But it was a fine time. One of the tenants, a young Italian man, played violin until Luther expected his arm to fall off, and later in the evening he was joined by a cop with an accordion. There were heaps of food and wine and whiskey and buckets of Pickwick Ale on ice. The white folk danced and laughed and toasted and toasted until they were toasting the sky above and the earth below as both grew blue with the night.

Near midnight, Danny found him sitting along the parapet and sat beside him, drunk and smiling. “The bride’s in a bit of a snit that you haven’t asked for a dance.”

Luther laughed.

“What?”

“A black man dancing with a white woman on a roof. Yeah. I’ll bet.”

“Bet nothing,” Danny said, a bit of a slur in the words. “Nora asked me herself. You want to make the bride sad on her wedding day, you go right ahead.”

Luther looked at him. “There’s lines, Danny. Lines you don’t cross even here.”

“Fuck lines,” Danny said.

“Easy for you to say,” Luther said. “So easy.”

“Fine, fine.”

They looked at each other for some time.

Eventually, Danny said, “What?”

“You’re asking a lot,” Luther said.

Danny pulled out a pack of Murads, offered one to Luther. Luther took it and Danny lit it, then lit his own. Danny blew out a slow plume of blue smoke. “I hear the majority of the executive office positions of the NAACP are filled by white women.”

Luther had no idea where he was going with this. “There’s some truth to that, yeah, but Dr. Du Bois, he’s looking to change that. Change comes slow.”

“Uh-huh,” Danny said. He took a swig from the whiskey bottle at his feet and handed it to Luther. “You think I’m like them white women?”

Luther noticed one of Danny’s cop friends watching him raise the bottle to his lips, the guy making note which whiskey he wouldn’t be drinking the rest of the night.

“Do you, Luther? You think I’m trying to prove something? Show what a free-minded white man I am?”

“I don’t know what you’re doing.” Luther handed the bottle back.

Danny took another swig. “Ain’t doing shit, except trying to get my friend to dance with my wife on her wedding day because she asked me to.”

“Danny.” Luther could feel the liquor riding in him, itching. “Things is.”

“Things is?” Danny cocked an eyebrow.

Luther nodded. “As they’ve always been. And they don’t change just because you want them to.”

Nora crossed the roof toward them, a little tipsy herself judging by the sway of her, a champagne glass held loosely in one hand, cigarette in the other.

Before Luther could speak, Danny said, “He don’t want to dance.”

Nora turned her lower lip down at that. She wore a pearl-colored gown of satin messaline and silver tinsel. The drop skirt was wrinkled and the whole outfit a hair on the sloppy side now, but she still had those eyes, and that face made Luther think of peace, think of home.