He passed two boys with gray-black, ashy faces and running noses who laughed as they chased a little black girl up and down the steps of a tenement. “Little Tommy Tucker was a bad motherfucker,” one of the boys half sang, half spoke, and they all laughed. Rodney thought it obscene and a violation of a protective and sacred barrier between two distinctively different age groups. But after a few more steps he began to think that it was very clever. He stopped. He looked back. He began to memorize it. Then he began to walk back toward them, still at play on the steps, having already forgotten the inventiveness of a moment before. Rodney was about to call to them to repeat the whole verse when a robust and short-haired dark woman in a tight black dress that was open at the side came out of the tenement and down the stairs and began to undulate her way, sensually, toward him. The three children followed her, laughing as they each attempted to imitate her walk. Just when he was about to pass her, a light blue Ford pulled over to the curb next to her and a bald-headed white man leaned, questioningly, out of the driver’s window toward the big woman. She stopped, and looking the man directly in the eye with a hint of professional irritation on her round, hard face, asked, “How much?”

“Ten,” the man said.

“Hell no,” she said turning to go in a way that, while sharp and decisive, also suggested that there was a happy chance that, upon the occurrence of certain conditions, as yet unnamed, she might not go at all.

“Twelve,” said the man.

The woman looked at Rodney for a moment; then she looked the leaning man full in the face with fierce eyes. “Fuck you!” she said matter-of-factly.

“Well, damn if you’re worth more than that,” the man said, ignoring Rodney and the children.

“Get the hell on,” said the woman, and began to walk slowly and sensually in the direction in which the car was pointed.

“She ain’t got no drawers on,” exclaimed one of the children.

“Can you see her cunt?”

“Yeah” was the answer. They all ran after her and the car, which was now trailing her, leaving Rodney alone on that part of the hot sidewalk. But he was not minding the heat now, or the smells, or the lounging men, or even Willie’s condescension; he only minded that he had not thought to bring a notebook because he was having difficulty arranging all this in his head for memorization.