“Oh, I was just brooding over some of the injustice in this world,” he replied. “It’s absurd, of course—never does any good. What were we talking about?”
“You said something about negroes and whites always acting up to each other,” Blanche answered, “and then I said that some of the couples I saw at Vanderin’s seemed to be really gone on each other.”
“Of course they are—for a night, or a month. A year’s the world’s record as far’s I know. It’s nothing but surface sex-appeal, you know, and it’s not much different from the old plantation-owners down South, who used to pick out colored mistresses. The only difference nowadays is that white women are starting to respond to colored men.”
“Gee, I wonder ’f I could care for you, ’f you were colored ... I wonder now,” Blanche said, reflectively. “Of course, I’ll never have to bother about it, but it’s interesting just the same. I guess a woman never knows how she’ll feel about anything until she’s got to make a choice. It’s all right to think it over and say ‘I could’ ’r ‘I couldn’t,’ but that’s just because you’ve got to pretend to know yourself anyway. It kind of keeps up your backbone.”
She did not notice the pain that twisted his face. He tried his best to be humorous ... this dark bugaboo was getting on his nerves.
“Mix black and white together and they make gray,” he said. “I never did like that color. Let’s be more gaudy to-night.”
“You’re a terrible liar—you’re wearing a gray suit,” she replied.
He laughed.
“Well, what’s a man to do?” he asked. “You women can put on lavender, and orange, and cerise clothes, but if a man tried it he’d be howled out of town.”
“It’s all your own fault,” she said. “Men just hate to look different from each other, and besides, they’re always afraid that somebody’s going to think that they’re showing some weakness or other. I know them.”