Verena was even harder hit. At the funeral she had been bewildered, angry, and lost. The man she had admired, cherished, and served for seven years was gone.

To George’s consternation she had not wanted him to console her. He was hurt deeply by this. They lived six hundred miles apart, but he was the man in her life. He figured that her rejection was part of her grief, and would pass.

There was nothing for her in Atlanta—she did not want to work for King’s successor, Ralph Abernathy—so she had resigned. George had thought she might move into his apartment in Washington. However, without explanation she had gone back to her parents’ home in Los Angeles. Perhaps she needed time alone to grieve.

Or perhaps she wanted something more than just an invitation to move into his place.

Hence the ring.

The next primary was California, which gave George a chance to visit Verena.

At LAX he rented a white Plymouth Valiant, a cheap compact—the campaign was paying—and drove to North Roxbury Drive in Beverly Hills.

He passed through tall gates and parked in front of a Tudor-style brick house that he guessed was the size of five genuine Tudor houses. Verena’s parents, Percy Marquand and Babe Lee, lived like the stars they were.

A maid let him in and showed him into a living room that had nothing Tudor about it: a white carpet, air-conditioning, and a floor-to-ceiling window that looked out onto a swimming pool. The maid asked if he would like a drink. “A soda, please,” he said. “Any kind.”

When Verena came in he suffered a shock.

She had cut off her wonderful Afro, and her hair was now cropped close to her head, as short as his. She wore black pants, a blue shirt, a leather blazer, and a black beret. It was the uniform of the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense.

George suppressed his outrage in order to kiss her. She gave him her lips, but only briefly, and he knew right away that she had not moved on from her mood at the funeral. He hoped his proposal would bring her out of it.

They sat on a couch covered in a swirly pattern of burnt orange, primrose yellow, and chocolate brown. The maid brought George a Coke with ice in a tall glass on a silver tray. When she had gone he took Verena’s hand. Holding in his anger, he said as gently as he could: “Why are you wearing that uniform?”

“Isn’t it obvious?”

“Not to me.”

“Martin Luther King led a nonviolent campaign, and they shot him.”

George was disappointed in her. He had expected a better argument that that. He said: “Abraham Lincoln fought a civil war, and they shot him, too.”

“Blacks have a right to defend themselves. No one else will—especially not the police.”

George could barely conceal his contempt for these ideas. “You just want to scare whitey. Nothing has ever been achieved by this kind of grandstanding.”