“As much as you hang out on this corner,” I said, “I don’t see when she has much of a chance.”

“You know Joyce is a working woman,” said Simple, “also decent. She won’t come to see me, so I goes to see her early. I already paid my nightly call.”

“I understand that you work also and it’s midnight now. When do you sleep?”

“In between times,” Simple answered, lighting a butt and taking a long draw. “Sleep don’t worry me. I just hate to go back to my little old furnished room alone. How about you? What’re you doing up so late?”

“Observing life for literary purposes. Gathering material, contemplating how people play so desperately when the stakes are so little.”

“What do you mean by all that language?” asked Simple.

“I mean there are very few people of substance out late at night—mostly hustlers. And all the hustlers around here hustle for such small change.”

“They will not hustle off of me,” said Simple. “No, sir! Somebody is always trying to take disadvantage of me. The other night I went to a poker game and lost Twelve Bucks. They was playing partners, dealing seconds, stripping the deck and palming, so all I could do was lose. I could not win—so I prefer to drink it up.”

“At least you’ll have it in you,” I said. “But why do you imbibe practically every night?”

“Because I like it. I also drink because I don’t have anything better to do.”

“Why don’t you read a book,” I asked, “go to a show or a dance?”

“I do not read a book because I don’t understand books, daddy-o. I do not go to the show because you see nothing but white folks on the screen. And I do not go to a dance because if I do, I get in trouble with Joyce, who is one girl friend I respect.”

“Trouble with Joyce?”

“Yes,” said Simple, leaning on the mailbox so no one could mail a letter. “Joyce thinks every time I put my arms around a woman to dance with her, I am hugging the woman! Now, how can you dance with a woman without hugging her? I see Joyce enough as it is. I drink because I am lonesome.”

“Lonesome? How can you be lonesome when you’ve got plenty of friends, also girl friends?”

“I’m lonesome inside myself.”

“How do you explain that?”

“I do not know,” said Simple, “but that is why I drink. I don’t do nobody no harm, do I? You don’t see me out here hustling off nobody, do you? I am not mugging and cheating and robbing, am I?”

“You’re not.”

“So I don’t see why I shouldn’t take a beer now and then.”

“When did you say?”

“Now,” said Simple.

“You said ‘now and then,’ which is putting it mildly.”