The next morning was Saturday, and we woke up to the news that the whole thing had been some sort of test. Victor perched on the edge of the couch, his hair sticking up as if he had fought a windstorm to make it through to daybreak. He held the coffee mug between his hands and took little sips, his gaze fixed on the television. After I got out of the shower, I sat down next to him. The mayor was giving a press conference, explaining how they’d wanted to make certain that the city was prepared. We were instructed to keep the masks in a safe and dry place where we would be able to find them easily. He apologized for any inconvenience or unnecessary fright the test had caused anyone, thanked all of the volunteers, and congratulated the city for the admirable way it had performed in test conditions. When the reporters began to bark out questions, I went to the kitchen to pour myself some coffee, and when I switched on the radio, the mayor’s answers echoed through the apartment in an eerie duet.

It had snowed during the night, which was unusual for that time of year, and Victor and I decided to take a walk together. It had been a long time since we did that, almost as long as since we’d last interrupted dinner to fuck on the living-room floor. It was cold, so we bundled up in hats and scarves, and Victor wore the red wool mittens I’d knitted for him when that was something I did. I wore a pair of gloves that were frayed at the thumbs, and when we stopped to wait for the light to change, Victor lifted my thumb to his mouth like a horn and blew hot air through the hole.

In the park the snow crunched under our feet. The sun had come out and reflected brightly off everything. Victor made a snowball and threw it at a tree, an explosion of whiteness against the black. I kept slipping because my shoes didn’t have any treads, but Victor held my arm so I wouldn’t fall. There were some kids running around with a dog in the snow, and Victor laughed loudly as he watched.

I thought about that day some weeks later when I did one of those home tests and found out that I was pregnant. I did it twice because the first time the pink line showed up in the box I couldn’t believe it, even though I’m never late. For a few days I didn’t tell Victor. I went to work and did the tours with the knowledge that in me something tiny was becoming, a kind of human insistence, steadily growing until the day it would finally make its way out into the world to tell us what all this time we had not known, been without, were left wondering. A small being with a clear argument, able to predict the future. Perhaps there was a time during those silent days while I carried around that secret, a small window of opportunity. But it never occurred to me not to keep the baby. During the long months of my pregnancy, before I became too big to walk as far as the park, I often stood outside the fence and watched the runners on the track. I possessed the small, inexplicable hope that if I watched them long enough, the child might be born into their race, with invincible lungs and immunity to whatever it was in the air that drove us to drunkenness and lit the sky at sunset.