“I thought you told me the man is a widower who owns two houses and is a very solid citizen.”

“That’s the jive Isabel wrote. But Isabel might just be trying to shame me by comparison, because I never owned nothing. All I do know is, I wish the man would hurry up and pay that lawyer so me and Joyce can complete our arrangements. Isabel had no business getting my expectations up like this.

“‘I have got all my trousseau clothes,’ Isabel wrote me, ‘and everything but the decree’—which is where I reckon the man’s money went. Isabel done made him buy her a whole lot of clothes. Then she writ on, ‘If you was any kind of a husband, Jess Semple, you would help me to get this decree. You ought to want a divorce as much as I do. The least you could do is to assist my husband-to-be pay for your wife-that-was to get rid of you.’”

“What did you answer to that?”

“Nothing,” said Simple. “The only answer would be money—and money I do not have. They say silence is golden—which is all the gold she can get out of me. Are you walking toward the corner?”

“Yes.”

“I will keep you company as far as the bar. Maybe a little further. Maybe I will take a walk, too.”

He rose, sighed, stretched, and, as we filed through the crowded block, for no good reason whatsoever started singing:

Two things, Miss Martin,

I cannot stand,

A bow-legged woman

And a cock-eyed man.

“Kindly lower your voice,” I requested.

Two things, Miss Martin,

I adore,

One is some loving—

And the other is

Some more!

“Cease your rowdyism,” I said. “People will conclude you’re drunk.”

Two things, Miss Martin,

That bug a man …

Cars sped by. The city hummed like a mechanical beehive. Beneath the street lights among the crowded stoops, the broken end of the song got lost in the early blue. With his mouth open Simple stopped indecisively at the corner to look slowly up and down the street.

“Which way are you going?” I asked.

“Come with me,” said Simple, “and I will show you where I am going—to Joyce’s.”

“There is no point in my going with you to see Joyce. She’s not my girl.”

“You can keep the ball rolling,” said Simple. “With me, Joyce is kind of silent these days. But if you are there, she will act like we got company—then I can talk, too. Otherwise, she will just um-hum when I say something and let it go at that. There is nothing worse than a woman that will not talk. You get so used to women rattling away that when they keep quiet you are scared they will explode. Are you coming with me or not?”