Mitch never got excited about having to get rid of two ounces of coke quick-like, but he didn’t ever say it wasn’t all right, either, because you do what you got to, and $15.00 maximum per nite wasn’t going to send anybody anywhere close to New Orleans for at least a year. And Sassafrass was right about L.A.: it wasn’t a place for free Africans to be being free in, especially with Mitch’s record, and the way he towered over every living thing in sight except for the buildings out by Century Boulevard, and of course, the L.A. County Jail. But something was not clicking, and Mitch decided to wait and see. As always, the Arkansas Spot was hopping as much as it could, with some gut-bucket jukebox spirit just crying how his woman done left him high and dry. Mitch met the rest of his band at the end of the bar, and Sassafrass sat in an old splintered chair, like the kind in Polish lunchrooms down by the warehouses. She was right at ease; red-checkered napkins were tucked under the ice container in the back of the place, and she was sitting nattily in a claret satin and velvet dress Mitch had traded a painting for. Sassafrass scavenged the bar looking for another past in the faces of the workers carrying on for Friday’s sake, and the regulars nobody could mess with. She felt the rancor of Cypress’ vendetta against the blues, and her own affinity for slow low-down tearin-ya-up singing, and guitars pulling through hairs on her stomach to hold onto her insides so she could swear she knew the pain, the truth of her existence. As ladies in skinny-heeled tipping shoes straddled in with a housewife’s “I’m-out-for-the-night” switch, and young working girls in all the latest, cheapest clothes, padded in makeup and bangles, sat swivel legged in chairs facing the bar where men—younger than the law allowed—tossed scant shots of whiskey down throats scratching in newly pressed collars, and old dudes with grease relentless under the nails and those heavy working-walking-carrying shoes leaned over each other, Sassafrass began a conversation with Mamie Smith . . .

. . . who had just come out of the bathroom, and was busy straightening the plumes of lime and lavender that grazed her heavily waxed coiffure. Her silken dress clung to her broad hips and full bosom like she was a hefty Cotton Club dancer . . . on her arms were aeons of pre-depression plastic bracelets, and she smelled of day-opened scotch and fresh perfume.