"I'm right with you, pardner," Bunny agreed, "but I gotta have one with class. None o' these Woolworth dames for me! Get you in a peck o' trouble.... Fact is, Big Boy, ain't none o' these women no good. They all get old on the job."
They drank in silence and eyed the motley crowd around them. There were blacks, browns, yellows, and whites chatting, flirting, drinking; rubbing shoulders in the democracy of night life. A fog of tobacco smoke wreathed their heads and the din from the industrious jazz band made all but the loudest shrieks inaudible. In and out among the tables danced the waiters, trays balanced aloft, while the patrons, arrayed in colored paper caps, beat time with the orchestra, threw streamers or grew maudlin on each other's shoulders.
"Looky here! Lawdy Lawd!" exclaimed Bunny, pointing to the doorway. A party of white people had entered. They were all in evening dress and in their midst was a tall, slim, titian-haired girl who had seemingly stepped from heaven or the front cover of a magazine.
"My, my, my!" said Max, sitting up alertly.
The party consisted of two men and four women. They were escorted to a table next to the one occupied by the two colored dandies. Max and Bunny eyed them covertly. The tall girl was certainly a dream.
"Now that's my speed," whispered Bunny.
"Be yourself," said Max. "You couldn't touch her with a forty-foot pole."
"Oh, I don't know, Big Boy," Bunny beamed self-confidently, "You never can tell! You never can tell!"
"Well, I can tell," remarked Disher, "'cause she's a cracker."
"How you know that?"