He wanted to know what she did. She was in a training school, she told him, learning how to operate a drill press. He told her he wrote continuity for an afternoon soap opera—“All about the trials of white folk,” he said with the faintest irony.

Later, they took their plates and sat down on some cushions and ate together. She had never had a conversation with a Negro, a conversation over dinner and drink. He maintained an even, pleasant demeanor although he drank considerably more than she did. He spoke of himself without constraint, yet she felt it was a prepared script he offered her, something to get done with before you got down to the real game. She offered him her own script in return, radically edited.

“Your life’s messed up,” he said. “But you’re just beginning.” He began to laugh. “It gets worse, lady.”

“It can’t.”

“Can, always can. Now this week, they wanted to have a colored maid say ‘gwine to hebben,’ the story’s too dull to go into, but just hold that in your mind. They wanted me to have that girl say ‘gwine to hebben.’ I told them I was gwine to my lawyer and break my contract if they were going in for that jive.”

“What did you have the maid say?”

“I quit.” Her own laughter was not in response to what he had said, but to something playful in him. He was grinning at her. “That’s a beautiful jacket,” she said. “Yeah. Blues out my dark soul. Leads young women into thinking I’m a safe bet for a soft talk. Isn’t that what you think?”

“I don’t know much about jackets.”

“That’s good.” He had a lovely thick laugh; he could talk right through it; his Chinese eyes glinted, the fine wrinkles all around them creasing with merriment.

“Where’s your daddy and mama?”

“My father—I’m not sure now, somewhere in New England. She’s dead. It’s been a long time.”