(DOAKER enters from his room.)

Hey, Doaker, you remember L. D. Jackson?

DOAKER: That’s Lymon’s daddy. That was one bad-luck nigger.

BOY WILLIE: Look like you ready to railroad some.

DOAKER: Yeah, I got to make that run.

(LYMON enters from the stairs. He is dressed in his new suit and shoes, to which he has added a cheap straw hat.)

LYMON: How I look?

WINING BOY: You look like a million dollars. Don’t he look good, Doaker? Come on, let’s play some cards. You wanna play some cards?

BOY WILLIE: We ain’t gonna play no cards with you. Me and Lymon gonna find some women. Hey, Lymon, don’t play no cards with Wining Boy. He’ll take all your money.

WINING BOY: (To LYMON.) You got a magic suit there. You can get you a woman easy with that suit . . . but you got to know the magic words. You know the magic words to get you a woman?

LYMON: I just talk to them to see if I like them and they like me.

WINING BOY: You just walk right up to them and say, “If you got the harbor I got the ship.” If that don’t work ask them if you can put them in your pocket. The first thing they gonna say is, “It’s too small.” That’s when you look them dead in the eye and say, “Baby, ain’t nothing small about me.” If that don’t work then you move on to another one. Am I telling him right, Doaker?

DOAKER: That man don’t need you to tell him nothing about no women. These women these days ain’t gonna fall for that kind of stuff. You got to buy them a present. That’s what they looking for these days.

BOY WILLIE: Come on, I’m ready. You ready, Lymon? Come on, let’s go find some women.

WINING BOY: Here, let me walk out with you. I wanna see the women fall out their window when they see Lymon.

(They all exit and the lights go down on the scene.)

SCENE 2

(The lights come up on the kitchen. It is late evening of the same day. BERNIECE has set a tub for her bath in the kitchen. She is heating up water on the stove. There is a knock at the door.)

BERNIECE: Who is it?

AVERY: It’s me, Avery.

(BERNIECE opens the door and lets him in.)

BERNIECE: Avery, come on in. I was just fixing to take my bath.

AVERY: Where Boy Willie? I see that truck out there almost empty. They done sold almost all them watermelons.

BERNIECE: They was gone when I come home. I don’t know where they went off to. Boy Willie around here about to drive me crazy.

AVERY: They sell them watermelons . . . he’ll be gone soon.

BERNIECE: What Mr. Cohen say about letting you have the place?

AVERY: He say he’ll let me have it for thirty dollars a month. I talked him out of thirty-five and he say he’ll let me have it for thirty.