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when the sirens could be heard, the red eyes swooping around on top of the leading police cars. A cheer began to go up from some of the people braced around the snow fence used to cordon off the park. But this cheer was drowned out instantly by the demonstrators, who blanketed the area with heavy boos. The cheerers turned and gave the evil eye to the booers, but there weren’t enough of them to matter. One provocateur walked back and forth in front of the line of demonstrators, a sick looking young Negro in a blue three-piece suit with a camera, saying, “Y’all gonna get locked up,” but people blanked on him and he trailed off.
    In the car directly behind the president’s was Tim Good-son’s, and directly behind that was Laird Conroy, President of Gratitude. Its white marble tower stood directly across the park from the hotel, and the blue neon had just turned on and beamed its steady announcement of wealth and power. Actually, Conroy almost resented the fact that Tim’s car was in front of his. The governor was riding with the president, and Senator Cod rode with Tim. It was the correct protocol, but not really, if you was being for real. Actually, Conroy should have been in the first car, Jimmy.
    The demonstrators could see the cars as they pulled up the street toward the hotel. The comrades with the banners had hoisted them as high as they could, in hopes that the president would see that some folks thought he was jive. But it was mostly as Goodson had said: They didn’t see the president and he didn’t see them.
    The party got out and swept up the stairs bathed in police. If you wasn’t the president, you got mashed a little bit by the zealous Secret Service and the police. It was obvious that Tim and Roger had done a good job. There was no way nothing untoward could happen.
    Laird Conroy was still a trifle starchy because he trailed the president by so much while Tim and the other blacks were closer, though none of them were anywhere near because of the police ring. With Conroy were his wife, Lydia, and their children, Morgan and Melissa. Melissa was a junior at Vassar, majoring, actually, in walking just slower than a medium gait, with head thrown slightly back and little nose reddening. Her brother was a peacenik potnik, gone straight. He and the governor’s son had gotten busted a year ago for smoking bush, and that was when the governor came out with his humanitarian plea that the marijuana laws were too hard and should be reviewed. They were reviewed and the two boys got off with a stern talking-to by a judge, with Morgan being reenrolled at Princeton, where he’d just about dropped out. He had started to go underground to classes given by the disciples of the Perfect Master Guru Rij, one of whom was a former revolutionary homosexual. The revolutionaries kept being unsympathetic to homosexuality, and that moved him more toward the Perfect Master, who understood homosexuality perfectly, like he understood everything else. But at the same time, Morgan got excited when he read about Patty Hearst. Peace was everywhere, he understood. But Patty Hearst, that excited him. They had the same experience. Trapped in the avalanche of privilege.
    Tim was fine now. He shook the president’s hand again. They were eating the thousand-dollar plate, and he looked over at Madeline, thinking she ought to feel better than this, sitting on the dais with the President of the United States. How many niggers can say that? Why she begrudge me a little loose booty, and I got her sitting up here with these milliondollar folks? A couple of years and a cabinet post, Jim.
    “The security was fabulous, Tim, fabulous. I’ve heard so much about your city. The media, you know how they like to distort things. I didn’t know what to expect. But you’re handling things wonderfully.” The president leaned over and said these things to Tim during the dinner, and he was glad that Madeline was listening and could check out how dynamite