“It’s nice,” she admitted loudly, “but it would be nicer if I had you there with me.”
He patted her hand and held it regardless of the onlooking crowd.
“Maybe so, sugar, but you wouldn’t like me if you had to live with me all the time.”
Emma Lou was aggrieved: “I don’t see how you can say that. How do you know? That’s what made me mad last Sunday.”
Alva saw that Emma Lou was ready for argument and he had no intention of favoring her, or of discomfiting himself. He was even sorry that he said as much as he had when she had first broached the “living together” matter over the telephone on Sunday, calling him out of bed before noon while Geraldine was there too, looking, but not asking, for information. He smiled at her indulgently:
“If you say another word about it, I’ll kiss you right here in the subway.”
Emma Lou didn’t put it beyond him so she could do nothing but smile and shut up. She rather liked him to talk to her that way. Alva was shouting into her ear again, telling her a scandalous tale he claimed to have heard while playing poker with some of the boys. He thus contrived to keep her entertained until they reached the 135th Street station where they finally emerged from beneath the pavement to mingle with the frowsy crowds of Harlem’s Bowery, Lenox Avenue.
They made their way to the Lafayette, the Jew’s gift of entertainment to Harlem colored folk. Each week the management of this theater presents a new musical revue of the three a day variety with motion pictures—all guaranteed to be from three to ten years old—sandwiched in between. On Friday nights there is a special midnight performance lasting from twelve o’clock until four or four-thirty the next morning, according to the stamina of the actors. The audience does not matter. It would as soon sit until noon the next day if the “high yaller” chorus girls would continue to undress, and the black face comedians would continue to tell stale jokes, just so long as there was a raucous blues singer thrown in every once in a while for vulgar variety.
Before Emma Lou and Alva could reach the entrance door, they had to struggle through a crowd of well dressed young men and boys, congregated on the sidewalk in front of the theater. The midnight show at the Lafayette on Friday is quite a social event among certain classes of Harlem folk, and, if one is a sweetback or a man about town, one must be seen standing in front of the theater, if not inside. It costs nothing to obstruct the entranceway, and it adds much to one’s prestige. Why, no one knows.
Without untoward incident Emma Lou and Alva found the seats he had reserved. There was much noise in the theater, much passing to and fro, much stumbling down dark aisles. People were always leaving their seats, admonishing their companions to hold them, and someone else was always taking them despite the curt and sometimes belligerent, “This seat is taken.” Then, when the original occupant would return there would be still another argument. This happened so frequently that there seemed to be a continual wrangling automatically staged in different parts of the auditorium. Then people were always looking for someone or for something, always peering into the darkness, emitting code whistles, and calling to Jane or Jim or Pete or Bill. At the head of each aisle, both upstairs and down, people were packed in a solid mass, a grumbling, garrulous mass, elbowing their neighbors, cursing the management, and standing on tiptoe trying to find an empty, intact seat—intact because every other seat in the theater seemed to be broken. Hawkers went up and down the aisle shouting, “Ice cream, peanuts, chewing gum or candy.” People hissed at them and ordered what they wanted. A sadly inadequate crew of ushers inefficiently led people up one aisle and down another trying to find their supposedly reserved seats; a lone fireman strove valiantly to keep the aisles clear as the fire laws stipulated. It was a most chaotic and confusing scene.
First, a movie was shown while the organ played mournful jazz. About one o’clock the midnight revue went on. The curtain went up on the customary chorus ensemble singing the customary, “Hello, we’re glad to be here, we’re going to please you” opening song. This was followed by the usual song and dance team, a blues singer, a lady Charleston dancer, and two black faced comedians. Each would have his turn, then begin all over again, aided frequently by the energetic and noisy chorus, which somehow managed to appear upon the stage almost naked in the first scene, and keep getting more and more naked as the evening progressed.
Emma Lou had been to the Lafayette before with John and had been shocked by the scantily clad women and obscene skits. The only difference that she could see in this particular revue was that the performers were more bawdy and more boisterous. And she had never been in or seen such an audience. There was as much, if not more, activity in the orchestra and box seats than there was on the stage. It was hard to tell whether the cast was before or behind the proscenium arch. There seemed to be a veritable contest going on between the paid performers and their paying audience, and Emma Lou found the spontaneous monkey shines and utterances of those around her much more amusing than the stereotyped antics of the hired performers on the stage.
She was surprised to find that she was actually enjoying herself, yet she supposed that after the house-rent party she could stand anything. Imagine people opening their flats to the public and charging anyone who had the price to pay twenty-five cents to enter? Imagine people going to such bedlam Bacchanals?
A
