“Man alive, ya don’t know what you’re missin’—somebody little and cute telling ya sweet things in your ear. Paris is full of women folks.”
“I ain’t much on ’em all the same. Then too, they’re all white.”
“What’s it to ya? This ain’t America.”
“Can’t help that. Get this—I’m collud, see? I ain’t got nothing for no white meat to do. If a woman eva called me nigger I’d have to kill her, that’s all!”
“You for it, son. I can’t give you a thing on this Mr. Jefferson Lawd way of lookin’ at women.”
“Oh, tain’t that. I guess they’re all right for those that wants ’em. Not me!”
“Oh you ain’t so forty. You’ll fall like all the other spades I’ve ever seen. Your kind falls hardest.”
And so Paul went his way—alone. He smoked and drank with the fellows and sat for hours in the Montmartre cafes and never knew the companionship of a woman. Then one night after his work he was walking along the street in his queer shuffling way when a woman stepped up to his side.
“Voulez vous.”
“Naw, gowan away from here.”