The old bistro shook with everybody’s laughter.
“Which one a them was it?” demanded Malty.
“That saucy-lipped, shakem-shimmying sweet mam‑ma.”
“The dawggonest, hardest, and dearest piece a brownness in this bum hussy,” said Bugsy.
“Now Ise got mah man, we’ll play ‘Carolina’ for yo-all,” Banjo announced.
“I took her on a jig and she jigged more than me. …”
Lustily Goosey fluted it and the boys charged mightily into the chorus.
“Stay, Carolina, stay. …”
The Britishers demanded champagne for the boys. The bistro-keeper had only vins mousseux, Clairette, and Royal Provence. They made her send her husband out for champagne. He returned with four bottles of white-label Mercier.
“That’s better,” said the taller white. “I hate the vile taste of those sickly-sweetish mousseux wines.”
Between intervals of champagne-swilling the boys played and danced. “Carolina,” “Mammy-Daddy,” “That’s My Baby,” “Shake That Thing,” “The Garvey Blues,” and all the “blues” that Banjo’s memory could rake up.
When the Britishers left the bistro there was still champagne in the bottles, and by the time the boys were finished, they were all posing in attitudes of soft ecstasy.
In the Bum Square, Latnah appeared and hung on to Banjo. The group began to break up, every man to his own dream! Taloufa was all in a haze of intoxication, but he remembered his rendezvous with the girl at the Antilles bar. Latnah and Banjo went along with him, but when they got there the Antilles was closed.
Returning to the Bum Square, they found Malty, Bugsy, and Ginger, undecided about their aims, swaying softly in their tracks.
“Let’s all have a chaser of some’n’,” suggested Banjo.
“No, no,” protested Latnah. “It too late and you-all saoul.”
“Shut up,” said Banjo. “This is a man’s show.”
They walked a little along the quay and into a café. And there was Taloufa’s girl disdainfully drinking beer with a white corporal, who seemed broke and quite fed up with the business of life, because a common soldier could not enjoy its pleasures when he was far away from pay day.
The girl brightened up with a smile and brusquely left the soldier to take charge of Taloufa, whose legs were like reeds under him. She had been much put out that he had not returned to the Antilles. She had even changed for the occasion and was wearing a wine-colored frock, all soft and gleaming. Her crinkly hair was done up in the shape of a bowl, and in her buxom beauty and the magnetic aura of fascination around her she looked like some perfect marvel of mating between amber-skinned Egypt and black Sudan.
Malty took Taloufa’s guitar. “I wanta play some moh,” he droned in a singsong. “I ain’t noways sleepy.”
The girl went off with Taloufa.
Outside, Latnah said to Banjo: “She no good girl for your friend. I know her. She very wicked.”
“Oh … she can’t kill him,” he replied. “Let’s allez to turn the spread back.”
Malty had reached that delightful attitude of inebriation when a man feels like staying the night through, tippling and fooling with boon companions. Bugsy, who had contrived to pass many of his glasses over to the other boys, was quite aware of what was happening, but Ginger was all enveloped in a brown fog.
“Let’s carry on, fellahs,” said Malty, “till the stars them fade out.”
He had some money and they went into a little open-all-night café. Malty strummed softly on the guitar and hummed snatches of West Indian “shay-shay” and “jamma.”
“When you feel a funny feel,
When you feel a funny feel,
When you feel a funny feel,
Get in the middle of the wheel. …”
“The daughter of Cordelia is going round the town—
Sailor men in George’s Lane after the sun gone down,
Going round, going round Cordelia Brown. …”
“I love her oh, oh, oh. …
I love her so, so, so. …
I love the little-brown soul of her,
I love the classy-town stroll of her.
And every move she makes is like a picture to me,
I love her to mah haht and I love her on mah knee.”
They had finished four bottles of white wine tempered with lemonade when Taloufa came rushing in in shirt sleeves, his shirttail flying.
“She gypped me! She gypped me!” he cried. “Took every cent I had and beat it.”
“All you’ money? Banjo said you had about three thousand francs!” cried Malty.
“How you mean rob you?” from Bugsy.
“Rob you—rob you …” Ginger singsonged.
All three of them spoke together.
“Cleaned you outa all that money?” Malty questioned.
Taloufa explained that he had been long-headed enough to leave two thousand five hundred francs at his hotel, but the girl had got away with all he had—over three hundred francs. Bugsy, scornful of his incompetence, interrupted him while he was talking:
“Git you’ shirt in you’ pants, mon, git it in. You ain’t in the African jungle with the monkeys in the trees now. Youse on the sidewalk of the white man’s big city. Git it in, I say.”
Taloufa was too agitated to pay any attention. Ginger reached over and arranged his clothes for him.
“I was so boozy and all in I fell asleep,” Taloufa said, “and when I woke up she was gone. I thought of my pocketbook right away, and looked in my coat pocket, but every nickel was clean gone.”
“So you done got rooked foh nothing at all!” exclaimed Bugsy. “My Gawd! The baboons them in the bush where you come from has got moh sense than you. And what youse gwine do about it?”
“I don’t know,” replied Taloufa.
“Don’t know?” repeated Bugsy. “Why, lock her up, man! Lock her up! You ain’t gwine a let that black slut pass all that buck to her white p.i., when we fellahs am hungry on the beach. Lock her up, I say.”
Taloufa hesitated about the police. Malty was indifferent, but Ginger was flatly for letting the matter rest.
“You shoulda leave the money with us. Now she done had it I wouldn’t mess with no police. Just as cheap be magnamisuch.”
“Crap on that magnamisuch!” retorted Bugsy. “ ’Causen you done make the same fool
