Four perspiring bottles graced the redwood picnic table provided by the limited budget of The 28%. Side by side on one of the benches, Lon and Violet faced a twosome conspicuous not only by their post-nineteen maturity but by the vivid contrast of their coloring. Violet had introduced them as Sassy Gregg and Mavis.
The Amazon’s pale-yellow hair fell in short careless waves over the wide brow of a face once deeply tanned, now faded. It was a face with the unravaged ruggedness of one who has enjoyed the outdoors in solid comfort: playing dedicated tennis, perhaps, or swimming lengths of a country club pool. Her features were carefully spaced, her grey-blue eyes unflinchingly direct. And the simplicity of her tailored shirt and slacks spoke quietly of elegance. Any doubt of her affluence was erased by the wide bracelet clamping the cuff of her long-sleeved shirt and the matching wide belt-buckle of hand-wrought silver and Mexican lava. Her nickname, Lon suspected, was backwash from early childhood; Sassy looked and behaved like anything but her name. A few of her yawns were deliberate; the rest seemed genuine enough.
Violet was tying herself into tortured knots in a pathetic attempt to impress the girl. “Honest to God, I think it’s terrif’ about you went ta collidge. Even if you on’y specialized in gym. Ain’t that what you mean by P. E.?”
Sassy’s gray eyes reflected more boredom than amusement. “Yes. I majored in physical education.”
“Yeah, but along with that you had ta read up on other subjecks. I’m that same way. Books! Jeez, I read ‘em by the carload. Anything that has t’ do with education, or if it’s artistical, it makes me flip.” She reached over to squeeze Lon’s hand in a show of familiarity and Lon flinched.
Sassy Gregg broke her cool reserve to wink subtly and knowingly at Lon. Who smiled a vague response to the compliment, grateful that Sassy was not seeing them as a pair.
Violet chattered on, parading her concept of intellectuality, and the analytical eyes of the older girl veiled with a patronizing contempt. Lon turned her attention to Sassy’s friend. “Did you go to U.C.L.A. with Sassy?”
The colored girl spoke with a joyless calm. “No, we met this place I work. Used to come round, hear me play jazz piano. Come with ‘er fiance.”
Lon had missed the sparkle on Sassy’s powerful hand. “Oh, sure. She’s engaged.”
Mavis smirked. “Reason why escape me jus’ now.”
Lon stared at the girl, silent while Betty brought fresh beers all around and Sassy wrangled with Violet over the two-dollar honors. Lon had never exchanged words with a Negro before—nor gazed at enigma that surpassed mere physical beauty. Mavis was slight, loose-limbed, the cafe-au-lait flesh pulled tightly over bone structure well defined. Yet it was not the effortless grace with which she moved the languid wrists, floated the slender fingers when she talked. And not the uninterrupted sweep of features, from broad, intelligent forehead past high-rising cheekbones, downward below the cherry-tinted mouth to the defiant little chin. It was in the line of blue-black hair drawn rigid to the coiled bun from which black wisps played with the back of her neck. And in the fierce pride of distended nostrils, the negroid nose. There, and in the regal tilt of her head, the impassable curtain of velvet black eyes. Eyes almond-shaped and weary from too much seen. If she rose, Lon knew, she would walk with a haughty bearing; Lon knew this with an unassailable certainty. Born to be a Second High Priestess, born to murmur the rhythmic incantations, weave the lithe body on nights when the sky is moonless and the sea beats the time for our chant. Lon dropped her eyes unconsciously to the heavy, snobbish breasts.
“You takin’ style notes? You analyzin’ my dress?”
Embarrassed, Lon shook her head. “No—I’m sorry. I didn’t mean …”
What could be seen of Mavis’s dress was dull black and shapeless. Lon lifted the second bottle, drinking back the chagrin.
“This dress what you call a saque,” Mavis said tonelessly. “Been with me a long time. Man, couple years back the modistes caught up with me. But I pass ‘em up again. Now nobody in style but me!” Flashing a snowflake grin, the whiteness melting into brown repose. “Sassy say I look beat. Them beat cats jus’ catchin’ up with me, too. I beat befo’ they latch on Zen. Long befo’ they pick up on Gide. Baby, I beat from awa-a-y back. An’ don’t need to make some cafe expresso scene provin’ it.”
Now Lon faced the new bewilderment. Mavis fluctuated between a cultured enunciation and what seemed to be deliberate parody of minstrel show dialect. Finding courage in swallows of the tart beer, she said, “You sound like you know a lot. But you don’t talk like—” And stammering in the self-induced confusion, “You perplex me!”
Mavis lifted a cigarette from Sassy’s case, lying on the table between them. “Trouble is, you tryin’ put me in some peg-hole. Baby, go ‘head an’ crucify me. Go ‘head an’ vilify me. But don’t go messin’ ‘round tryin’ to classify me! I one thing now. Tomorrow I gonna be something else.”
“Don’t you want anyone to know how sharp you are?”
Sucking in the blue smoke, Mavis said, “That way I get me invited into white-color brain circles. Them folks can go home, tell they neighbors they had tea with a colored gal could quote Spinoza. Big deal! Man, I take a good ole-fashioned down-South nigger-hater over them kind.” Then, staring into the dim haze, “I talk my way. I read about some decadent French cats, that Proust talk. Read about some festerin’, slime-ooze creeps down South, that Faulkner talk. Ain’t for me.” And in a sudden spurt of animation, the heat of white-hot, white-directed resentment burned like the tip of her cigarette. “Mavis talk. That all you ever gonna get from me!”
The juke broke out with Poison Ivy. And Sassy, obviously bored with the pressure of being impressed, lifted her brows at the Violet kid. “Dance?”
“Crazy!” Violet wrinkled the little round nose, laughed her delight.
Sassy was even taller than Lon had suspected. The statuesque and the stubby left the table to jiggle their way into the moving crowd.
An alien excitement fell over Lon. Alone with brown Mavis and too tense to express what had lain dormant in her, Lon tried to force herself. Now, now, when at long last the closed doors had strangely opened to her. Feebly offering, “I’ve never known anyone named Mavis. Mavis what?”
“Jus’ Mavis.”
“Everybody has a last name.”
“Some born without ‘em. Some lose the right to use ‘em.”
Lon sensed that she had treaded on shaky ground. And began again. “You said you play the piano.”
“Yea-ah, Sassy got this Knabe grand. Used to be jus’ furniture in that fancy pad where she live. That big ole piano cryin’ its gut out f’lonesome till I come by.”
“I thought you said she used to go somewhere to hear you play.”
“Ruggio’s. Baby, I play in more pi-ano bars ‘n’ you got years. That the last place I play before I git unemployed. Ruggio, he tie the can to me.”
“Why?” Asking it indignantly, marking the faceless Ruggio a sworn enemy.
“Oh, couple gay gals start hangin’ ‘round. Ruggio don’t want that. I tip these gals, but that don’t stop ‘em comin’ on, comin’ on, requestin’ I play this numbah ‘n’ that numbah. Till one night he blow his stack. I gotta git!”
“But it wasn’t your fault, was it? Just because he didn’t like …” Lon swallowed the hard core taking form in her throat. “Were they girls like these?” Gesturing to indicate the dancers.
“Man, they don’t come no gayer. These gals, they both on the make. They wear a big neon sign keep flashin’ what they is. Same as these cats you seein’ now.” Mavis dragged deeply, exhaled, cooled the smoke with draughts from the brown bottle. “I