“The reason was that she was right. If I had argued with her, she would have won, because I do not have the patience to lie and then re-lie again. Lies show in my eyes, anyhow, so I just kept my face so close to her’n she could not see my eyes. Women do not use logic, they just use words. I didn’t let her talk. That time I did not even speak. I just bit her on the cheek, hugged her, run my hand down her back, and said, ‘Baby!’ Which were enough.

“She knowed I had been out with Della Mae Jones, but she did not care after that. She had sense enough to know it would do no good to care nohow. A man is not like a woman. A man can love two, three, four womens at once and still go to work. If a woman loves one man, she does not want him out of her sight. She will quit her job and stay home to be sure he comes from work on time. She will miss her lodge meeting to be certain he does not go nowhere. When a woman is a fool about a man, she is a fool. But no matter how much she loves you she will still argue. Argument is something a woman never gives up, no matter how much she loves you. She still wants to win. If you are in no mood to argue, don’t, daddy-o! Just don’t! But when you do, do not expect to win, not once in a wife-time. If you don’t give a wife the last word, she will take it anyhow. That I know! If Isabel says I deserted her in her divorce papers, let it be. Should I argue back, I might never get free. She put me out. Thank God I went!”

“Now you’re about to get tangled up again,” I said.

“I am—if the high cost of love don’t get me down. Things has changed since I was courting Isabel. Love has done gone way up. It costs me more to take Joyce out now than it does to buy a summer suit or a pair of winter shoes.”

“It’s all according to where you take her,” I said.

“Joyce won’t go nowhere but to the Shalimar, Frank’s, Mrs. Frazier’s. And if she eats a steak, I’m out of a week’s work! If she has a bottle of wine (and she won’t drink plain old sherry) I am shook. Joyce don’t drink nohow, but somebody told her wine goes with dinner when a gentleman takes a lady out to dine—so lately she must have wine—and it has to be some foreign kind like Beergindy or Sawturn, else Keyauntie.

“She says, ‘You never take me nowhere, so when you do, I want nothing but the best.’