“I see you stayed,” I said. “Yet ever so often you speak of the South with longing. You’re like those foreign people you spoke of—who come to America, but still remember home. You’re a kind of displaced person yourself.”

“I’d be a displeased person if I had to live down South again,” said Simple. “Harlem has got everything I want from A to Z Here, like the song says, ‘I have found my true love.’ Them Bal timore womens was just preliminaries, my A-B-C’s.”

“You’ve certainly told me plenty about the A-B-C’s of your love life in Baltimore,” I said, “but not too much about your X-Y-Z’s in Harlem.”

“J is as far as I go nowadays,” said Simple. “I stops with Joyce. I can’t spell with letters no further down in the alphabet than A-B-C-D-E-F-G-H-I-J-O-Y-C-E.”

“Zarita begins with a Z.”

“Hers is one name I will never write on no paper. Yet and still, I likes Zarita. When you are happy, she is happy. Zarita likes to be happy with people.”

“That’s why they call women like her playgirls,” I said.

“I reckon it is,” said Simple. “And she can be a right good plaything. But don’t get me wrong, bud, I don’t love Zarita. She is always broke. And when I am hang-overed, Zarita is hang-overed. Zarita ain’t good for but one thing, to have fun with. Cherie in Baltimore was like that, too, and being young, I made the mistake of loving her. Never no more! That is not really love.”

“Just what do you call love, I’d like to know?”

“Love is—when you are broke and hungry, she says, ‘I don’t mind being hungry either.’ When you are hang-overed, she says, ‘I will put a cold towel on your head.’ When you are happy, she will say, ‘You make me happy, too.’ Instead of, ‘Why don’t you get out of here and earn me some money?’ Or, ‘How come you didn’t come home sober?’ Or, ‘I can’t see nothing to be so happy about when I ain’t got a rag to put on my back?’ Do you see what I mean by love?”

“Long-suffering,” I said.

“Exactly,” said Simple. “Some women pretends they like to suffer, but when a man is really suffering, they ain’t got no sympathy for him. Cherie runs. Isabel raised a flat-iron, even Joyce just turns cool. Don’t womens know a man’s got feelings, too, as well as they have? When you’re broke you need company. When you got a hang-over, you need sympathy. And when you’re happy, you need somebody to be happy along with you.”

“You want an angel,” I said, “not a woman.”