“Oh, no?” she said. “Then, why bring race into it if all she wants to do is protect her child? What’s next Al Sharp-ton going to come to town, hold a vigil for Curtis’s foot? Pin Jenna’s death on the white man too?”

She was sounding off. Reactionary white rage. I hear more of it lately. A lot more of it. I’ve said similar things on occasion myself. You hear it most among the poor and working class. You hear it when brain-dead sociologists call incidents like the wilding attack in Central Park a result of “uncontrollable” impulses, and defend the actions of a group of animals with the argument that they were only reacting to years of white oppression. And if you point out that those nice, well-bred animals who happen to be black probably would have controlled those actions just fine if they’d thought that female jogger was protected by an army of her own, you’re labeled a racist. You hear it when the media make a point out of race. You hear it when a bunch of possibly well-intentioned whites get together to sort it all out and end up saying, “I’m no racist but...” You hear it when judges who forcibly desegregate public schools with bussing put their own children in private schools, or when, recently, a circuit court judge said he’d never seen evidence to suggest that street gangs were any more dangerous than labor unions.

You hear it most when politicians who live in places like Hyannis Port and Beacon Hill and Wellesley make decisions that affect people who live in Dorchester and Roxbury and Jamaica Plain, and then step back and say there isn’t a war going on.

There is a war going on. It’s happening in playgrounds, not health clubs. It’s fought on cement, not lawns. It’s fought with pipes and bottles, and lately, automatic weapons. And as long as it doesn’t push through the heavy oak doors where they fight with prep school educations and filibusters and two-martini lunches, it will never actually exist.

South Central L.A. could burn for a decade, and most people wouldn’t smell the smoke unless the flames reached Rodeo Drive.

I wanted to sort this out. Now. To wade through it all, in the car with Angie, until our places in this war were clearly defined, until we knew exactly where we stood on every issue, until we could look into our hearts and be satisfied with what we saw there. But I feel this way a lot, and everything always ends up in circles, coming back to me with nothing solved.

I said, “What’re you going to do, right?” and pulled to the curb in front of her house.

She looked at the front page of the paper, at Jenna’s body. She said, “I can tell Phil we’re working late.”

“I’m fine,” I said.