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“You only missed one week. That’s nothing,” the guy says. “You’re good for it.”

He lets me look at any suit I want. Of course, I want something nicer than the first time. On account of how I’m moving up in the world.

The high-end zoots look slick. Sharp as a tack and hip as a hip bone. Made of fabric that barely has any feel to it at all, it’s so nice.

I pick out a zoot in sharkskin gray. So fine.

I pour myself into that sharkskin suit. Tug on the tight cuffs. Smooth myself into the blooming sleeves.

Looking good.

I spin before the mirror. Strike my pose. Feet apart. Toes out, heels in. Knees in, elbows out. Head down, hat low, fingers on the brim.

I peek at myself. All right, now. All right.

It’s an expensive zoot, more so than the last one. That means my weekly payment will go up. Harder to make it.

But the zoot feels so fine on me. The line it cuts is nice. I’ve never looked so hip in all my days.

Where’s the question? The sharkskin zoot suit is coming home with me. I can handle the payments. I’ve missed one already, and it was no big deal. You just make it up later. Papa was wrong about this, too. Credit is just about the best thing imaginable.

I pluck off the tags and wear that sharkskin zoot down to the Roseland for the Negro dance. All those nights working the shoe-shine rag hadn’t prepared me for how it would feel to be down in the throes of it all. The heat radiating off the dancers. The scents of whiskey and perfume and sweat. The blinding shine of the stage lights if you catch one in the eye. My shoes skid nicely across the waxed floor, and all those nights in dark apartments, leading girls and learning the steps, have paid off. I’m confident. I’m in the Roseland, on the floor, and ready to take the place by storm.

I dance with every woman I can get my arms around. Beautiful Negro girls: short and tall, slender and big-boned, smooth skin, sun-kissed mahogany, ebony, or creamy caramel. I swirl them, lift them, flip them side to side off my hips while their legs fly through the air. The minute one girl gets tired or takes a breath, I spin away, pick up the hands of another. I’m so tall and so slick. They love me. I love them, too.

I sweat through dance after dance.

I go upstairs to my old office to take a little break myself. There’s the new guy, crouched in my old spot, scrambling with his rag.

“Where you from?” I ask him.

“Kansas.” He hands a towel to a guy, who takes it but doesn’t even tip a nickel. Some people.
Them’s the breaks, kid
. I’d managed, and so would he.

“How you like Roxbury so far?” I say to the kid. He’s my age, probably. Thereabouts. He seems younger, though, on account of being so green.

The new kid grins real wide. Real country. Couple months from now, he’ll be smirking. Slick as owl shit. Probably in a zoot. Not as fine as this one, though. I smooth my lapels.

“I’m getting the hang of it,” he says.

“Good for you.”

I flip him a quarter, slide into the chair, and get my shoes shined. Sip from the flask in my jacket pocket. I stare down at the crown of his nappy head. Damn. I’ve come so far.

Boston, 1941

Next day I start at Townsend’s. When I come down the stairs wearing the white server’s coat, Ella could not be more pleased. She fusses over me for what feels like an hour. “Oh, you’re going to meet all kinds of lovely people,” she says. “Girls your own age. Nice girls. This is a good opportunity, Malcolm.” She smiles, for the thousandth time. “You’ll see.”

What I mostly see are things that drive me mad: the same kinds of people I saw when I first visited. The kind who put on a certain face to go out, a prim and proper mask. They chatter, all flushed and breathless, climbing a ladder that’s going nowhere. Everything’s a hustle, like Shorty always says, but these folks are hustling after something they can’t get. Down the Hill, we hustle after what’s real. Being happy. Getting rich. The important stuff.

Ella has these high hopes about all the people I’ll meet here, so I go home and tell her all kinds of stories about everything. She eats it up with a sugar-coated spoon. Meanwhile all I really do all day is pour soda over ice cream. Root-beer floats. Coca-Cola floats. Ice-cream cones. Ice-cream sundaes. Smile real nice and big. Plop cherries on top with a flourish.

But there’s always something good about even the crappiest job. The thing I get to looking forward to day after day is the quiet girl with the book. Banana split is her standing order. Glass of water with ice. She comes and sits in the corner of the bar on one of the tall red stools with her nose in one thick book or another. Never looks up except to place her order and to pay.

My attention strays to her constantly while I work. Her glowing brown skin. The delicate dark hairs that frame the sides of her face. Her full lips teasing the ice-cream spoon. I wonder what it would feel like to touch the smooth back of her hand, to lace our long slender fingers together. I stare, hoping I can catch her glancing up with those sparkling eyes.

Just about every day she comes in. It gets to where I’ll start slicing the bananas from the moment I see her through the window. But girls like her don’t really talk to the soda jerk, except, I guess, to order.

“Banana split, please,” she says. It’s the sweet, sincere “please” that gets me. It’s surprising how often people forget to say it. All these people, so uppity and polite, can’t manage to get that little word out, or at least can’t make me believe they really mean it.

“Coming right up,” I say. She has a nice smile, which she tends to offer me for the small price of an extra cherry or two. No skin off my nose. I give her a real smile in return, not the big corny fake one I’ve been practicing.

All along, I know I’m eventually going to talk to her. She seems different from the others, less affected. Down-to-earth or something. Real. So I’m going to talk to her for sure someday. Just not today. Maybe tomorrow.

Tomorrow comes and goes a couple of dozen times before I get around to opening my mouth.

“What are you reading?” I ask her.

She looks around for a second before glancing up. “Me?”

“Sure,” I say. “You’re the one with the book.”

She flips the book upright and shows me the cover. I reach over and place her glass canoe of ice cream in the space between her elbows. “Thank you,” she whispers.

“Their Eyes Were Watching God,”
I read off the jacket. “Is it any good?”

She nods, more enthusiastic. “Oh, yes. I can’t put it down. I love her writing. Have you read her?”

I glance at the spine. Zora Neale Hurston. “No.” Last time I picked up a book was . . . I don’t even know. Some school thing or other. Back in Lansing.

“Is it for school?” I ask.

“No,” she says. “Just for fun. School reading is too boring. Don’t you think?”

“I’m done with school,” I say. “Now I’m just a guy who makes a mean banana split.” I really want to know her name, so I add, “I’m Red.”

She frowns. “Then who’s ‘Malcolm’?”

“Oh, right,” I say, glancing at the name tag pinned on my chest. “I’m him, too.”

“Nice to meet you, Malcolm. I’m Laura.” She swirls her spoon, studying me. “You don’t look old enough to be done with school.”

Laura. I
roll the name around, tasting it.

“I’m going to college,” she adds. “Aren’t you?”

“No way.”

A different song comes on the radio, from the speaker at the edge of the room. The kind of beat that sets your toes to tapping. Laura starts drumming the fingers of her free hand.

“You like that song?” I ask.

“Yes,” she says. “I like anything with a nice rhythm.” She moves her shoulders a bit. Kinda flirty. Kinda sexy. I start to think maybe there’s more to her than a big stack of books.

“You ever do the Lindy?” I ask her.

“Oh, I love to dance,” she says, closing her eyes. Her shoulders move.

I close in on that remark. Hawklike. “Really? You been to the Roseland?”

Her eyes pop open. “The Roseland Ballroom? Oh, I’ve never been there before! I’d give anything to go,” she wails. “My grandmother would die.”

“I go from time to time,” I tell her. “Let me know if you would ever want to. . . .”

“Oh,” she exclaims. “Oh, I wish I could.”

She’s a good girl. Too good, I suppose, for the likes of me. She’s a college girl, or will be soon enough. But I’ll be going to the Roseland, next Negro dance. It’d sure be nice to have a pretty girl on my arm walking in the door.

I meet Laura outside of Townsend’s Drug Store. I wear my new gray zoot, hat and everything. I stand on the sidewalk, trying to look hip.

She comes rushing up to me, breathless. “Sorry I’m late, Malcolm,” she says. “It was harder than I thought to get out of the house.”

“You sneaked?” I ask. Her grandmother doesn’t approve of much of anything, it seems. Dancing. Dating.

“Not really,” she says. “I told her I was coming to the soda fountain. She just kept talking. I couldn’t tell her I had to be here at a certain time.” She tucks her hand into the crook of my arm.

The party at the Roseland is already pushing out beyond the bounds of the club. The sidewalk is full of people working their way in.

“I hope we can get in,” Laura frets.

“We’ll get in,” I say. One of the few things around town I know without a doubt is how to get into the Roseland.

We push toward the door. I put my hand on Laura’s waist, real casual. My fingers nestle into the curve of her body, drawing her to me and guiding her through the crowd at the same time. She glances around nervously at the people shouldering against us, but when she looks back and up at me, her gaze becomes trusting and soft. I’ve wondered how it would be to hold her and dance with her, when I’ve never even so much as touched her hand before, at the fountain. I know now it’s going to be fine. We fit.

When we’re close enough, I nod to the doorman and he motions us in. The crowd parts, and I nudge Laura to lead us through the gap. As we pass the doorman, I slap his skin with my free hand. He says something under his breath to me, and I don’t totally catch it, but I sure get the gist.
Nice catch
, he’s saying, about Laura.

We’re inside, and I check her coat. She seems impressed by how many people I know. I’m slapping skin left and right. Her eyes go wide as we approach the dance floor. I keep my hand on her waist and ease her forward.

The music soars; it aches; it glows. Sour notes turn sweet, and the rhythms of the night thrum deeper and deeper until every beat of the song becomes a part of me. Beside me, Laura closes her eyes and sways. I know she’s feeling it same as me. If the song is me, and the song is her, then she is me and vice versa.

I fold her hand in mine, some kind of magic. Soft brown skin, fingers interlaced. The tips of her nails graze the back of my hand. We rock in the rhythm.

Dancing with Laura is unbelievably smooth. She glides as easy as a hand on the surface of water. No weight to her.

“Where’d you learn?” I ask her.

She half shrugs. Spins. “Around.”

As good an answer as any, I suppose. Where does anyone learn? I’m just trying to make conversation. Don’t really need to. She’s smiling like the sun. I’m feeling smooth enough. Seems OK for now to just get lost in the music, to feel the flow and the jive and ride along with it.

We’re walking around the Hill one day when Laura says, “I don’t see why you aren’t in school. You know you’re smart.”

“Nah,” I say.

She tugs my arm. Insistent. “You’re so smart. Don’t you know it?”

Smart enough to be top of the class. Smart enough to rise to the top at any school. Smart enough to get by without it, too. “I’m OK,” I tell her. “No point in any of that.”

I can’t go back. I’m only moving forward.

Laura loves school. Can’t imagine the road I’m walking. “I’m so looking forward to college,” she gushes. “Haven’t you ever wanted that or wondered what it would be like?”

I try to ignore the little flutter in my heart. “I wanted to be a lawyer once, maybe.”

“Oh,” she exclaims. “You still can be. That’s perfect for you. You could go back to school. I know you can catch up on everything, and fast. We can go to college together.”

Feels like a long time since I’ve thought about school. Grades and classes and problems and reports. It would be like stepping back into a box I was lucky enough to break out of.

“No way,” I say. “That was just me thinking crazy one day. I don’t even know why I just said that.” Now Laura’s getting stars in her eyes about this future, the two of us lugging books across a lawn from building to building. I’ve walked around the campuses nearby, seen all the buttoned-up students with their books and their satchels and their studious expressions. I rarely saw a dark face.

“Not that many people like us actually go to college,” I tell her.

“Of course they do,” she insists. “There are lots of Negro colleges.”

I’ve been all over Boston, and I’ve never seen one. “Around here?”

“Well, no,” she admits.

“Then, where?”

Laura sighs. “Atlanta. I would love to go to Spelman,” she says. “But Grandma thinks it’s too far from home.”