Page:Nigger Heaven (1926).pdf/89



A day or so later, Mary encountered Adora emerging from a shop on Seventh Avenue.

You haven't been to see me since I came back from the country, the ex-music-hall diva complained. I've a good mind to cut you dead.

Don't scold me, Mary pleaded. You know I'm a working woman.

I know you have more time than I have, Adora retorted, but I don't care how you behave. I like you and I'm going to hang on to you. Come home with me now.

Assenting willingly, Mary entered the Rolls-Royce, whereupon the chauffeur in purple livery slammed the door and drove the pair the short distance to West One hundred and thirty-ninth Street, dubbed Strivers' Row by all and sundry in Harlem. This block of tan brick houses, flanked by rows of trees on either side of the way, had been designed in the early twentieth century by Stanford White, at the time when Harlem was a German section. Now they had been taken over by rich Negroes: a few, like Fletcher Henderson, the band-leader, and Harry Wills, the prize-fighter, of international fame, but most of them lawyers, physicians, real-estate operators, or opulent proprietors of beauty