I went over to Paul’s place and knocked on the door, and Freddie, Paul’s brother, opened it. Soon as he saw it was me he got into his Muhammad Ali stance and went into a little jive shuffle. I dug it. Freddie was a nice kid. I told him there was a roach near his foot and he looked down and I gave him a little uppercut. That ticked him off because he was always falling for something like that.

“Mary-Ann home?”

“Yeah,” he said—he was still pouting—“but she’s sleeping.”

“Your mama home?”

“No, just me and Mary-Ann,” he said, “and I wouldn’t be here if I had a quarter!”

I gave him a quarter, and he split. Mary-Ann usually slept over at Tyrone’s place. When she did sleep at home, it would be when Paul wasn’t home and she’d sleep in his bed. I went into Paul’s room, and she was laying there with the covers up around her head.

I got on the bed and started blowing in her ear.

First she pulled the cover up around her ear, but I just pulled it away and started blowing in her ear again. Then she started murmuring something in her sleep. I did that for another minute or so, and it still didn’t seem that she was going to wake up, so finally I shook her by the shoulder. If she didn’t move around in her sleep, I would have thought she was dead because she didn’t wake up until I just about shook her head off.

“What you doing here?” she asked. Her eyes were only half opened, and she had her head tilted back so she could see through the slits.

“I got an idea,” I said.

“What kind of idea?”

“I want you to meet Cal.”

“Who’s Cal?” she asked. “Ain’t he that wino you were talking about?”

“He’s okay,” I said. “I really dig the guy, and I want you to meet him.”

“Why?” She opened her eyes full for the first time and looked at me.

“You know you got some pretty eyes, girl,” I said.

“Yeah? What else?”

“You mean about Cal?”

“No, I mean about my pretty eyes,” she said. Then she pulled the sheet down her arm. “How about this dynamite shoulder?”

“Come on, be serious,” I said.

“When we going to meet him?” she asked. She slipped out of bed, and she had on a brown slip with lace on the bottom that lay against her thigh and sent goose pimples up my back. She stretched and then grabbed a blouse from the drawer as I tried to drag my mind back to what I had been thinking about.

“He’s probably over at the center now,” I said. “We could go over there and you can meet him.”

“You still didn’t tell me why you want me to meet him,” she said.

“I just do,” I said, “that’s all.”

“Do I have to meet your mother, too?” she asked. She was sitting on the edge of the bed, putting on some little half socks.