Irene looked from me to Terrence and back again and I could tell from the expressions fluttering across her face that she had assessed everything instantly. Her outrage and anger electrified the room. In her cool blonde-Buddha way she gave Terrence’s hand a wan shake. She was wearing gloves.

Coralee saw the implicit derision in the gesture. “Terrence is the star reporter for the Challenger,” she said defiantly. “A great writer.”

“That’s a Negro paper, isn’t it?” asked Irene.

“The Challenger comes out three times a week,” said Terrence, adding, even more awkwardly, “but we used to print six days a week before the War.”

“Terrence gonna write a book one day that everyone will read,” Coralee insisted. “One day. You watch.” She pointed at me and Irene. “You all will be reading his book.”

“Maybe my sister should sign him up as a client,” said Irene with an icy look at me. “God knows her agency could use someone smarter than Charlie Frye.”

Terrence turned to Ruby and Clarence, asking anxiously after the surgery, and amid even more uncomfortable talk of Clarence’s bowels and viscera, everyone in the room, except for Serena, seemed to exude an unstable brew of shame and outrage. I excused myself and stepped into the hall, hoping like hell that Irene would not follow me and that Terrence would.

Eons seemed to pass before he came out, and we ducked into an empty hospital room next door. Terrence flung the door shut and took me in his arms, and we fell onto the scratchy gray blanket covering the hospital bed. He held me, pressed me to him as if he would etch my flesh on his palms forever, both of us breathing deep, seeking each other with our lips and tongues. His fingers fumbled with the buttons on my blouse and sought my smooth breast, my taut nipple.

“Oh, baby,” I cried, holding his face in my hands, “I love you, baby, and I’ve missed you and you can’t even—”

“I can. These last ten days, the feel of you, the touch, the smell . . .” His lips went up and down my neck. “I missed the way your eyes light up when you’re happy, the way you crazy moan when I’ve got hold of you.” He brought his mouth down to my lips, and his tongue sought mine.

I reached down and found where he was hardest, stroked him, and his breath came in sharp gusts. “Don’t ever leave me again,” I whispered against the curve of his neck, his small perfect ears. “I never want to spend another ten days apart. No matter what. Please come home, baby. I miss you. I don’t want to live without you.”