8:36 a.m.

I kept speaking. No one heard me. The microphone and loudspeakers provided no sound. I had no voice. The crowd’s voice was obscenity.

I kept speaking. Paper debris and water balloons hit the platform. Everyone jumped off. Garbage spattered me.

I held the microphone and kept speaking. My lips moved and made no sound. I spoke with undiminished intent and could not hear my own voice. The crowd was directly below and right in front of me. I heard a thousand Japs and saw a savage beating.

Someone was down. People were kicking him. People were beating those people and forcing them to disperse. I couldn’t see faces. It was all punches and kicks. I held the microphone and kept speaking.

I delivered my indictment. The platform rattled and skewed my line of sight. People ran in front of me. I thought I saw Ed Satterlee. Bill Parker and Scotty Bennett might have run by. They were disheveled. The might-be Parker lost his glasses. The might-be Scotty wore ripped clothes.

I looked to the 5th Street sidewalk and blew a line of text. Mike Breuning and Dick Carlisle eased Hideo Ashida into a K-car. Hideo brushed the back window and left blood streaks.

The car pulled out. The lie that race defines human beings. The lie that dissent defines sedition. The car turned north on Hill Street. I watched it disappear. A paper bag full of food scraps hit me. The definitive lie of fearful hatred. Rotten fruit in my hair.

A man hurled a trash can at the platform and cracked a foundation strut. The boards listed to one side; the microphone stand tipped over; I stumbled and fell down with it.

The platform collapsed. I crashed to street level. A man ran up, kicked me and ran back into the crowd. Saul and Andrea Lesnick walked through the rubble. They grabbed my arms and began to hoist me; I felt how frail they were and pushed myself upright.

They were frail. I was jarred and battered. We stumbled to the Hill Street curb and a double-parked Chrysler. Saul got in the driver’s side; I got in beside him. Andrea slipped and fell into the back.

Saul pulled into traffic. Andrea said something about her nerves and Queen of Angels.

We drove north. I brushed apple pulp out of my hair. Traffic was stalled in front of us; I saw the whip antenna on the K-car above the traffic line. Hideo stepped out of the backseat and began walking east. He held a bloody handkerchief to his face.

Saul cut through Bunker Hill and got us to the hospital. He parked by the side entrance; he helped Andrea out and gave me a look. It meant You’ve done enough. They walked in the door together—frail comrades, arm in arm.

Lee’s room was on the third floor. I smoked a cigarette in the car and walked inside to the washroom. I tended to myself and reread Saul’s look. Brittle child, chaos attends you, so impervious to others.

I took the elevator up to Lee’s room. Lee was asleep, with his bed cranked into a sitting-reclining position. He had metal studs and sutures in his jaw. His chewed-off ear had been retrieved and stitched back into place. Criss-crossed stitches secured his nose.

He’d left the house, arm in arm with Scotty. No hard feelings, huh? Jesus, that Kay. It was like the first Louis-Schmeling fight. You stay here, sweetie—this is man’s stuff.

They drove off together. Of course, I stayed behind. Chaos attends but does not subsume me. I don’t stick around to view the cost.

I pulled a chair up to the bed and watched Lee sleep. Leland Charles Blanchard, “The Southland’s Great White Hope.” Ex-contender, policeman, bank robber–killer. I’d known him for three years. This is where we were now.

I watched Lee sleep. He never stirred. A medical chart was hooked to the wall above his bed.

“You were brilliant, Miss Lake.”

He’d let some prairie into his voice. Deadwood and Sioux Falls—that short distance apart.

I turned my chair around to see him. His face was nicked, his jaw was bruised, his eyes were huge without his glasses.

“Did you follow me here?”

“I saw Lesnick drive off with you. I had an instinct as to where you were going.”

“My movie is unprecedented. It will stand as an unbiased document, whatever you do to Claire and me.”

“Don’t cast yourselves as martyrs. It’s not who you are. She’s a traitorous dilettante, and you’re the biggest opportunist since me.”

“I may be that in spirit, but I lack your résumé. You can’t blame me for that. You had Two-Gun Davis for a mentor, but all I have is you.”

“Your résumé is the men you’ve screwed to get what you want. It exceeds my résumé in sheer volume.”

“Who’s the tall red-haired woman? What will you do when you find her and she sees how little you have?”

“What will you do when your ‘unprecedented’ movie is labeled Exhibit A in Federal court?”

“What will you do when the world steps aside and you don’t get what you want? What will you do when Russia remains our ally after we win this war? What will you do when the world decides that you’re not worth the trouble and throws in with some other man less furious and more presentable than you?”

Lee coughed. I turned away and looked at him. He twitched in a dream; his eyes fluttered; he rolled onto his side.

I shifted my chair back around. He was gone—and the room was too bright and quiet without him. I opened a window and saw Scotty down on the sidewalk. He was disheveled and reading the Holy Bible.

I’ll make love with him again.

I horrify myself.

Only William H. Parker knows my heart.