“When’d you ever have any fun for nothing?” Fonzo said. “Come on.”
“I’ll go,” Virgil said. “But I aint going to promise to spend nothing.”
“You wait and say that when we get there,” Fonzo said.
The barber took them to a brothel. When they came out Fonzo said: “And to think I been here two weeks without never knowing about that house.”
“I wisht you hadn’t never learned,” Virgil said. “It cost three dollars.”
“Wasn’t it worth it?” Fonzo said.
“Aint nothing worth three dollars you caint tote off with you,” Virgil said.
When they reached home Fonzo stopped. “We got to sneak in, now,” he said. “If she was to find out where we been and what we been doing, she might not let us stay in the house with them ladies no more.”
“That’s so,” Virgil said. “Durn you. Hyer you done made me spend three dollars, and now you fixing to git us both throwed out.”
“You do like I do,” Fonzo said. “That’s all you got to do. Dont say nothing.”
Minnie let them in. The piano was going full blast. Miss Reba appeared in a door, with a tin cup in her hand. “Well, well,” she said, “you boys been out mighty late tonight.”
“Yessum,” Fonzo said, prodding Virgil toward the stairs. “We been to prayer-meeting.”
In bed, in the dark, they could still hear the piano.
“You made me spend three dollars,” Virgil said.
“Aw, shut up,” Fonzo said. “When I think I been here for two whole weeks almost.……”
The next afternoon they came home through the dusk, with the lights winking on, beginning to flare and gleam, and the women on their twinkling blonde legs meeting men and getting into automobiles and such.
“How about that three dollars now?” Fonzo said.
“I reckon we better not go ever night,” Virgil said. “It’ll cost too much.”
“That’s right,” Fonzo said. “Somebody might see us and tell her.”
They waited two nights. “Now it’ll be six dollars,” Virgil said.
“Dont come, then,” Fonzo said.
When they returned home Fonzo said: “Try to act like something, this time. She near about caught us before on account of the way you acted.”
“What if she does?” Virgil said in a sullen voice. “She caint eat us.”
They stood outside the lattice, whispering.
“How you know she caint?” Fonzo said.
“She dont want to, then.”
“How you know she dont want to?”
“Maybe she dont,” Virgil said. Fonzo opened the lattice door. “I caint eat that six dollars, noways,” Virgil said. “Wisht I could.”
Minnie let them in. She said: “Somebody huntin you all.” They waited in the hall.
“We done caught now,” Virgil said. “I told you about throwing that money away.”
“Aw, shut up,” Fonzo said.
A man emerged from a door, a big man with his hat cocked over one ear, his arm about a blonde woman in a red dress. “There’s Cla’ence,” Virgil said.
In their room Clarence said: “How’d you get into this place?”
“Just found it,” Virgil said. They told him about it. He sat on the bed, in his soiled hat, a cigar in his fingers.
“Where you been tonight?” he said. They didn’t answer. They looked at him with blank, watchful faces. “Come on. I know. Where was it?” They told him.
“Cost me three dollars, too,” Virgil said.
“I’ll be durned if you aint the biggest fool this side of Jackson,” Clarence said. “Come on here.” They followed sheepishly. He led them from the house and for three or four blocks. They crossed a street of negro stores and theatres and turned into a narrow, dark street and stopped at a house with red shades in the lighted windows. Clarence rang the bell. They could hear music inside, and shrill voices, and feet. They were admitted into a bare hallway where two shabby negro men argued with a drunk white man in greasy overalls. Through an open door they saw a room filled with coffee-colored women in bright dresses, with ornate hair and golden smiles.
“Them’s niggers,” Virgil said.
“ ’Course they’re niggers,” Clarence said. “But see this?” he waved a banknote in his cousin’s face. “This stuff is color-blind.”
22
