One night in Philadelphia Jake breezed into the waiters’ quarters in Market Street, looking for Ray. It was late. Ray was in bed. Jake pulled him up.

“Come on outa that, you slacker. Let’s go over to North Philly.”

“What for?”

“A li’l fun. I knows a swell outfit I wanta show you.”

“Anything new?”

“Don’t know about anything new, chappie, but I know there’s something good right there in Fifteenth Street.”

“Oh, I know all about that. I don’t want to go.”

“Come on. Don’t be so particular about you’ person. You gotta go with me.”

“I have a girl in New York.”

“Tha’s awright. This is Philly.”

“I tell you, Jake, there’s no fun in those kinds for me. They’ll bore me just like that night in Baltimore.”

“Oh, these here am different chippies, I tell you. Come on, le’s spend the night away from this damn dump. Wese laying ovah all day tomorrow.”

“And some of them will say such rotten things. Pretty enough, all right, but their mouths are loaded with filth, and that’s what gets me.”

“Them’s different ovah there, chappie. I’ll kiss the Bible on it. Come on, now. It’s no fun me going alone.”

They went to a house in Fifteenth Street. As they entered Jake was greeted by a mulatto woman in the full vigor of middle life.

“Why, you heartbreaker! It’s ages and ages since I saw you. You and me sure going to have a bust-up tonight.”

Jake grinned, prancing a little, as if he were going to do the old cakewalk.

“Here, Laura, this is mah friend,” he introduced Ray casually.

“Bring him over here and sit down,” Madame Laura commanded.

She was a big-boned woman, but very agile. A long, irregular, rich-brown face, roving black eyes, deep-set, and shiny black hair heaped upon her head. She wore black velvet, a square-cut blouse low down on her breasts, and a string of large coral beads. The young girls of that house envied her finely-preserved form and her carriage and wondered if they would be anything like that when they reached her age.

The interior of this house gave Ray a shock. It looked so much like a comfortable boardinghouse where everybody was cheerful and nice coquettish girls in colorful frocks were doing the waiting.⁠ ⁠… There were a few flirting couples, two groups of men playing cards, and girls hovering around. An attractive black woman was serving sandwiches, gin and bottled beer. At the piano, a slim yellow youth was playing a “blues.”⁠ ⁠… A pleasant house party, similar to any other among colored people of that class in Baltimore, New Orleans, Charleston, Richmond, or even Washington, DC. Different, naturally, from New York, which molds all peoples into a hectic rhythm of its own. Yet even New York, passing its strange thousands through its great metropolitan mill, cannot rob Negroes of their native color and laughter.

“Mah friend’s just keeping me company,” Jake said to the woman. “He ain’t regular⁠—you get me? And I want him treated right.”

“He’ll be treated better here than he would in church.” She laughed and touched Ray’s calf with the point of her slipper.

“What kind o’ bust-up youse gwine to have with me?” demanded Jake.

“I’ll show you just what I’m going to do with you for forgetting me so long.”

She got up and went into an adjoining room. When she returned an attractively made-up brown girl followed her carrying a tray with glasses and a bottle of champagne.⁠ ⁠… The cork hit the ceiling, bang! And deftly the woman herself poured the foaming liquor without a wasted drop.

“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 the policeman’s ear and bridled.

“I know it’s the Bible trute,” the happy-faced black lady chanted in a sugary voice, setting a bottle of champagne and glasses upon the table and seating herself familiarly beside the policeman.

The champagne foamed in the four glasses.

“Whar’s mah li’l chappie?” Jake asked.

“Gone, maybe. Don’t worry,” said Madame Laura. “Drink!”

Four brown hands and one white. Chink!

“Here’s to you, Pat,” cried Madame Laura. “There’s Irish in me from the male line.” She toasted:

“Flixy, flaxy, fleasy,
Make it good and easy,
Flix for start and flax for snappy,
Niggers and Irish will always be happy.”

The policeman swallowed his champagne at a gulp and got up. “Gotta go now. Time for duty.”

“You treat him nice. Is it for love or protection?” asked Jake.

“He’s loving her”⁠—Madame Laura indicated the now coy lady who helped her manage⁠—“but he’s protecting me. It’s a long time since I ain’t got no loving inclination for any skin but chocolate. Get me?”

When Jake returned to the quarters he found Ray sleeping quietly. He did not disturb him. The next morning they walked together to the yards.

“Did the policeman scare you, too, last night?” asked Jake.

“What policeman?”

“Oh, didn’t you see him? There was a policeman theah and somebody hollered ‘Raid!’ scaring everybody. I thought you’d done tuk you’self away from there in quick time becasn a that.”

“No, I left before that, I guess. Didn’t even smell one walking all the way to the quarters in Market Street.”

“Why’d you beat it? One o’ the li’l chippies had a crush on you. Oh, boy! and she was some piece to look at.”

“I know it. She was kind of nice. But she had some nasty perfume on her that turned mah stomach.”

“Youse awful queer, chappie,” Jake commented.

“Why, don’t you ever feel those sensations that just turn you back in on yourself and make you isolated and helpless?”

“Wha’d y’u mean?”

“I mean if sometimes you don’t feel as I felt last night?”

“Lawdy no. Young and pretty is all I feel.”

They stopped in a saloon. Jake had a small whisky and Ray an eggnog.

“But Madame Laura isn’t young,” resumed Ray.

“Ain’t she?” Jake showed his teeth. “I’d back her against some of the youngest. She’s a wonder, chappie. Her blood’s like good liquor. She gave me a present, too. Looka here.” Jake took from his pocket a lovely slate-colored necktie sprinkled with red dots. Ray felt the fineness of it.

“Ef I had the sweetman disinclination I wouldn’t have to work, chappie,” Jake rocked proudly in his walk. “But tha’s the life of a peewee cutter, says I. Kain’t see it for mine.”

“She was certainly nice to you last night. And the girls were nice, too. It was just like a jolly parlor social.”

“Oh, sure! Them gals not all in the straight business, you know. Some o’ them works and just go there for a good time, a li’l extra stuff.⁠ ⁠… It ain’t like that nonetall ovah in Europe, chappie. They wouldn’t ’a’ treated you so nice. Them places I sampled ovah there was all straight raw business and no camoflage.”

“Did you prefer them?”

“Hell, no! I prefer the niggers’ way every time. They does it better.⁠ ⁠…”

“Wish I could feel the difference as you do, Jakie. I lump all those ladies together, without difference of race.”

“Youse crazy, chappie. You ain’t got no experience about it. There’s all kinds a difference in that theah life. Sometimes it’s the people make the difference and sometimes it’s the place. And as foh them sweet marchants, there’s as much difference between them as you find in any other class a people. There is them slap-up private-apartmant ones, and there is them of the dickty buffet flats; then the low-down speakeasy customers; the cabaret babies, the family-entrance clients, and the street fliers.”

They stopped on a boardwalk. The dining-car stood before them, resting on one of the hundred tracks of the great Philadelphia yards.

“I got a free permit to a nifty apartmant in New York, chappie, and the next Saturday night we lay over together in the big city Ise gwine to show you some real queens. It’s like everything else in life. Depends on you’ luck.”

“And you are one lucky dog,” Ray laughed.

Jake grinned: “I’d tell you about a li’l piece o’ sweetness I picked up in a cabaret the first day I landed from ovah the other side. But it’s too late now. We gotta start work.”

“Next time, then,” said Ray.

Jake swung himself up by the rear platform and entered the kitchen. Ray passed round by the other side into the dining-room.