“Everything, Bunny,” answered the debonair Max. “That damn yallah gal o’ mine’s got all upstage and quit.”
“Say not so!” exclaimed the short black fellow. “Why I thought you and her were all forty.”
“Were, is right, kid. And after spending my dough, too! It sure makes me hot. Here I go and buy two covers at the Honky Tonk for tonight, thinkin’ surely she’d come and she starts a row and quits!”
“Shucks!” exploded Bunny, “I wouldn’t let that worry me none. I’d take another skirt. I wouldn’t let no dame queer my New Year’s.”
“So would I, Wise Guy, but all the dames I know are dated up. So here I am all dressed up and no place to go.”
“You got two reservations, aint you? Well, let’s you and me go in,” Bunny suggested. “We may be able to break in on some party.”
Max visibly brightened. “That’s a good idea,” he said. “You never can tell, we might run in on something good.”
Swinging their canes, the two joined the throng at the entrance of the Honky Tonk Club and descended to its smoky depths. They wended their way through the maze of tables in the wake of a dancing waiter and sat down close to the dance floor. After ordering ginger ale and plenty of ice, they reared back and looked over the crowd.
Max Disher and Bunny Brown had been pals ever since the war when they soldiered together in the old 15th regiment in France. Max was one of the Aframerican Fire Insurance Company’s crack agents, Bunny was a teller in the Douglass Bank and both bore the reputation of gay blades in black Harlem. The two had in common a weakness rather prevalent among Aframerican bucks: they preferred yellow women. Both swore there were three things essential to the happiness of a colored gentleman: yellow money, yellow women and yellow taxis. They had little difficulty in getting the first and none at all in getting the third but the yellow women they found flighty and fickle. It was so hard to hold them. They were so sought after that one almost required a million dollars to keep them out of the clutches of one’s rivals.
“No more yallah gals for me!” Max announced with finality, sipping his drink. “I’ll grab a black gal first.”
“Say not so!” exclaimed Bunny, strengthening his drink from his huge silver flask. “You aint thinkin’ o’ dealin’ in coal, are you?”
“Well,” argued his partner, “it might change my luck. You can trust a black gal; she’ll stick to you.”
“How do you know? You ain’t never had one. Ever’ gal I ever seen you with looked like an ofay.”
“Humph!” grunted Max. “My next one may be an ofay, too! They’re less trouble and don’t ask you to give ’em the moon.”
“I’m right with you, pardner,” Bunny agreed, “but I gotta have one with class. None o’ these Woolworth dames for me! Get you in a peck o’ trouble. … Fact is, Big Boy, ain’t none o’ these women no good. They all get old on the job.”
They drank in silence and eyed the motley crowd around them. There were blacks, browns, yellows, and whites chatting, flirting, drinking; rubbing shoulders in the democracy of night life. A fog of tobacco smoke wreathed their heads and the din from the industrious jazz band made all but the loudest shrieks inaudible. In and out among the tables danced the waiters, trays balanced aloft, while the patrons, arrayed in colored paper caps, beat time with the orchestra, threw streamers or grew maudlin on each other’s shoulders.
“Looky here! Lawdy Lawd!” exclaimed Bunny, pointing to the doorway. A party of white people had entered. They were all in evening dress and in their midst was a tall, slim, titian-haired girl who had seemingly stepped from heaven or the front cover of a magazine.
“My, my, my!” said Max, sitting up alertly.
The party consisted of two men and four women. They were escorted to a table next to the one occupied by the two colored dandies. Max and Bunny eyed them covertly. The tall girl was certainly a dream.
“Now that’s my speed,” whispered Bunny.
“Be yourself,” said Max. “You couldn’t touch her with a forty-foot pole.”
“Oh, I don’t know, Big Boy,” Bunny beamed self-confidently, “You never can tell! You never can tell!”
“Well, I can tell,” remarked Disher, “ ’cause she’s a cracker.”
“How you know that?”
“Man, I can tell a cracker a block away. I wasn’t born and raised in Atlanta, Georgia, for nothin’, you know. Just listen to her voice.”
Bunny listened. “I believe she is,” he agreed.
They kept eyeing the party to the exclusion of everything else. Max was especially fascinated. The girl was the prettiest creature he’d ever seen and he felt irresistibly drawn to her. Unconsciously he adjusted his necktie and passed his well-manicured hand over his rigidly straightened hair.
Suddenly one of the white men rose and came over to their table. They watched him suspiciously. Was he going to start something? Had he noticed that they were staring at the girl? They both stiffened at his approach.
“Say,” he greeted them, leaning over the table, “do you boys know where we can get some decent liquor around here? We’ve run out of stuff and the waiter says he can’t get any for us.”
“You can get some pretty good stuff right down the street,” Max informed him, somewhat relieved.
“They won’t sell none to him,” said Bunny. “They might think he was a Prohibition officer.”
“Could one of you fellows get me some?” asked the man.
“Sure,” said Max, heartily. What luck! Here was the very chance he’d been waiting for. These people might invite them over to their table. The man handed him a ten dollar bill and Max went out bareheaded to get the liquor. In ten minutes he was back. He handed the man the quart and the change. The man gave back the change and thanked him. There was
