Bill calls Seema twice over the next few days to check on her foot. She politely declines his renewed offers of help. The following weeks go by in a desperate haze of meetings, presentations, and strategy sessions, work made all the more dissatisfying now because Seema keeps intruding in his thoughts. The few hours he spends every night at his apartment feel even more desolate than before. He moved to San Francisco after Mame’s death last summer, from the condo in Oakland where they’d lived together. He misses Mame all the more now.

He broods over Seema and begins to follow the news on Iraq closely, reading everything he can lay his hands on. He fantasizes about wowing Seema with his newly acquired knowledge at some anti-war meeting in the city. Josh urges him to call her, even threatens to call her on Bill’s behalf.

In mid-March, Bush issues an ultimatum: Saddam and his family have two days to leave Iraq. And two days later, as promised, missiles rain over Baghdad. Bill watches the coverage on TV as the assault begins. As predawn skies flare into light, and cloud clusters bloom soft and pink, like roses, he plucks up the courage to call Seema.

She’s surprised to hear from him but not displeased to have someone to rant to. She savages Bush’s announcement—We come to Iraq with respect for its citizens, for their great civilization, and their religious faiths. We have no ambitions in Iraq!—and speaks of herself ravaging Bush: “I’d like to tear his eyes out from his dumb face and scratch more furrows into his forehead.”

He’s both startled and bemused by the intensity of her anger, as if the assault on Iraq were somehow personal. Mame has drilled into him that anger is never the answer: you kept your head down, you worked hard till you reached a place where you couldn’t be touched.

He suggests meeting up for drinks, to help take her mind off the matter.

She makes a counterproposal. There are to be protests downtown in the morning, in front of businesses profiting from the war—does he want to join her? “We have to do something, even if it will have no effect. They want us to feel too powerless to even protest.”

He hesitates. The run-in with the police during the march unnerved him, and tomorrow will surely be worse; besides, he has work. But he can’t let this opportunity to meet Seema slip away. He agrees to pick her up at eight in the morning.

Josh gives his blessings: “You don’t believe all that leftist crap, do you? But if it’s for a girl—what the hell. The company is going down the drain anyway. Just don’t get arrested.”