or simply because the situation was intolerable.

(Gregory said dryly that he was a man, wasn’t he; and he had come to loathe the whole bunch of them by this time—even those who meant well, who were really very nice men. Perhaps his situation was more intolerable than Marya’s because he was a man. “Consider our raging insatiable egos, our famous need to fight,” he said. “All my brute’s adrenaline rushing about to no purpose.”)

From time to time Marya noted the irony, even the humor, of her situation; tried to view it in mature perspective. After all, even if she failed at this crucial point in her career (which is to say, her life) she had in any case come a remarkable distance from the Canal Road.

AT LUNCH IN the sunny walled garden of a pre-Revolutionary inn, Marya and Gregory were each ravenous with hunger. They ate heartily, greedily, unapologetically. Marya saw that eating was a serious business—food was a great deal more than an idea or a metaphor. “Isn’t this black bread delicious? Maybe we could steal some of it to take with us,” Marya said, taking yet another piece and tearing it in two; and Gregory, chewing, his mouth full, said, “At this point everything is delicious, my love—don’t distract us.”

Marya forgot her strained back, her throbbing leg muscles, even her swollen ankle. She squeezed Gregory’s thigh beneath the table and congratulated him on leading them so unfalteringly to this inn, and for having had the brilliant idea of the bicycle ride itself. “It’s carried us a considerable distance from that other couple,” she said, lifting her glass of red wine, “cowering with worry, sick with apprehension, playing at being stoical and mature . . . or whatever it is we’ve been playing at. I feel so sorry for them, and so contemptuous. . . .”

“Yes,” said Gregory, reaching for another slice of bread, “they are contemptible. Let’s not allow them at the table. Let’s not even take the time to pity them. Please.”

“Do you think the committee is at lunch right now?” Marya said, looking at her watch. “Yes, probably, they’ve been meeting six, eight hours a day, trying to clear the books—”

“Stop,” Gregory said. “We promised to give each other a respite.”