He glanced over at me with a look of near desperation. “This isn’t a goddamn movie, Roxanne, where you walk down the street at high noon, and make fine gestures, and in The End the good guys win while a bunch of trumpets play in the background. Shit like that will get you killed. It will sure as hell get me killed.”

There was nothing I could say to that. I did not recognize the danger that Terrence instantly sensed because I had no frame of reference at all. After all, in the movies I had never seen a white woman and a black man out together, arm in arm. Of course I hadn’t. There never was such a scene. There might not ever be such a scene. The Hays Code did not allow miscegenation on the screen. Miscegenation. Is that what we were doing? What an ugly word. So ugly that even the scandal rags that had excoriated Diana Jordan hadn’t used it, preferring to highlight a blonde actress and her black lover. Miscegenation. As he drove me back to Clara Bow Drive, I tried but could not think of a single movie or play or novel where a white woman and a black man defied custom, expectations, and fell in love. None except Othello—a tragedy.

•   •   •

If we wanted to go to a movie, Terrence and I had to buy separate tickets, apart from each other, enter separately after the lights had gone down, sit together, and leave separately before the lights came up. And at that, especially in a crowded theater, we attracted unwanted attention just sitting side by side. We couldn’t eat a meal at the Farm Café, or anywhere near Clara Bow Drive, without nasty looks seasoning every bite. We found a couple of restaurants in Chinatown, dark, quiet, painted in red and black and gold, with little glass wind chimes that tinkled with the breeze of every passing waiter. No one in Chinatown cared who we were, since we weren’t Chinese. Neither of us had ever eaten Chinese food, and we both liked it, and we learned to use chopsticks. We drove to Baja for a couple of weekends, and there we could go wherever we wanted, dance to our hearts’ content, and not attract any special notice (except for nasty looks from the border guards). Jonathan insisted everything would be fine at Casa Fiesta, reminding us that Clayton Strong and his girlfriend sometimes showed up at the parties. But Clayton’s girlfriend wasn’t white, and I reminded Jonathan that when Bongo and those two actors saw Diana and Booker together at the Comet Club, what did they do? They bolted, afraid to be anywhere near a white woman who loved a black man. By the end of the summer, Terrence and I agreed it was easier to stay home, to keep to ourselves.