The woman’s head was bowed. Then, as Annie started to turn away, the mother of monkeys looked up. One of the animals leaped to her lap and tugged at the cloth of the tunic, then fell to the straw where it instantly mounted another monkey that had paused at the woman’s feet. There was a shout of laughter from the watchers at the fence. The woman turned her head slowly, her glance coming to rest on Annie. Her expression was grave, remote. Annie flushed with shame and pity. The woman smiled, holding Annie’s unwilling gaze. The smile widened. It was as though the two of them were alone. Annie smiled back uncertainly. The woman nodded her head very slightly. Perhaps Annie imagined it. Then the woman’s head drooped; she hid her hands in the folds of her costume.

Driving home, Annie relived that flash of light between herself and the Negro woman. What had it meant? Why had the woman’s smile lifted her heart so? What moment’s comprehension had brought them together?

When she got back to the apartment house, she found two letters that had been slipped under her door. One was from Paul Lavan, the other from Max Shore.

PART TWO
Meetings

Chapter 11

On an evening during the long rainy spell that summer, Jake Cranford went to see Max Shore. Jake’s shoes sloshed, his basketball player’s jacket clung wetly to his shirt, and water dripped down his face from his plastered hair. From the doorway, he looked uneasily at Eva, who was painting her nails by the light of a small table lamp, her lips tightened with concentration.

“Jake, it’s been a while. Come in.”

Max dropped the typescript pages he’d been editing and stretched. The pamphlet was impossible! Before it could be translated into Spanish, it had to be translated into English. The dense airless language, clogged with party jargon, was supposed to reveal to the Mexican community of Los Angeles that its treatment by the police was a matter of brotherly concern to the Communist party. Why had there been that long tangent about the chauvinistic implications of the phrase “fine Italian hand”? The pamphlet was stuffed with such irrelevant asides. But knowing the ex-missionary who’d been assigned the job, Max was not surprised. Calvin Schmitter would suffocate his flock, any flock, with every piece of information he could marshal whether it made sense or not.