Page:The Blacker the Berry - Thurman - 1929.djvu/151

 ''Slap bim in the face. Change your seat. Don’t be an idiot. He has a nice smile. Look at him again.''

“Did you see him in ‘Long Pants’?”

He was leaning closer now, and Emma Lou took note of a teakwood tan hand resting on her knee. She took another look at him, and saw that he had curly hair. He leaned toward her, and she leaned toward him. Their shoulders touched, his hand reached for hers and stole it from her lap. She wished that the theater wasn’t so dark. But if it hadn’t been so dark this couldn’t have happened. She wondered if his hair and eyes were brown or jet black.

The feature picture was being reeled off again. They were too busy talking to notice that. When it was half over, they left their seats together. Before they reached the street, Emma Lou handed him three dollars, and, leaving the theater, they went to an apartment house on 140th Street, off Lenox Avenue. Emma Lou waited downstairs in the dirty marble hallway where she was stifled by urinal smells and stared at by passing people, waited for about ten minutes, then, in answer to his call, climbed one flight of stairs, and was led into a well furnished, though dark, apartment.

His name was Jasper Crane. He was from Virginia. Living in Harlem with his brother, so he said. He had only been in New York a month. Didn’t have a