Page:The Blacker the Berry - Thurman - 1929.djvu/203

 just the right size to create a smart uniform for, and shapely enough to allow the creator of the uniform ample latitude for bizarre experimentation. Most important of all, her skin, the color of beaten brass with copper overtones, synchronized with the gray plaster walls, dark hardwood furniture and powder blue rugs on the Maison Quantrelle.

Anise soon had any number of “boy friends,” with whom she had varying relations. But she willingly dropped them all for Braxton, and, simple village girl that she was, expected him to do likewise with his “girl friends.” She had heard much about the “two-timing sugar daddies” in Harlem, and while she was well versed in the art herself, having never been particularly true to her male employer, she did think that this sort of thing was different, and that any time she was willing to play fair, her consort should do likewise.

Alva was proud of himself when he noticed how rapidly things progressed between Anise and Braxton.” They were together constantly, and Anise, not unused to giving her home town “boy friends” some of “Mister Bossman’s bounty,” was soon slipping Braxton spare change to live on. Then she undertook to pay his half of the room rent, and finally, within three weeks, was, as Alva phrased it, “treating Braxton royally.”