But Mrs. Rosenbloom had gone in the spring. She had said she wanted to smell a fresh flower at noon again and she had remembered that before blacks had moved into the neighborhood there were daffodils in St. James Park in the spring and she was going to try to smell one in the bright sun. She knew they had to be up by now. So she had phoned and said goodbye in case something should happen. Gerd had warned her not to go but she had said she was tired of living without sunshine and even though she had the misfortune to live in a now dangerous place, she wanted to walk in the sun again. It was not her fault her skin was white and she was too poor to move away from blacks and she was too old to run or to fight them off. Maybe if she just walked out on the street, as if she had a right to, maybe she could get to the park and back.

And so Mrs. Rosenbloom had headed for the park that noon and the next day when Gerd had phoned one of the other whites who could not leave the neighborhood, he found out that Mrs. Rosenbloom had not contacted them either. Her phone did not answer.

Gerd reasoned that since there was nothing on the radio-he had a small silent earphone put in because that way you could keep a radio because they wouldn't know you had one and come to steal it-then Mrs. Rosenbloom was dead cleanly. The radio and the newspapers only had stories when they poured gasoline over you and burned you alive as in Boston or when whites committed suicide because the fear of blacks was too great as in Manhattan. The normal everyday deaths were not on the radio, so perhaps Mrs. Rosenbloom had died quickly and easily.

And later they saw someone who had known someone who had seen her body picked up, so she was dead definitely.