EARLY blue evening. The street lights had just come on, large watery moonstones up and down the curbs. April. The days were stretching leisurely. This particular evening had become too old to eat dinner and too young to do much of anything else. It was unseasonably warm. Tasting spring, Harlem relaxed. Windows, stoops, and streets full of people not doing anything much. In spite of his landlady’s request not to sit on the steps in front of her house, Simple was sitting there. Harlem has few porches. In his youth in Virginia, Simple had been accustomed to sitting on porches. His youth was some thirty-odd years gone, but the habit remained. The lights looked pretty in the smoke-blue evening of sudden spring. But did Simple see the lights? Who knows? He didn’t see me as I came down the street. His legs were stretched out over three steps and he leaned back staring at nothing.

“Good evening,” I said, “if you’re not too tired to open your mouth.”

“Tired, nothing. Man, I’m natural-born disgusted,” said Simple. “My divorce didn’t come through.”

“What?”

“That fool man that promised to marry my wife and pay for our divorce, too, did not pay her lawyer to clinch the proceedings,” said Simple, “and until he does, the judge will not hand down no decree. Divorces and money is all mixed up in Baltimore. In fact, I believe divorces costs more there than they do here in New York. The last time I asked about a divorce in Harlem, the man told me Three Hundred Dollars. My wife writ me that her present boy friend is paying Four Hundred for hers—and she ain’t got it yet—which is hindering me, because I am due to marry Joyce. If it had not been that I showed Joyce Isabel’s last letter, I do believe Joyce would have thought I am standing her up. But you know as nice as Joyce is to me, I would almost marry that girl without a divorce.”

“Joyce would hardly want to marry a man who is already married,” I said.

“No, but she wants me so bad that if I was to press her, she might even lend me the money to pay for the rest of my wife’s divorce. Joyce swore she would never outright pay for no other woman’s divorce, but a loan is a different thing.”

“Why don’t you accept the loan?”

“Because I do not want the shadow of nothing having to do with Isabel hanging over me and Joyce. I swore and be damned I wouldn’t pay for no divorce for Isabel. Neither will I let Joyce pay for it. If that man in Baltimore who wants to marry Isabel can’t even pay for a little old decree for her, he ain’t much good. And he is bugging me!”