“What’s yours?”
“Me? I’m Rufus Scott.”
He wondered what she was doing in this joint, in Harlem. She didn’t seem at all the type to be interested in jazz, still less did she seem to be in the habit of going to strange bars alone. She carried a light spring coat, her long hair was simply brushed back and held with some pins, she wore very little lipstick and no other make-up at all.
“Come on,” he said. “We’ll pile into a cab.”
“Are you sure it’s all right if I come?”
He sucked his teeth. “If it wasn’t all right, I wouldn’t ask you. If I say it’s all right, it’s all right.”
“Well,” she said with a short laugh, “all right, then.”
They moved with the crowd, which, with many interruptions, much talking and laughing and much erotic confusion, poured into the streets. It was three o’clock in the morning and gala people all around them were glittering and whistling and using up all the taxicabs. Others, considerably less gala — they were on the western edge of 125th Street — stood in knots along the street, switched or swaggered or dawdled by, with glances, sidelong or full face, which were more calculating than curious. The policemen strolled by; carefully, and in fact rather mysteriously conveying their awareness that these particular Negroes, though they were out so late, and mostly drunk, were not to be treated in the usual fashion; and neither were the white people with them. But Rufus suddenly realized that Leona would soon be the only white person left. This made him uneasy and his uneasiness made him angry. Leona spotted an empty cab and hailed it.
The taxi driver, who was white, seemed to have no hesitation in stopping for them, nor, once having stopped, did he seem to have any regrets.
“You going to work tomorrow?” he asked Leona. Now that they were alone together, he felt a little shy.
“No,” she said, “tomorrow’s Sunday.”
“That’s right.” He felt very pleased and free. He had planned to visit his family but he thought of what a ball it would be to spend the day in bed with Leona. He glanced over at her, noting that, though she was tiny, she seemed very well put together. He wondered what she was thinking. He offered her a cigarette putting his hand on hers briefly, and she refused it. “You don’t smoke?”
“Sometimes. When I drink.”
“Is that often?”
She laughed. “No. I don’t like to drink alone.”
“Well,” he said, “you ain’t going to be drinking alone for awhile.”
She said nothing but she seemed, in the darkness, to tense and blush. She looked out of the window on her side. “I’m glad I ain’t got to worry none about getting you home early tonight.”
“You ain’t got to worry about that, nohow. I’m a big girl.”
“Honey,” he said, “you ain’t no bigger than a minute.”
She sighed. “Sometimes a minute can be a mighty powerful thing.”
He decided against asking what she meant by this. He said, giving her a significant look, “That’s true,” but she did not seem to take his meaning.
They were on Riverside Drive and nearing their destination. To the left of them, pale, unlovely lights emphasized the blackness of the Jersey shore. He leaned back, leaning a little against Leona, watching the blackness and the lights roll by. Then the cab turned; he glimpsed, briefly, the distant bridge which glowed like something written in the sky. The cab slowed down, looking for the house number. A taxi ahead of them had just discharged a crowd of people and was disappearing down the block. “Here we are,” said Rufus; “Looks like a real fine party,” the taxi driver said, and winked. Rufus said nothing. He paid the man and they got out and walked into the lobby, which was large and hideous, with mirrors and chairs. The elevator had just started upward; they could hear the crowd.
“What were you doing in that club all by yourself, Leona?” he asked.
She looked at him, a little startled. Then, “I don’t know. I just wanted to see Harlem and so I went up there tonight to look around. And I just happened to pass that club and I heard the music and I went in and I stayed. I liked the music.” She gave him a mocking look. “Is that all right?”
He laughed and said nothing.
She turned from him as they heard the sound of the closing elevator door reverberate down the shaft. Then they heard the drone of the cables as the elevator began to descend. She watched the closed doors as though her life depended on it.
“This your first time in New York?”
Yes, it was, she told him, but she had been dreaming about it all her life — half-facing him again, with a little smile. There was something halting in her manner which he found very moving. She was like a wild animal who didn’t know whether to come to the outstretched hand or to flee and kept making startled little rushes, first in one direction and then in the other.
“I was born here,” he said, watching her.
“I know,” she said, “so it can’t seem as wonderful to you as it does to me.”
He laughed again. He remembered, suddenly, his days in boot camp in the South and felt again the shoe of a white officer against his mouth. He was in his white uniform, on the ground, against the red, dusty clay. Some of his colored buddies were holding him, were shouting in his ear, helping him to rise. The white officer, with a curse, had vanished, had gone forever beyond the reach of vengeance. His face was full of clay and tears and blood; he spat red blood into the red dust.
The elevator came and the doors opened. He took her arm as they entered and held it close against his chest. “I think you’re a real sweet girl.”
“You’re nice, too,” she said. In the closed, rising elevator her voice had a strange trembling in it and her body was also trembling — very faintly, as though it were being handled by the soft spring wind outside.
He tightened his pressure on her arm. “Didn’t they warn you down home about the darkies you’d find up North?”
She caught her breath. “They didn’t never worry me none. People’s just people as far as I’m concerned.”
And pussy’s just pussy as far as I’m concerned, he thought — but was grateful, just the same, for her tone. It gave him an instant to locate himself. For he, too, was trembling slightly.
“What made you come North?” he asked.
He wondered if he should proposition her or wait for her to proposition him. He couldn’t beg. But perhaps she could. The hairs of his groin began to itch slightly. The terrible muscle at the base of his belly began to grow hot and hard.
The elevator came to a halt, the doors opened, and they walked a long corridor toward a half-open door.
She said, “I guess I just couldn’t take it down there any more. I was married but then I broke up with my husband and they took away my kid — they wouldn’t even let me see him — and I got to thinking that rather than sit down there and go crazy, I’d try to make a new life for myself up here.”
Something touched his imagination for a moment, suggesting that Leona was a person and had her story and that all stories were trouble. But he shook the suggestion off. He wouldn’t be around long enough to be bugged by her story. He just wanted her for tonight.
He knocked on the door and walked in without waiting for an answer. Straight ahead of them, in the large living room which ended in open French doors and a balcony, more than a hundred people milled about, some in evening dress, some in slacks and sweaters. High above their heads hung an enormous silver ball which reflected unexpected parts of the room and managed its own unloving comment on the people in it. The room was so active with coming and going, so bright with jewelry and glasses and cigarettes, that the heavy ball seemed almost to be alive.