Page 68 of Edge of Eternity (The Century 3)

He shook his head. "If I bring in a bill and get defeated I'll look weak, and that will jeopardize everything else. And I'd never get a second chance on civil rights."

"So what should I tell Grandpa?"

"That doing the right thing is not as easy as it looks, even when you're president."

He stood up, and she did the same. They toweled each other dry, then went into his bedroom. Maria put on one of his soft blue cotton nightshirts.

They made love again. If he was tired, it was brief, like the very first time; but tonight he was at ease. He reverted to a playful mood, and they lay back on the bed, toying with one another, as if nothing else in the world mattered.

Afterward he went to sleep quickly. She lay beside him, blissfully happy. She did not want the morning to come, when she would have to get dressed and go to the press office and begin her day's work. She lived in the real world as if it were a dream, waiting only for the call from Dave Powers that meant she could wake up and come back to the only reality that mattered.

She knew that some of her colleagues must have guessed what she was doing. She knew he was never going to leave his wife for her. She knew she should be worried about getting pregnant. She knew that everything she was doing was foolish and wrong and could not possibly have a happy ending.

And she was too much in love to care.

*

George understood why Bobby was so pleased to be able to send him to talk to K

ing. When Bobby needed to put pressure on the civil rights movement, he had more chance of success using a black messenger. George thought Bobby was right about Levison but, nevertheless, he was not entirely comfortable with his role--a feeling that was beginning to be familiar.

Atlanta was cold and rainy. Verena met George at the airport, wearing a tan coat with a black fur collar. She looked beautiful, but George was still hurting too much from Maria's rejection to be attracted. "I know Stanley Levison," Verena said, driving George through the urban sprawl of the city. "A very sincere guy."

"He's a lawyer, right?"

"More than that. He helped Martin with the writing of Stride Toward Freedom. They're close."

"The FBI says Levison is a Communist."

"Anyone who disagrees with J. Edgar Hoover is a Communist, according to the FBI."

"Bobby referred to Hoover as a cocksucker."

Verena laughed. "Do you think he meant it?"

"I don't know."

"Hoover, a powder puff?" She shook her head in disbelief. "It's too good to be true. Real life is never that funny."

She drove through the rain to the Old Fourth Ward neighborhood, where there were hundreds of black-owned businesses. There seemed to be a church on every block. Auburn Avenue had once been called the most prosperous Negro street in America. The Southern Christian Leadership Conference had its headquarters at number 320. Verena pulled up at a long two-story building of red brick.

George said: "Bobby thinks Dr. King is arrogant."

Verena shrugged. "Martin thinks Bobby is arrogant."

"What do you think?"

"They're both right."

George laughed. He liked Verena's sharp wit.

They hurried across the wet sidewalk and went inside. They waited outside King's office for fifteen minutes, then they were called.

Martin Luther King was a handsome man of thirty-three, with a mustache and prematurely receding black hair. He was short, George guessed about five foot six, and a little plump. He wore a well-pressed dark-gray suit with a white shirt and a narrow black satin tie. There was a white silk handkerchief in his breast pocket, and he had large cuff links. George caught a whiff of cologne. He got the impression of a man whose dignity was important to him. George sympathized: he felt the same.

King shook George's hand and said: "Last time we met, you were on the Freedom Ride, heading for Anniston. How's the arm?"

"It's completely healed, thank you," George said. "I've given up competitive wrestling, but I was ready to do that anyway. Now I coach a high school team in Ivy City." Ivy City was a black neighborhood in Washington.

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