“There! That’s our bust-up,” she said. “Me and you and your friend. Even if he’s a virgin he’s all right. I know you ain’t never going around with no saphead.”
“Give me some, too,” a boy of dull-gold complexion materialized by the side of Madame Laura and demanded a drink. He was about eleven years old.
Affectionately she put her arm around him and poured out a small glass of champagne. The frailness of the boy was pathetic; his eyes were sleepy-sad. He resembled a reed fading in a morass.
“Who is he?” Ray asked.
“He’s my son,” responded Madame Laura. “Clever kid, too. He loves books.”
“Ray will like him, then,” said Jake. “Books is his middle name.”
Ray suddenly felt a violent dislike for the atmosphere. At first he had liked the general friendliness and warmth and naturalness of it. All so different from what he had expected. But something about the presence of the little boy there and his being the woman’s son disgusted him. He could not analyse his aversion. It was just an instinctive, intolerant feeling that the boy did not belong to that environment and should not be there.
He went from Madame Laura and Jake over to the piano and conversed with the pianist. When he glanced again at the table he had left, Madame Laura had her arm around Jake’s neck and his eyes were strangely shining.
Madame Laura had set the pace. There were four other couples making love. At one table a big-built, very black man was amusing himself with two attractive girls, one brown-skinned and the other yellow. The girls’ complexion was heightened by High-Brown Talc powder and rouge. A bottle of Muscatel stood on the table. The man was well dressed in nigger-brown and he wore an expensive diamond ring on his little finger.
The stags were still playing cards, with girls hovering over them. The happy-faced black woman was doing the managing, as Madame Laura was otherwise engaged. The pianist began banging another blues.
Ray felt alone and a little sorry for himself. Now that he was there, he would like to be touched by the spirit of that atmosphere and, like Jake, fall naturally into its rhythm. He also envied Jake. Just for this night only he would like to be like him. …
They were dancing. The little yellow girl, her legs kicked out at oblique angles, appeared as if she were going to fall through the big-built black man.
We’ll all be merry when you taste a cherry,
And we’ll twine and twine like a fruitful vine.
In the middle of the floor, a young railroad porter had his hand flattened straight down the slim, cerise-chiffoned back of a brown girl. Her head was thrown back and her eyes held his gleaming eyes. Her lips were parted with pleasure and they stood and rocked in an ecstasy. Their feet were not moving. Only their bodies rocked, rocked to the “blues.” …
Ray remarked that Jake was not in the room, nor was Madame Laura in evidence. A girl came to him. “Why is you so all by you’self, baby? Don’t you wanta dance some? That there is some more temptation ‘blues.’ ”
Tickling, enticing syncopation. Ray felt that he ought to dance to it. But some strange thing seemed to hold him back from taking the girl in his arms.
“Will you drink something, instead?” he found a way out.
“Awwww-right,” disappointed, she drawled.
She beckoned to the happy-faced woman.
“Virginia Dare.”
“I’ll have some, too,” Ray said.
Another brown girl joined them.
“Buy mah pal a drink, too?” the first girl asked.
“Why, certainly,” he answered.
The woman brought two glasses of Virginia Dare and Ray ordered a third.
Such a striking exotic appearance the rouge gave these brown girls. Rouge that is so cheap in its general use had here an uncommon quality. Rare as the red flower of the hibiscus would be in a florist’s window on Fifth Avenue. Rouge on brown, a warm, insidious chestnut color. But so much more subtle than chestnut. The round face of the first girl, the carnal sympathy of her full, tinted mouth, touched Ray. But something was between them. …
The piano-player had wandered off into some dim, faraway, ancestral source of music. Far, far away from music-hall syncopation and jazz, he was lost in some sensual dream of his own. No tortures, banal shrieks and agonies. Tum-tum … tum-tum … tum-tum … tum-tum. … The notes were naked acute alert. Like black youth burning naked in the bush. Love in the deep heart of the jungle. … The sharp spring of a leopard from a leafy limb, the snarl of a jackal, green lizards in amorous play, the flight of a plumed bird, and the sudden laughter of mischievous monkeys in their green homes. Tum-tum … tum-tum … tum-tum … tum-tum. … Simple-clear and quivering. Like a primitive dance of war or of love … the marshaling of spears or the sacred frenzy of a phallic celebration.
Black lovers of life caught up in their own free native rhythm, threaded to a remote scarce-remembered past, celebrating the midnight hours in themselves, for themselves, of themselves, in a house in Fifteenth Street, Philadelphia. …
“Raided!” A voice screamed. Standing in the rear door, a policeman, white, in full uniform, smilingly contemplated the spectacle. There was a wild scramble for hats and wraps. The old-timers giggled, shrugged, and kept their seats. Madame Laura pushed aside the policeman.
“Keep you’ pants on, all of you and carry on with you’ fun. What’s matter? Scared of a uniform? Pat”—she turned to the policeman—“what you want to throw a scare in the company for? Come on here with you.”
The policeman, twirling his baton, marched to a table and sat down with Madame Laura.
“Geewizard!” Jake sat down, too. “Tell ’em next time not to ring the fire alarm so loud.”
“You said it, honey-stick. There are no cops in Philly going to mess with this girl. Ain’t it the truth, Pat?” Madame Laura twisted
