“Man, I came near getting my wires crossed this afternoon,” he said, “and all by accident. I told Joyce I would meet her in the park, so I was setting out there on a bench with my portable radio just bugging myself with Dizzy Gillespie, when who should come blaséing along but Zarita.”

“How did she look by daylight?” I asked.

“She looked fine from the bottom up, but beat from the top down,” said Simple.

“You kept your eyes down, I presume.”

“No, I didn’t neither,” said Simple. “I looked Zarita dead in the eye and I said, ‘Woman, what you doing out here in the broad-open daytime with your head looking like Zip?’

“Zarita said, ‘Don’t look at my hair, Jess, please. I ain’t been to the beauty shop this week.’

“‘Then you ought to go,’ I said. ‘Besides, how are you going to get your rest staying up all night? Last thing I saw last night was you—and now you’re out here in the park and it ain’t hardly noon.’

“‘I could ask you the same thing,’ said Zarita, ‘but I ain’t that concerned about your business. And I don’t have to answer your questions.’

“‘You didn’t mind answering them last night when I was buying you all them drinks,’ I said.

“‘To be a gentleman,’ said Zarita, ‘you speaks too often about the money you spend. I’ll bet you if your girl friend ever saw you setting up in the bar having a ball every A.M. she would lay you low.’

“‘Joyce knows all about me,’ I said, ‘and I would thank you to keep her name out of this. Joyce is a lady.’

“‘What do you think I am?’ yells Zarita.

“‘You ain’t even an imitation,’ I said, ‘coming out in the street with your head looking like a hurrah’s nest!’”

“Why were you so hard on Zarita?” I asked. “I thought she was a friend of yours.”

“She ain’t nothing but a night-time friend,” said Simple, “and I do not like to see her in the day. You would not like to see her neither if you had seen her this noon. I often wonders what makes some women look so bad early in the day after they have looked so sweet at night. Can you tell me?”

“You can answer that yourself.”

“Well, for one thing, a woman is half make-up,” said Simple, “and the other half is clothes. They got no business coming out in the morning before they fix themselves up. I said, ‘Zarita, go on home and put on some face, also oil your meriney.’