THE next time I visited Simple, I found him convalescent, slightly ashy and a bit thinner, sitting up in bed, but low in spirits. He was gazing sadly at the inscription on a comic book, “Lovingly yours, Joyce.”

“She has just been here,” he said, “and I feel like I am going to have a relapse.”

“If that’s the way visitors affect you, then I will depart.”

“Not all visitors,” said Simple, “just Joyce. I love that girl.”

“Then why does a visit from her get you down?”

“A woman brought me into this world,” said Simple, “and I do believe women will take me out. They is the fault of my being in this hospital with pneumonia because my doctor told me the mind is worse than my body and from the looks of my chest, I must of been worrying.”

“So you too have one of those fashionable psychosomatic illnesses,” I said.

“No, it’s Zarita and Isabel,” said Simple, “plus Joyce. That wife of mine called me up New Year’s Eve just when I was starting out to have some fun—long-distance, collect, from Baltimore—just to tell me that since another year was starting, she was tired of being tied to me and not being with me. She told me again either to come back to her or else get her a divorce. I said which would she rather have after all these years, me or the divorce.

“She said, ‘Divorce!’

“I said, ‘How much do a divorce cost nowadays?’

“She said, ‘Three Hundred Dollars.’

“That is what I am feeling bad about, buddy-o. If I had not paid Five Dollars to marry that woman in the past, I would not have to pay Three Hundred now to get loose.”

“Maybe it would be cheaper to go back to her.”

“My nerves is wrecked,” said Simple. “That woman is incontemptible. She has caused me mental anguish, also a headache. I will not go back. Besides, Joyce has been too good to me for me to cut out now. You see them flowers she brought to this hospital, also these two comic books and four packs of chewing gum. But Joyce is also a headache.”

“You are just weak from your recent illness,” I said.

“You mean Joyce is weak for me,” corrected Simple. “Sitting right here on this bed today, she told me she is not built of bricks. Joyce says she’s got a heart, also a soul, and is respectable. Joyce swears she is getting tired of me coming to her house so regular and everybody asking when is we gonna marry. She says I’ve been setting in her parlor too late for her respectability.

“I said, ‘One o’clock ain’t late.’

“She said, ‘No, but two and three o’clock is, and you sure can’t stay till four.’

“I said, ‘Baby, it ain’t what you do, it’s how you do it.’ But she disagreed.