Gregory waited for her, straddling his bicycle, at the top of the long, long hill. She disliked him, suddenly; she resented it that he was taking advantage of her exhaustion, her pain, by resting, now, and waiting for her . . . watching her wobbly progress with an expression of infinite patience.

“Now stop for a minute, Marya,” he said, when Marya pulled up beside him. “Don’t keep going. Please don’t be stubborn.”

“I’m not stubborn,” Marya said, her breath ragged. “I’m really not tired.”

“And when you take this next hill, use your brakes,” he said. “Don’t let your speed get too high.”

“I know how to ride a bicycle,” Marya said.

“Yes, but you haven’t been on hills quite like these and you’ve probably never been quite so tired. If you had—”

“I bicycled all the time as a child,” Marya said. “I bicycled to work.”

He stared at her; his eyes looked pale, colorless, behind the tinted lenses; his own face was flushed and his hair disheveled. Despite the jaunty headband his face was damp with perspiration. He doesn’t love me, Marya thought in a surge of self-pity, he wants me to fail, she thought, turning away unsmiling, brushing her hair out of her eyes.

Gregory broke the mood by leaning over to squeeze her shoulder and kiss her cheek. “Hey,” he said, “I’m proud of us, aren’t you?—getting this far without fighting.”

THEY WERE HEADED west and south, curving gradually downward toward the river, now approximately fifteen miles away. Marya took heart from the fact that the ride was half over: one could endure anything, she thought, with the knowledge that it was half over. A dull ache between her shoulder blades, numbness in her knees, head faintly throbbing. . . . Sunshine, pavement (broken and patchy, tarry, coarse), wind, that damned incessant wind making her eyes water. . . . Once Gregory shouted for her to get over just as she heard a car rushing up behind, and she reacted too quickly, desperately, running her front wheel off the road, nearly falling, stumbling . . . knocking her ankle against the pedal. . . . She had to stop and wait for a minute, two minutes, three, until the pain subsided. “You’re doing very well,” Gregory said cautiously. “We could turn back, you know, any time you like.”

Marya said, teasing, that the two halves of his remark didn’t scan: either she was doing well (was she? oh yes?) or he was thinking they could turn back for a good reason (since he never said or thought anything without a good reason).

“I wouldn’t want to think you were humoring me,” Marya said.

“Certainly it’s the last thing on my mind,” Gregory said, stooping to examine her ankle.