“Is she the goods?”
“She’s a wang, boh. Queen o’ Philly, I tell you. And foh me, everything with her is F.O.C. But I don’t want that yaller piece o’ business come nosing after me here in Harlem.”
“She ain’t got to find you, boh. Jest throws her a bad lead.”
“Tha’s the stuff to give ’m. Ain’t you a buddy with a haid on, though?”
“ ’Deed I is. And all you niggers knows it who done frequent mah place.”
And so Jake, in a prankish mood, replied to Madame Laura on a picture postcard saying he would be well and up soon and be back on the road and on the job again, and he gave Congo Rose’s address.
Madame Laura made her expected trip to New York, traveling “Chair,” as was her custom when she traveled. She wore a mauve dress, vermilion-shot at the throat, and short enough to show the curved plumpness of her legs encased in fine unrumpled rose-tinted stockings. Her modish overcoat was lilac-gray lined with green and a large marine-blue rosette was bunched at the side of her neat gray hat.
In the Fifth Avenue shops she was waited upon as if she were a dark foreign lady of title visiting New York. In the afternoon she took a taxicab to Harlem.
Now all the fashionable people who called at Rose’s house were generally her friends. And so Rose always went herself to let them in. She could look out from her window, one flight up, and ho-ho down to them.
When Madame Laura rang the bell, Rose popped her head out. Nobody I know, she thought, but the attractive woman in expensive clothes piqued her curiosity. Hastily she dabbed her face with powder pad, patted her hair into shape, and descended.
“Is Mr. Jacob Brown living here?” Madame Laura asked.
“Well, he was—I mean—” This luxurious woman demanding Jake tantalized Rose. She still referred to him as her man since his disappearance. No reports of his living with another woman having come to her, she had told her friends that Jake’s mother had come between them.
“He always had a little some’n’ of a mamma’s boy about him, you know.”
Poor Jake. Since he left home, his mother had become for him a loving memory only. When you saw him, talked to him, he stood forth as one of those unique types of humanity who lived alone and were never lonely. You would hardly wonder who were his father and mother and what they were like. He, in his frame and atmosphere, was the Alpha and Omega himself.
“I mean—Can you tell me what you want?” asked Rose.
“Must I? I didn’t know he—Why, he wrote to me. Said he was ill. And sent his friend to tell me he was ill. Can’t I see him?”
“Did he write to you from this here address?”
“Why, certainly. I have his card here.” Madame Laura was fumbling in her handbag.
A triumphant smile stole into Rose’s face. Jake had no real home and had to use her address.
“Is you his sister or what?”
“I’m a friend,” Madame Laura said, sharply.
“Well, he’s got a nearve.” Rose jerked herself angrily. “He’s mah man.”
“I didn’t come all the way here to hear that,” said Madame Laura. “I thought he was sick and wanting attention.”
“Ain’t I good enough to give him all the attention required without another woman come chasing after him?”
“Disgusting!” cried Madame Laura. “I would think this was a spohting house.”
“Gwan with you before I spit in you’ eye,” cried Rose. “You look like some’n just outa one you’self.”
“You’re no lady,” retorted Madame Laura, and she hurried down the steps.
Rose amplified the story exceedingly in telling it to her friends. “I slapped her face for insulting me,” she said.
Billy Biasse heard of it from the boy dancer of the Congo. When Billy went again to see Jake, one of the patrons of his gaming joint went with him. It was that yellow youth, the same one that had first invited Zeddy over to Gin-head Susy’s place. He was a prince of all the day joints and night holes of the Belt. All the shark players of Dixie Red’s poolroom were proud of losing a game to him, and at the Congo the waiters danced around to catch his orders. For Yaller Prince, so they affectionately called him, was living easy and sweet. Three girls, they said, were engaged in the business of keeping him princely—one chocolate-to-the-bone, one teasing-brown, and one yellow. He was always well dressed in a fine nigger-brown or bottle-green suit, excessively creased, and spats. Also he was happy-going and very generous. But there was something slimy about him.
Yaller Prince had always admired Jake, in the way a common-bred admires a thoroughbred, and hearing from Billy that he was ill, he had brought him fruit, cake, and ice cream and six packets of Camels. Yaller Prince was more intimate with Jake’s world than Billy, who swerved off at a different angle and was always absorbed in the games and winnings of men.
Jake and Yaller had many loose threads to pick up again and follow for a while. Were the gin parties going on still at Susy’s? What had become of Miss Curdy? Yaller didn’t know. He had dropped Myrtle Avenue before Zeddy did.
“Susy was free with the gin all right, but, gee whizzard! She was sure black and ugly, buddy,” remarked Yaller.
“You said it, boh,” agreed Jake. “They was some pair all right, them two womens. Black and ugly is exactly Susy, and that there other Curdy creachur all streaky yaller and ugly. I couldn’t love them theah kind.”
Yaller uttered a little goat laugh. “I kain’t stand them ugly grannies, either. But sometimes they does pay high, buddy, and when the paying is good, I can always transfer mah mind.”
“I couldn’t foh no price, boh,” said Jake. “Gimme a nice sweet-skin brown. I ain’t got no time foh none o’ you’ ugly hard-hided dames.”
Jake asked for Strawberry Lips. He was living in Harlem again and working longshore. Up in Yonkers
