“I couldn’t do the sort of things they’re doing,” Marya said with a thrill of self-righteousness. Her face was sunburnt from the morning’s ride; her cheeks blazed. “I really don’t think I could.”

“Marya. Please.”

Gregory laughed, and shuddered, and poured the last of the wine ceremoniously into their glasses. He said, after a thoughtful minute, “Yes—you probably could,” in a voice so subdued Marya almost didn’t hear.

LONG AGO GREGORY told Marya an anecdote about his father, who had died when Gregory was nineteen and a sophomore at Brown.

His father had been a highly successful insurance executive with Prudential; he loved to work and he was happy only when he was working. Life was that simple, that clear. One afternoon in his office he felt pains in his chest . . . a constriction, a sense of suffocation . . . but he ignored them for a while; then informed his secretary irritably that he wasn’t to be interrupted; and got down on the floor and began to do push-ups. . . . He was going to overcome the problem, whatever it was. He was going to triumph.

What happened, Marya asked, though she wasn’t certain she wanted to know.

He did thirty-seven push-ups before he fainted, Gregory said.

But he didn’t die, said Marya.

Not that time, said Gregory.

SEVERAL OF MARYA and Gregory’s colleagues had cultivated an air of cynicism, to deal with their anxiety; several were annoyingly and rather maniacally idealistic; a few had taken on a melancholy philosophical tone, as if the crisis were over and, yes, the worst had occurred. Yet even the doomed were frequently overtaken by cruel flashes of hope; and the optimistic, by bouts of despair. After all, there were virtually no jobs in their rarefied profession any longer. There were these jobs, which they now held, but which, despite their industry and good intentions, they were very likely going to lose.

Gregory swung extravagantly from mood to mood. Since, as everyone said, he fully deserved good fortune (wasn’t he the best of the lot?), he suspected he would never receive it; then again, how could he not receive it, since in fact he was deserving?

It was like trying to conceive of mortality, he said. Trying to envision the world on the morning after your death.

Marya had tried each of the strategies in turn though none really suited her. She vowed not to be bitter if the decision went against her, then again, why shouldn’t she be bitter? bitter and angry and resentful? By the morning of the bicycle ride she no longer knew how she felt at all; even if she felt anything. Perhaps she was burnt out already, at the age of twenty-eight. Perhaps the initiation into her profession was in fact a powerful emetic.

Marya thought, observing Gregory whom she loved, Do we have a future, or only futures?

Sometimes she thought one way, sometimes another. She had no idea what Gregory thought.