’ Then turning to his wife he said ‘maybe you can find something else for him to do.while I’m gone’, and he left. When we heard the car start ...and back away, Joy looked to me, saying ‘ hold on a sec’. and ran up the steps. Lots of thoughts were running around in my head. I know today there’s a black guy in the Whitehouse, Interracial marriages and such. But back then, things were different. A man didn’t leave his white wife alone with a black teenage boy. A black man did little more than say. She was standing in a hallway in a plain white shirt, a pleated skirt and scuffed old shoes. Her short hair and long bones plainly marked her a low-gee'r."Come on, Maria!"She startled alert and hurried to catch up, plunging through the virtual door after her cousins. The electronic beat poured into Maria's bones, the trembling melody skittered over her skin followed by laser beam traces. The Ballroom stretched into half-lit depths, full of spinning bodies and light-scattering smoke. A moment. "You've done a good job, son. A man's job. This year ought to be our best yet, just wait and see."Mark didn't seem very interested. He toyed with his mashed potatoes, not meeting his father's gaze. "Yeah. Thanks, Dad."Frankly, Linda was getting worried. Susie had been visiting almost a week now, and at first the kids had seemed to hit it off extremely well. But they'd been so subdued and unlike themselves all day that she was beginning to fear that her niece wasn't fitting in.She spoke up. Despite what Singh had said it still seemed to him adeeply out of character action that she could launch such a horrendousattack on the three of them. For the moment Jim was dealing with it bytreating it as another example of theoretical knowledge colliding withfacts on the ground and falling short in favor of reality. And he hadother concerns that preyed on his thoughts. Chief among them, knowingthat an even more powerful version of that being was coming to jointhem. That idea left him still.