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With his arm heavy across her chest, his lips rest on her neck.

“Can I move?” Josie asks.

“Mmm. Too comfortable.” He rolls over on his back.

“Are you needed at the breakfast program this morning?”

“Yeah. I have a table of little goofy jumping jacks. Five or six of them belong to the Panther sisters.”

“What about the Panther brothers?”

“Okay, smartass, but it takes too long to lay out an entire biography.”

“Would you want to have children?” How come she doesn’t know this?

“Is this a lead-in question?”

She can sense his tension. “Of course not. God forbid. I was just curious if you liked kids.”

“I think about it.”

“What does that mean?”

“Well . . . on the one hand, the more of us there are, the safer we’ll be.”

“On the other hand?”

“Is this like a need to know? I mean, right now?”

“Everything I ask I need to know.” He doesn’t want her to pursue this. A list of reasons she doesn’t want to read run in a headline around her brain.

“Yes . . . that’s so true, Josie.”

“Don’t sound so exasperated.”

“I’m aiming for the shower. Though I want to nuzzle you all over again, I have no time to provide answers to your pithy questions.” He nips her ear and then slides his legs off the side of the bed.

He likes kids; she knows he does. Having one with a white woman, though, that may not be on his agenda. She understands. They live in a country that makes normal happenings feel abnormal. Anyway, having children isn’t on her agenda.

“Come back. I have a little while before I have to get dressed for work.” She doesn’t want the morning to end, doesn’t want to think about the day ahead or Lowell’s message, which she hasn’t shared with Melvin. He already thinks white radicals are too full of themselves. The message included instructions on how to make sure that she wouldn’t be followed. Was that necessary, she wonders, or are the layers of secrecy a way to make activists feel important?

“Josie, if I climb back . . . never mind.” His long, lean torso disappears into the bathroom.

Daylight has crept into every corner of the shadeless room. She slips out of bed, wraps the sheet around her, and stands at the open window. A cool breeze hints at autumn, her favorite season, though it’s when things begin to die.

Exiting the last subway car, she takes in as many faces as she can of those who also get off. Then enters a nearby pharmacy, walks through the aisles, and watches to see if anyone from the train has followed her in. No one she recognizes, which is what she expected.

In the hospital lobby, she buys the newspaper and a container of coffee, then heads to the second-floor offices. Everything must be as usual. In a few hours, a fugitive will arrive here, where nurses bustle in and out of rooms and doctors route the sick to heaven.

At twelve thirty, her lunchtime, she takes the elevator up to the sixth floor cafeteria, which is as large as a basketball court and open to the public. Trays are piled high near the counters; women in white hairnets and pink dresses ladle out the hot foods.

She slides a tray along the rails, picks up a sandwich and a drink, then finds a vacant table for two. The cafeteria is crowded and the buzz of voices loud, but fortunately, none of her coworkers are nearby.

Miles slips into a chair across from her and places a tray with a garden salad and some napkins on the table. He’s dressed in slacks, sport jacket, and tie, his crew-cut hair dyed light brown. Only his dark eyes are recognizable behind the wire-framed glasses. “Hi,” he says, but couldn’t sound more indifferent.

Is he supposed to be a stranger, a friend, a colleague, or what? No one has said. “It’s nice to see you,” she replies carefully.

He nods.

Though she can’t tell him about Celia’s abortion or that Celia plans to attend an upcoming abortion rights meeting, she can keep a promise. Leaning across the table to reach for one of his napkins, she whispers, “Celia needs to meet with you. She’ll do whatever you ask to make it happen.”

“Not a good time.” His quick whispered response a crystal-clear message.

“Celia doesn’t care what you do about the draft,” she persists.

“The draft is the least of my problems.” His eyes remain on the food.

“Give me a note for her?”

“Can’t.” An icy-toned warning not to pursue this.

There’s much she’d love to share with him: about the Panther 21, about the call for reparations and more. But he’s busy shoveling every last bit of salad into his mouth, a camel preparing for a desert crossing.

“I bumped into my cousin Grace. She’s living with her lover, a woman.”

“A lesbian?”

“Is that all you can say? What’s the matter with you?”

“Sorry,” he mumbles. But is he? She’s confused. What’s real here, she needs to know. It’s Miles, sweet, daring Miles. Is he keeping a distance from her the way that doctors learn not to get deeply involved with patients in order to survive their deaths? Is that what Miles is doing? Surviving love, his mother’s and hers?

“How’s the job going?” he suddenly asks as if they’ve been discussing this all along. “Did you get that raise? I never received mine, so I’m skimping now. Cash has become a problem.”

Beneath the casual words, there’s urgency. Money is the reason for the meeting. She can’t refuse him, though there’s a bottom to her cash. She removes bills from her purse and places them under a napkin, which disappears quickly.

“Need to go, can’t be late for work. Good seeing you.”

She watches him disappear through the exit door. The meeting leaves her poorer, bewildered, even angry. The tiptoe carefulness, the evasiveness, what does any of it mean? And what about her sister? Will it relieve Celia to know that she met with Miles or upset her that he refuses to see her?