“I believe there is a lady in his life.”

“Oh, don’t worry, I’m not after him. I made that decision a long time ago. All the same, I wish him well.”

“I’ll tell him that. Now I’m going to jump in a cab and go check on Maria.”

“Thank you, Georgy—or George, I should say.”

George hurried out. Nelly was an attractive woman with a kind heart. Why had Greg not married her? Perhaps it suited him to be a bachelor.

George’s taxi driver said: “You work in the White House?”

“I work for Bobby Kennedy. I’m a lawyer.”

“No kidding!” The driver did not trouble to hide his surprise that a Negro should be a lawyer with a high-powered job. “You tell Bobby we ought to bomb Cuba to dust. That’s what we ought to do. Bomb them to goddamn dust.”

“Do you know how big Cuba is, end to end?” George said.

“What is this, a quiz show?” the driver said resentfully.

George shrugged and said no more. Nowadays he avoided political discussions with outsiders. They usually had easy answers: send all the Mexicans home, put Hells Angels in the army, castrate the queers. The greater their ignorance, the stronger their opinions.

Georgetown was only a few minutes away, but the journey seemed long. George imagined Maria collapsed on the floor, or lying in bed on the edge of death, or in a coma.

The address Nelly had given George turned out to be a gracious old house divided into studio apartments. Maria did not answer her downstairs doorbell, but a black girl who looked like a student let George in and pointed out Maria’s room.

Maria came to the door in a bathrobe. She certainly looked sick. Her face was bloodless and her expression dejected. She did not say Come in, but she walked away leaving the door open, and he entered. At least she was ambulatory, he thought with relief: he had feared worse.

It was a tiny place, one room with a kitchenette. He guessed she shared the bathroom down the hall.

He looked hard at her. It pained him to see her this way, not just sick, but miserable. He longed to take her in his arms, but he knew that would be unwelcome. “Maria, what’s the matter?” he said. “You look terrible!”

“Just feminine problems, that’s all.”

That phrase was normally code for a menstrual period, but he was pretty sure this was something else.

“Let me make you a cup of coffee—or maybe tea?” He took off his coat.

“No, thanks,” she said.

He decided to make it anyway, just to show her that he cared. But then he glanced at the chair she was about to sit on, and saw that the seat was stained with blood.

She noticed it at the same time, blushed, and said: “Oh, hell.”

George knew a little about women’s bodies. Several possibilities passed through his mind. He said: “Maria, have you suffered a miscarriage?”

“No,” she said tonelessly. She hesitated.