I followed Terrence through the low gate and toward the back, where August Branch had a glassed-in office with a door wide enough to accommodate his wheelchair. Like the rest of the Challenger, his office was a melee of stacked papers, folders, overflowing inboxes, two telephones, a typewriter, an array of fountain pens. On the wall were photographs of serious-looking Negroes shaking hands in front of NAACP banners, framed plaques honoring the Challenger, and August Branch personally. Mr. Branch righted the carnation in his lapel as Terrence introduced me. He spoke in a formal fashion, his accent left over, he said, from his childhood and youth in Alabama. He went on at length and with respect about Julia Greene, her courage, and her commitment to racial equality. I replied with vagaries. Certainly I did not say that in all the years I had lived with her, I knew nothing of this commitment.

Then he turned to Terrence. “Did Booker get his horn back?”

“Well, yeah, sort of. After you called the station I went back there, and they said there’d been a mistake and they had mislabeled his horn, and that’s why they couldn’t find it. But when they gave it to me, there was a mop handle shoved up the bell. Bastards charged me for the mop.”

“No!” I cried. “That’s terrible. That’s absolutely awful!”

“No shit. The only thing more important to my brother than his horn is his dick.” Terrence coughed and excused himself to Mr. Branch and to me. “I paid it. But I’m not giving the horn back to Booker till it’s fixed. He won’t be playing it for a few days anyway. I dropped it off at Corelli’s to have it fixed.”

“A wise choice. Now take Miss Granville to lunch at Ruby’s, and be back in time for the editorial meeting.” To me he said, “Ruby’s is Central Avenue’s best-kept secret.”

As Terrence and I passed the dry cleaner, a small brown woman stuck her head out the door and said, “Terrence, your shirts’re all clean and pressed, lotta starch, just how you like ’em. Your suit’s ready too. Oh! Look at your face, Terrence! Those bastards! They didn’t even find no drugs, did they?”

“Hard to say, Sally, if they found them or brought them to the party.”

“It was our fault,” I said as he and I walked on. “Diana fired her agent, and he knew about Diana and your brother. He wanted to bring her down, but just look at the terrible things that happened to everyone else.”

“Including you,” he reminded me with a nod to my shiner. He grinned so broadly his gold tooth gleamed. “Don’t worry. It’ll go away and you’ll be pretty again.”

On the other side of my face I could feel the birthmark flush, pleased that he had called me pretty.