“What you doin’ in the blue-light room all by yourself?” said Carmen.

“I was waitin’ on you, girl.”

“Go ahead, Derek.” Carmen laughed, looking into his heavy-lidded eyes. “You’re high, aren’t you?”

“A little.”

“I just had some nice smoke myself.”

“You gonna be a doctor, you need to quit it. Can’t be, like, operatin’ on people with your mind messed up.”

“I’m just an undergraduate. I got time to have fun. Anyway, what you gonna do, write me a ticket?”

“I’ll let you off with a warning tonight.”

Strange held his beer out to Carmen. She took it, drank, and gave the bottle back. Strange reached out and wiped his thumb across some foam that had gathered at the corner of her mouth. She leaned a little into his touch. She looked at him and looked away. Then she looked back into his eyes.

“I was thinking of you last December,” said Carmen. “The day Otis died.”

“Yeah, December tenth,” said Strange. “I was in my squad car when the news came on the radio, said his plane had gone down in Wisconsin.”

“He left some music, though, didn’t he.”

“Always gonna be there,” said Strange. His eyes went to one of the speakers in the room, where King Solomon’s voice was still coming out strong. “This is real pretty right here, too.”

“Sure is.”

“Wanna dance to it?”

“Okay.”

He placed the beer bottle on the floor and as he stood tall she came into his arms. He trembled a little as she put her head against his shoulder. He smelled that shampoo of hers and her dime-store perfume. Her breasts were firm against his chest, her fingers warm through his. They moved slowly and easily, as if she’d never left him, as they’d danced all through high school and beyond, until the trouble had come between them and she’d told him to go.

Otis Redding came on the box, the song with that beautiful piano introduction that always gave Strange chills. “Nothing Can Change This Love.” It had been one of theirs. Strange held Carmen close and breathed her in.

“I been missin’ you,” said Strange.

They kissed. Her lips were warm, and he felt the heat come off her face. Otis sang to them and there was no one else in the room.

LATER, AS THE crowd thinned and the music notched down, Strange and Carmen Hill sat outside the house on the front steps, sharing another beer. Lydell had gone back to Strange’s place with a girl he’d been on and off with for some time. The alcohol had brought Strange down nice, taking the edge off his high. His thigh touched Carmen’s as they talked.

“Tonight was good,” said Strange. “Good to relax some, you know? Good to see you.”

“Was for me, too.”

“It’s easy with you, Carmen. Always has been.”

“You can pick up the phone, Derek. You want to talk, you can call me.”

“I feel like I need to sometimes. Been rough, with my job and whatnot, these last few months.”

“You knew it would be.”

“I knew some of the white police would resent me. I was ready for that. What I didn’t expect was my own people lookin’ at me like I’m the enemy. I’m just trying to do my job and I’m duckin’ fire from both sides.”

“Then do your job,” said Carmen. “That’s what you always told me. Keep your head down and go to work. That’s what grown folks do.”

“I guess you’re right.”

“Anyway, you always did want to be like one of those dudes from those westerns you love. ‘A man who protects the community but can never be a part of it his own self.’ Isn’t that how you described it to me once?”

“I might have,” said Strange.

“You’re luckier than most, then. You’re the man you wanted to be.”

She found his hand and laced her fingers through his. He looked her over with deep affection.

“Where you stayin’ at now?” said Strange.

Carmen Hill nodded across the street. “I’m right there on the corner, up on the third floor. See that light up there? That’s me. Finally got a place that’s walking distance to my classes.”

“I heard you moved.”

“You did?” said Carmen in a slightly mocking way.

“Saw your sister one day, on the street.”

“You sure it was like that? ’Cause she said you called her up and asked her where I’d gone to.”

“I don’t remember the particulars. Point is, your sister told me.”

“Okay,” said Carmen with a little laugh. She squeezed his hand.

“So, seein’ as how you ain’t but a few steps away…”

“What?”

“Aren’t you gonna ask me over?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Why not?”

“I been talkin’ to people, too. You still seeing that little hairdresser from Northeast, right?”

“That ain’t nothin’ serious.”

“It never is with you.”

“She’s just a girl, is all I’m sayin’.”

“But she’s not the only girl, is she, Derek?”

“I ain’t married to her, if that’s what you mean.”

“And now you’re lookin’ to get with me tonight, too.”

“What’s your point?”

“You got the same problem you always had. And that will not work with me, Derek; not again.”

“If I could be with you, it would be only you.”

Carmen leaned in, kissed him on the side of his mouth, and stood.

“I always knew, Carmen,” said Strange. “Even when we were kids… you standing down by the corner market in that Easter dress of yours and those patent leather shoes. I knew.”

“So did I. We try it again, though, this time it’s gonna be on my terms. You need to think on that, Derek. You come to a decision, well, you know where to find me. Now that you know where I live.”

“You remember where I live, don’t you?”

“Yes. I still have your key.”

Strange watched her go down the steps and across the street to her row house. He wondered if he would ever be capable of committing to one woman or if it was just that he was young and would change in time. He wanted to change. ’Cause there wasn’t any question about it: Carmen was the one.

He got up and went down to Barry Place, then onto Florida Avenue. He walked east through a quiet city. He stopped to tell a boy of nine or ten, dribbling a basketball alone on the sidewalk, to get inside his house. The boy asked him why it was any business of his.

“I’m a police officer,” said Strange.

He waited for the boy to do as he was told, and then he walked on.

TWENTY

ON TUESDAY, IN Memphis, Negro leaders announced plans for a massive march at the end of the week, with trade union members and civil rights spokesmen from across the country due to attend. A settlement of the garbage workers’ strike would postpone the march, but no one expected that to happen. Dr. King had been scheduled to arrive in Tennessee that day to prepare for the demonstration, but he had been held up in Atlanta. His people promised that he would begin to head the operations in Memphis on Wednesday instead.

On Tuesday, in Milwaukee, Senator Eugene McCarthy celebrated his victory in the Wisconsin primary, having soundly beaten noncandidate Lyndon Johnson as well as write-in candidates Robert Kennedy and Hubert Humphrey the night before. In the Republican primary, Richard M. Nixon had won 80 percent of the vote to Ronald Reagan’s 10 and seemed well on the way to his party’s nomination.

On Tuesday, in D.C., the Cherry Blossom Festival of 1968 officially commenced. Over the Potomac River in Virginia, U.S. Park Police removed a Vietcong flag found flying over the Iwo Jima monument near Arlington Cemetery. Later that afternoon, two brothers were busted in the parking lot of a Northwest drive-in restaurant on Wisconsin Avenue, netting the largest seizure of hashish ever made in the Washington area.

At the same time, Buzz Stewart and Dominic Martini worked uneasily together at the Esso station on Georgia Avenue while Walter Hess, without remorse or anything else clouding his head, did his duties at the machine shop on Brookeville Road. Darius Strange flipped eggs and burgers on the grill of the Three-Star Diner on Kennedy Street while his wife, Alethea, cleaned a house in the Four Corners area of Silver Spring, Maryland. Their older son, Dennis, slept late, watched television, and read the want ads in the Post. Their younger, Derek, had a slow morning, reading and listening to records, then dressing to meet Troy Peters for their evening patrol.