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separate wings of a large house. That was the image I had in mind during breakfast when I decided something different had to be done. Change! It seemed to be everywhere except Laurel.
    I set my sights low. Incremental progress was my philosophy. We didn’t have to be heroes. There had been enough of those already, and in many ways, I reasoned, Isaac and I had already picked up the fight; we just hadn’t known that was what we were doing. I made a list of all the places we had gone to in the three months since we’d met: the grocery store, the mall, post office, bank, Goodwill. I thought of them while sitting at my desk and tried to remember if any obvious signs of affection had passed between us. I came up with a crude value system to measure each trip by.
    1) Shopping for food: After sex and children, what could be more intimate in America than choosing what kind of meat to cook? The grocery store was the first place in our town that I knew for certain we had conquered. We went once, sometimes twice a week. We laughed in the aisles, took turns pushing the cart. I gave him cooking lessons at the meat counter. Those were all important victories.
    2) The post office: I had to admit that had been a terrible loss, and because it was a government office I felt I had to weigh the defeat a bit more. One post-office defeat was the equivalent of two grocery-store victories. Mail was dangerous, personal letters especially. They pointed to great distances and old, mysterious lives I knew nothing about. There were tellers instead of clerks, forms that had to be filled. It would be difficult, if not impossible, to win in a place like that.
    3) Anything else that was related to shopping: furniture, plates, cutlery—we had chosen all that together, right under the skeptical eye of the clerks. Had Isaac and Itouched each other once, I would have said we dealt an important blow against segregation, but I had to be honest. I knew we had never touched except by accident, so I had to temper the victory with the knowledge that we could have done better.
    What I needed next were new targets. The first one that came to mind was the most obvious, and I couldn’t believe I hadn’t thought of it before. A week after our defeat at the post office, I called Isaac from my office and said I wanted to take him out to lunch.
    “To lunch?”
    “Yes,” I said, “for lunch. I’m tired of eating at my desk alone.”
    I chose the same diner my father had gone to every morning, and where as a child I had joined him on Saturday afternoons. It was the only place in Laurel that I associated exclusively with him. I had been going there for years, on my own and with friends and co-workers, but those other occasions were mere intrusions on the central event, a semi-regular father-daughter lunch that had lasted for two years and that had ended in one of those booths with my father promising to visit every week once he moved out. A month went by before I saw him again. I stopped worrying, and then, with more time, caring if he returned. Gradually, my memories of him were distilled into a single fluid image of a man confined to a booth, or counter, with thick sideburns and occasionally a soft mustache that moved when he spoke, which wasn’t often.
    The diner was never officially segregated, but I couldn’t remember anyone who wasn’t white eating there, either. In this case it was etiquette, and not a sign, that served as the cover for our division. Before I left to pick up Isaac, I wrote down on apiece of paper in case I forgot it later: “We have every right to be here.”
    We arrived shortly after noon, when I knew the restaurant would be crowded. Isaac said he could meet me there, but I insisted on picking him up so everyone could see us walk in together. The lunch counter was already full. Of the half-dozen men sitting there, I knew three by name and the others were familiar. Bill, whose chest and forearms were known throughout Laurel for the strong