Page:The Blacker the Berry - Thurman - 1929.djvu/206

 She’s forty with me, and I know how to treat her. I bet you couldn’t get five cents out of her.”

“I wouldn’t try.”

“Hell, if you tried it wouldn’t make no difference. There’s a gal ready to pay to have a man, and there are lots more like her. You couldn’t even keep a good-looking gold mine like Anise. Wish I could find her.”

Braxton would sulk a while, thinking that his silence would discourage Alva, but Alva was not to be shut up. He was truly outraged. He felt that he was being imposed upon, being used by some one who thought himself superior to him. He would admit that he wasn’t as handsome as Braxton, but he certainly had more common sense. The next Monday Braxton moved.

Alva was to take Emma Lou to the midnight show at the Lafayette Theater. He met her as she left work and they had taken the subway uptown. On the train they began to talk, shouting into one another’s ears, trying to make their voices heard above the roar of the underground tube.

“Do you like your new home?” Alva shouted. He hadn’t seen her since she had moved two days before.

“It’s nice,” she admitted loudly, “but it would be nicer if I had you there with me.”