Rodney was flipping the coin in his mind again now. He flipped it faster and faster. After a while it was spinning against Willie and the cigar-chewing bartender and Lynn and especially the Pratts. Finishing the beer, Rodney found that the coin had stopped spinning; and from where his mind hung on the bad side of it, somewhere close to the place where he kept his bigotry almost locked away, he could hear the Pratts battling back and forth for the right to tell the others about a famous movie star who sued her parents when she found out that she was a mulatto. He got to his feet and walked over to the stacks and stacks of records that lined the wall. Aimlessly going through them, he considered all the black faces on their covers and all the slick, praising language by white disc jockeys and white experts and white managers on their backs. Then he commenced to stare at the brunette who had agreed with him. She avoided his eyes. He stared at Lynn too; but she was looking at Charlie Pratt, very intentionally. Only once did she glance up at him and smiled in a way that said “bay-bee.” And then she looked away again.

Rodney leaned against the wall of records, put his hands in his pockets and wet his lips. Then he said: “Little Tommy Tucker was a bad motherfucker!”

They all looked up at him.

“What?” said Peggy Pratt, smiling.

He repeated it.

V

DRIVING HOME, Rodney went slower than required and obeyed traffic signals on very quiet, very empty streets. Lynn sat against the door, away from him. She had her legs crossed.

“You were pretty good tonight,” she said at last.

Rodney was looking at a traffic light changing back to red.

“You were the life of the party.”

Rodney inspected a white line of bird shit running down the top of the window, between him and the red light. It would have to come off in the morning.

“I knew you would let that color come through if you had enough beer,” Lynn said.

“Oh shut the hell up!” said Rodney. He was not mad. She had just interrupted his thinking. He was thinking of going over to buy some more beer for Willie and talk some more before the usual Saturday time. He was thinking about building up his collection of Ashy Williamson LP’s. He was thinking about driving Lynn directly home and not going up with her to make love to her in her bed, which was much wider than his own, no matter how much she apologized later and no matter how dark and safe and inviting her room would be.

A New Place