She sighed. Yes. It pretty much was.

“Gerald, I do mean it.” She spoke louder now, and for the first time the gleam in his eyes flickered a little. Good. He could hear her after all, it seemed. So maybe things were still okay. Not great, it had been a long time since things had been what you could call great, but okay. Then the gleam reappeared, and a moment later the idiot grin followed.

“I’ll teach you, me proud beauty,” he said. He actually said that, pronouncing beauty the way the landlord in a bad Victorian melodrama might say it.

Let him do it, then. Just let him do it and it will be done.

This was a voice she was much more familiar with, and she intended to follow its advice. She didn’t know if Gloria Steinem would approve and didn’t care; the advice had the attractiveness of the completely practical. Let him do it and it would be done. QED.

Then his hand-his soft, short-fingered hand, its flesh as pink as that which capped his penis-reached out and grasped her breast, and something inside her suddenly popped like an overstrained tendon. She bucked her hips and back sharply upward, flinging his hand off.

“Quit it, Gerald. Unlock these stupid handcuffs and let me up. This stopped being fun around last March, while there was still snow on the ground. I don’t feet sexy; I feel ridiculous.”

This time he heard her all the way down. She could see it in the way the gleam in his eyes went out all at once, like candle flames in a strong gust of wind. She guessed that the two words which had finally gotten through to him were stupid and ridiculous. He had been a fat kid with thick glasses, a kid who hadn’t had a date until he was eighteen-the year after he went on a strict diet and began to work out in an effort to strangle the engirdling flab before it could strangle him.