When she came away from him, eyes now open and staring up at him, gasping to breathe as he gasped too, she said, “Man, you sure is potent-you gittin’ poor Ruby’s naycher stirrin’ up a mile high an’ wantin’ to go-”

“Honey-”

She pushed herself off his lap and came around to stare at him solemnly. “Man, you know what you is doin’ to me?”

“Ruby-”

“You sure enuff full of powers, man, got me hot and full up with naycher-better lemme change-wanna let lil Ruby change?”

Bewildered, frightened, Beggs said, “Whatever you want, Ruby. Yes, you’d better.”

“Yum,” she said. She jumped off the sofa, and then abruptly sat on his lap again, her back to him, one finger pointing behind her. “Unbutton me, darlin’, so’s I can change.”

His thick fingers fumbled at the buttons, and he had difficulty opening them, but at last the back of her blouse fell apart revealing the smooth black shoulders and ridge of spine and the white band and clasp of her brassière. Her head came around, and her lower lip pouted. “Otter, you been ’round too much for this lil pickaninny. Ummm-” She kissed his nose and stood up, chastely holding up the front of her unfastened blouse with her palm. “Won’t be more than a minute changin’. Wanna freshen the drinks?”

“Sure thing.”

“You be waitin’ for lil Ruby-oh, mothah me! Dog my cats! I loves you, man-”

She went quickly, hips and skirt swinging, out of the small living room into the bedroom, half closing the door behind her.

Otto Beggs sat unmoving. She was gone, but the fragrance of her flesh still enveloped him, entered his pores, kindled his desire for her even more intensely. She had said that she wanted to “change.” What did that mean? Change to what? He had an idea to what. Still, would she? Was it possible? Of course, it was possible. She had said that she was hot and full up with “naycher”-meaning, he woozily deducted, that her natural instincts, her primitive instincts, had been aroused by him. Criminy, what did a colored girl do, how did she behave, when she felt like that? It was a mystery to him, yet his wonder at the unknown was secondary to his great expectations. Shortly, if he had not misread her, he would be initiated into the club-the club of coarse jokes-to be one with all those who had changed their luck.

He left the sofa for the kitchenette, dropped ice into the glasses, poured a double amount of J and B over her ice, and a long shot of gin over his, and forgot about the tonic. He walked back into the living room, holding her drink, taking a swallow of his, and suddenly he stood still. There she was, and he had never seen anything like it except in the movies and men’s magazines.

She posed, one hand on a hip, standing between the mosaic coffee table and the sofa.

“How you like it, Otter?” she asked, and as she pirouetted gracefully, the dark definite lines of her body were clearly revealed from behind the flimsy, long lemon-colored negligee. “I had to git myself some expensive underwear, price of three LPs, jes for this occasion with my Otter.”

“It fits you great,” he said, embarrassed by the thick huskiness of his voice. “This is sure a treat.”

“Don’t sweet-talk cottonpickin’ me-you a big hero with all them fancy whitegirls fussin’ ’round you-”

He took another drink, and protested, “None of them hold a candle to you, Ruby. You look like a movie star, no kidding.”

She lowered herself to the sofa, crossing one leg over the other in a new pose, this one of languor, and watched him. He placed her drink before her and looked down at her, at the ebony flesh running from the hollow of her throat to the exposed cleft between her breasts. She raised her hands behind her head, and he was hypnotized by the shifting and spreading of the mounds of her bosom, no longer covered by the brassière, hardly concealed by the transparent negligee.

She patted the soft sofa beside her. “Come on, Otter, ain’t you gonna show this woman no friendshipness?”

Stiffly, almost asthmatically wheezing, he moved between the sofa and table, drinking again. Then, daringly, he sank down beside her, one arm high on the sofa behind her, his free hand holding the drink. Without trying to look, he could see the reddish bikini panties she was wearing, and the flesh of one broad dark thigh as it lay over the other. He tried to lift his eyes to her face, but he could not help holding his gaze on her protruding breasts.

“Thirty-eight,” she said.

His head came up quickly. “What?”

She cupped her hands beneath her breasts. “Size thirty-eight,” she said. “Figger you’d wanna know exactly.”

He brought the trembling glass to his flushed face. “You should be an actress, Ruby, something like that.” He drank to reinforce his giddy hopes.

“Naw, like I told you before, I been there bein’ leered at by the whiteboys. I don’t like paradin’ myself before any ol’ body. You-you is somethin’ special, Otter-”

She reached out, gently but firmly removed the glass from his clutch, set it on the table, and squirmed closer to him, head against his shoulder, fingers playfully opening his shirt, and then her hand slipping underneath his shirt and caressing his hairy chest.

He dropped his arm from the sofa down around her shoulders, loosely, listening to the throaty sounds of her, like a cat’s motor-purrings. He was not positive what he should do next, take the plunge at once, grab her, start it, or tell her first what he wanted, or be more subtle and find out if what he thought was being led up to was really understood by both of them. If he came right out and made the move, or the demand, and she was just teasing around, it would be embarrassing and ruin everything. He had to be positive. Also, there were some women, even among the paid ones, who liked to go slow, and maybe she was one of these. If she was, he didn’t want to spoil his chances. There was time, plenty of time.

“Why do you think I’m so special, Ruby?” he asked, feeling foolish. “I like hearing it, believe me, but you must’ve known plenty of young men.”

“Not so many, Otter, an’ no somebody like you-you is handsome and strong-Jee-sus-you feels all muscle-an’ a hero with them medals, botherin’ ’bout lil pickaninny me-nobody me, sep I admit to bein’ thirty-eight where it counts-” She enjoyed this, and giggled. “You knows what, Otter, I was thinkin’ last night. You is too impo’tant to be wastin’ time even guardin’ the Pres of the U.S.A.-you knows that? You too impo’tant in you own right to be wastin’ time on a finky culludman Pres who ain’t half the man you is. Thass what I think of you, Otter. You is better than him. Mothah an’ Lordy, you sure is.”

“Thank you for the compliments, Ruby, but he is President of the United States, and nobody’s more important.”

“Ummm. You smell jes good… you is more impo’tant. That black man in the White House ain’t fit to shine you shoes.”

A little more, he thought, a little more of this aimless chatter, and he’d be sure, and take the plunge. “Last time we talked, you had no feelings one way or the other about President Dilman. What’s happened since, Ruby? You don’t have to answer-who gives a damn about him-except I’d think you’d be happy about a Negro in-”

Suddenly she removed her hand from his chest and turned on her side, her silky, cooing voice turning resolute and strident. “I ain’t happy ’bout him no more. Lots been happenin’ to him and us. Dilman ain’t good enuff to be colored man or whiteboy, either. He ain’t good enuff to be any ol’ thing. He a turd, nothin’ better. Lookit him bannin’ the Turners, not liftin’ a finger for poor ol’ Jeff Hurley. Lookit him even takin’ away the crummy minority law money from my kinfolk. Otter, that man you guardin’ with you life no good for nobody-he spellin’ only evil-”

Silently Beggs cursed himself for inciting her with a conversation that he had meant to use only as a bridge to the ultimate seduction. Now, judging from the indignation in her eyes, he saw that her mood was anything but sensual. Desperately, he tried to sidetrack her. “Ruby, just as you said before, he isn’t important enough to get riled up about. I don’t like him much either, I can admit it to you since we’re so close, and not because he’s a Negro or for what he’s doing to Negroes-I don’t know much about that, except the whites are plenty sore at him too for vetoing that bill, throwing his weight around-I don’t like him because he’s a weakling. That’s the main thing. That banning, somebody else did that for him, that’s how weak he is. And the veto, hell, that showed no guts, only he got scared of the banning and tried to make up for it-”