“We did. Joyce and I did. And it feels like something I never done before.”

“But I thought you were going to have a church wedding?”

“We were. But the feeling just overcome us early. So we went down to City Hall and rushed the season. We can get married again in a church any time we want to, when we get the dough.”

“But what about the engraved invitations? What about the bridal gown she’s having made? What about the relatives coming from down South for the ceremony? And what about the cake?”

“Man, that is where I was going this morning, to Cushman’s to buy a cake when that big old fat landlady stopped me. Old landlady was so surprised she invited me right back in the house to call Joyce to come down and have hot cakes with her. She said, ‘I’ll make you your first cakes.’

“So the landlady fixed our wedding breakfast. It were fine. But she asked to see my license first just to be sure I were not there under false pretenses. Then she said it was O.K. that I had stayed upstairs last night.”

“Well, friend, I still want to know, what about my dark-blue suit I was buying especially for the wedding, since you said I was going to be your best man?”

“You can wear it to our house to dinner. The invitations, the relatives, the cake, your suit, Joyce with a veil on—I asked her this morning, ‘Baby, will you miss all them things? Are you mad or glad?’

“Joyce says, ‘Glad, Jess, glad.’

“What happened was I took my first week’s salary that I received back on the job and bought the license. I were not taking no chances of being laid off again before the wedding happened. Only thing is, buddy, I did not know where to find you yesterday morning to stand up with me, it being Saturday. We just picked out a couple of strangers who was down at City Hall getting married, too. They was our best people. And we was theirs. They were white. But we did not care, and they did not care. They stood up with us and we stood up with them. That white man were my best man, and I was his.

“We was all so happy when it was over that that white couple hauled off and kissed my bride, and I hauled off and kissed his. I did not think anything like that would ever happen—kissing white folks, and they kissing me. But it did—in New York—which is why I like this town where everybody is free, white, and twenty-one, including me.”

“What about the wedding rings?”

“Me and Joyce is going to pick out the rings Monday.”

“What about F. D. and Gloria, who were going to get married with you?”