After several minutes he put down the last page. Still he said nothing, thinking. At last he looked up. A smile broke over his lumpy peasant face as he looked around the table at his colleagues. “Comrades,” he said, “we have saved Cuba!”

• • •

As usual, Jacky interrogated George about his love life. “Are you dating anyone?”

“I only just broke up with Norine.”

“Only just? That was almost a year ago.”

“Oh . . . I guess it was.”

She had made fried chicken with okra and the deep-fried cornmeal dumplings she called hush puppies. This had been his favorite meal when he was a boy. Now at twenty-six he preferred rare beef and salad, or pasta with clam sauce. Also, he normally had dinner at eight in the evening, not six. But he tucked in and did not tell her any of this. He preferred not to spoil the pleasure she took in feeding him.

She sat opposite him at the kitchen table, as she always had. “How is that nice Maria Summers?”

George tried not to wince. He had lost Maria to another man. “Maria has a steady,” he said.

“Oh? Who is he?”

“I don’t know.”

Jacky made a frustrated noise. “Didn’t you ask?”

“I sure did. She wouldn’t tell me.”

“Why not?”

George shrugged.

“It’s a married man,” his mother said confidently.

“Mom, you can’t possibly know that,” George said, but he had a horrible suspicion she might be right.

“Normally a girl boasts about the man she’s seeing. If she clams up, she’s ashamed.”

“There could be another reason.”

“Such as?”

For the moment George could not think of one.

Jacky went on: “He’s probably someone she works with. I sure hope her preacher grandfather doesn’t find out.”

George thought of another possibility. “Maybe he’s white.”

“Married and white too, I’ll bet. What is that press officer like, Pierre Salinger?”

“An affable guy in his thirties, good French clothes, a little heavy. He’s married, and I hear he’s up to no good with his secretary, so I’m not sure he has time for another girlfriend.”

“He might, if he’s French.”

George grinned. “Have you ever met a French person?”

“No, but they have a reputation.”

“And Negroes have a reputation for being lazy.”

“You’re right, I shouldn’t talk that way, people are individuals.”

“That’s what you always taught me.”

George had only half his mind on the conversation. The news about the missiles in Cuba had been kept secret from the American people for a week, but it was about to be revealed. It had been a week of intense debate within the small circle who knew, but little had been resolved. Looking back, George realized that when he had first heard he had underreacted. He had thought mainly of the imminent midterm elections and their effect on the civil rights campaign. For a moment he had even relished the prospect of American retaliation. Only later had the truth sunk in: that civil rights would no longer matter, and no more elections would ever be held, if there was a nuclear war.