“Yes.”

  “I mean, he’s not Puerto Rican,” Amelia said.

  “What’s the difference?”

  “Oh, in this city, there’s a big difference. In this city it’s pretty bad to be colored, but the worst thing you can possibly be is Puerto Rican.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “I don’t know,” Amelia said, and shrugged. “I guess it’s more fashionable to hate Puerto Ricans now.” She laughed, and Roger laughed with her. “My father’s name is Juan. Juan Perez. We always kid around with him, we ask him how his Colombian coffee beans are coming along. You know, have you ever seen that television commercial? It’s Juan Valdez, actually, but it’s close enough. My father loves when we kid around with him that way. He always says his coffee beans are doing fine because he’s got them under the tree that is his Spanish sun hat. He really is from Spain, you know, from a little town outside Madrid. Brihuega. Did you ever hear of it?”

  “Brihuega Basin, do you mean?”

  “No, Brihuega.”

  “Near Huddlesworth, right?”

  “Near Madrid.”

  “Where they fight camels.”

  “No, bulls.”

  “I knew I had it,” Roger said, and Amelia laughed. “Well, now that we’re here,” he said, “what are we supposed to do?”

  Amelia shrugged. “We could neck, I suppose.”

  “Is that what you want to do?”

  “No, not really. It’s a little too early in the day. I got to admit, though…”

  “Yes?”

  “I’m very curious about what it’s like to kiss a white man.”

  “Me, too.”

  “A colored girl, you mean.”

  “Yes.”

  “Yes.”

  They were both silent. The wind caught at their overcoats, flattening the material against their bodies as they looked out over the water. At the far end of the boardwalk, the old man was still motionless, like a salt-sodden statue frozen into position by a sudden winter.

  “Do you think the old man would mind?” Amelia asked.

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Well…” she said.

  “Well…”

  “Well, let’s.”

  She turned her face up to his, and he put his arms around her and then bent and kissed her mouth. He kissed her very gently. He thought of Molly the night before and then he moved away from her and stared down at her face and she caught her breath with a short sharp sigh and then smiled mysteriously and shrugged and said, “I like it.”

  “Yes.”

  “You think the old man would mind if we did it again?”

  “I don’t think so,” Roger said.

  They kissed again. Her lips were very wet. He moved slightly away from her and looked down at her. She was staring up at him with her dark brown eyes serious and questioning.

  “This is sort of crazy,” she whispered.

  “Yes.”

  “Standing here on a boardwalk with that wind howling in.”

  “Yes.”

  “Kissing,” she said. Her voice was very low.

  “Yes.”

  “And that old man watching.”

  “He isn’t watching,” Roger said.

  “On the edge of the world,” Amelia said. And suddenly, “I don’t even know who you are.”

  “My name is Roger Broome.”

  “Yes, but who?”

  “What would you like to know?”

  “How old are you?”

  “Twenty-seven.”

  “I’m twenty-two.” She paused. “How do I know…” She stopped, and shook her head.

  “What?”

  “How do I know you’re not…a…” She shrugged. “A…Well, you wanted to know where the police station was.”

  “That’s right.”

  “To meet a friend, you said. But then you came back to the drugstore and you hadn’t met this friend of yours at all, so how do I know…Well, how do I know you’re not in some kind of trouble?”

  “Do I look like somebody who’s in trouble?”

  “I don’t know what a white man in trouble looks like. I’ve seen lots of colored people in trouble. If you’re colored, you’re always in trouble, from the day you’re born. But I don’t know the look of a white man in trouble. I don’t know what his eyes look like.”

  “Look at my eyes.”

  “Yes?”

  “What do you see?”

  “Green. No, amber. I don’t know, what color are they? Hazel?”

  “Yes, hazel, like my mother’s. What else do you see?”

  “Flecks. Yellow, I guess.”

  “What else?”

  “Myself. I see myself reflected, like in tiny funhouse mirrors.”

  “Do you see trouble?”

  “Not unless I’m trouble,” Amelia said. She paused. “Am I trouble?”

  He thought again of Molly and immediately said, “No.”

  “You said that too fast.”

  “Don’t look at me that way,” he said.

  “What way?”

  “As if…you’re afraid of me all at once.”

  “Don’t be silly. Why should I be afraid of you?”

  “You have no reason to—”

  “I’m five feet four inches tall, and I weigh a hundred seventeen pounds. All you are is six feet nine—”

  “Six-five,” Roger corrected.

  “Sure, and you weigh two hundred pounds and you could break me in half just by—”

  “Two hundred ten.”

  “—snapping your fingers, and here we are all alone on a godforsaken boardwalk—”

  “There’s an old man down there.”

  “—in the middle of nowhere, with nothing but the ocean in front of us, and those deserted buildings behind us, so why should I be afraid? Who’s afraid?”

  “Right,” he said, and smiled.

  “Right,” she agreed. “You could strangle me or drown me or beat me to death, and nobody’d know about it for the next ten years.”

  “If ever,” Roger said.

  “Mmm.”

  “Of course, there’s always the old man down there.”

  “Yeah, he’s some protection,” Amelia said. “He’s probably half-blind. I’m beginning to wonder if he’s real, as a matter of fact. He hasn’t moved since we got here.”

  “Do you want to go?” he asked.

  “Yes,” she said. And then, quickly, “But not because I’m afraid of you. Only because I’m cold.”

  “Where would you like to go?”

  “Back to the city.”

  “Where?”

  “Do you have a room?” she asked.

  “Yes.”

  Amelia shrugged. “We could go there, I guess. Get out of the cold.”

  “Maybe,” Roger said.

  They turned their backs to the ocean and began walking up the boardwalk, out of the amusement park. She looped her hand through his arm, and then rested her head on his shoulder, and he thought how pretty she was, and he felt the pressure of her fingers on his arm, and he remembered again the way he had never got any of the pretty girls in his life, and here was one now, very pretty, but of course she was colored. It bothered him that she was colored. He told himself that it was a shame she was colored because she was really the first pretty girl he had ever known in his life, well, Molly had been pretty last night, but only after a while. That was the funny part of it; she hadn’t started out to be pretty. This girl, this colored girl holding his arm, her head on his shoulder, this girl was pretty. She had pretty eyes and a pretty smile and good breasts and clean legs, it was too bad she was colored. It was really too bad she was colored, though her color was a very pleasant warm brown. Listen, you can’t go losing your head over a colored girl, he told himself.

  “Listen,” he said.

  “Yes.”

  “I think we’d better get back and maybe…uh…maybe you ought to go back to the drugstore.”

  “What?” she said.

  “I think you ought to go back to work. For the afternoon, anyway.”

  “What?” she said again.

  “And then I can…uh…pick you up later, maybe, after work, and…uh…maybe we can have supper together, all right?”

  She stopped dead on the boardwalk with the wind tearing at the blue kerchief flapping in the wind, her body rigid and motionless.

  “What are you talking about?” she said. “I told my boss I had a headache. I can’t just walk back in now and tell him—”

  “We could meet later,” Roger said. “For supper.”

  “Are you—” She stopped the words and let out her breath in exasperation, and then stared at him solemnly and angrily for several moments, and then said, “What the hell is it?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Two minutes ago, you were kissing me as if—”

  “It’s just that I promised somebody—”

  “Well, what scared you off, that’s all I want to know. Don’t you like the way I kiss?”

  “I like the way you kiss.”

  “Well, then what? I mean, if you’re afraid of being seen with a colored girl, I mean taking a colored girl up to your room—”

  “It’s not that.”

  “I mean, we can always go back to my house, where we’ll be surrounded by colored people and also by rats running out of the walls, and leaky pipes, and exposed wiring, and—”

  “There are rats where I’m staying, too.”

  “Of course, my mother might not like the idea of my bringing home a white man. She might actually begin singing the same old tune she’s been singing ever since I was a darling little pickaninny, ‘Honeychile, stay away from de white man, he is only out to get in yo sweet little pants and rob you of yo maiden.’”

  “Look, Amelia—”

  “The only thing my mother doesn’t know, made of iron though she is, is that her darling little Amelia was robbed of her ‘maiden’ on a rooftop the summer she was twelve years old, and it wasn’t a white man who did it, or even a white boy. It was six members of a street gang called the Persian Lords, the biggest blackest niggers you ever saw in your life.” Amelia paused. Bitterly, she said, “My dueña was away on vacation that summer, I guess. At the beach, don’t you know? Sand Harbor, where all the society ladies spend their time, naturally. What the hell is it, Roger?”

  “Nothing.”

  “You’re not a faggot, are you?”

  “A what?”

  “A fairy, a pansy.”

  “No.”

  “Then why—”

  “I’ll meet you later, that’s all,” Roger said. “It’s just that my friend—the one I told you about?”

  “Yes?”

  “I have to see him, that’s all.”

  “He’s a very convenient friend.”

  “I have to see him,” Roger said.

  Amelia sighed.

  “I have to.”

  Amelia sighed again.

  “Come on, let’s go back,” he said.

  “I’ll give you my home number,” she said. “I won’t go back to the drugstore, not after I told him I had a headache.”

  “All right.”

  “Will you call me?”

  “Yes. Yes, I think so.”

  “Why do you only think so?”

  “Because I…Amelia, please don’t…don’t push me, huh? Just don’t push me.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “I’ll try to call you. We’ll have supper together.”

  “Sure.”

  They barely spoke on the subway ride back. They sat side by side, and occasionally Amelia would turn to look at him, but he was busy thinking about Molly and about what he had to do. It was foolish to even imagine any other way.

  He had to go to the police, that was all there was to it.

  He left her off on the corner of her block. It was almost 12:00 noon. The wind swept through the narrow street, and she clutched her collar to her throat and ducked her head.

  “Call me,” she said.

  “I’ll try.”

  “I’ll be waiting.” She paused. In a whisper, she said, “I like the way you kiss, white man,” and then she turned and went up the street and into one of the tenements.

  He watched her until she was out of sight, and then began walking toward Grover Avenue and the police station.

  It was beginning to snow.

  The flakes were large and wet and they melted the moment they touched the asphalt streets, melted on the tops of parked automobiles, and on the lids of garbage cans standing alongside shining wet tenement stoops. In the park, on the stone wall bordering the edge of the park, and on the rolling ground and jutting boulders of the park itself, the snow was beginning to stick, covering only lightly and in patches, but sticking nonetheless. He walked alongside the stone wall with its pale-white, almost transparent covering of snow, and looked across at the police station and then took a deep breath and sucked in his belly and crossed the street.

  He went up the steps. There were seven of them.

  There were two doors. He tried the knob of the one on the left but the door did not open. He reached for the knob directly to the right of the first one. The door opened on a very large room with grilled windows running its entire length on the left-hand side and with a large raised wooden counter that looked something like a judge’s bench in front of the windows. A hand-lettered sign on top of the counter, bold black on white, read, ALL VISITORS MUST STOP AT DESK. There were two uniformed policemen behind the muster desk. One of them was wearing a sergeant’s stripes. The other was sitting behind a switchboard and was wearing earphones. A railing had been constructed some four feet in front of the desk, with lead-pipe stanchions bolted to the floor, and with a horizontal piece of pipe forming the crossbar. An electric clock was on the wall opposite the desk. The time was 12:15. Two wooden benches flanked a hissing radiator on that same wall, and a small white sign, smudged, and lettered in black with the words DETECTIVE DIVISION, pointed to an iron-runged staircase that led to the upper story. The walls were painted a pale green and looked dirty.

  Two men were standing in front of the muster desk, both of them handcuffed to the pipe railing. A patrolman stood to the side of the two men as the desk sergeant asked them questions. Roger walked to one of the benches opposite the muster desk, and sat.

  “When did you pick them up?” the sergeant asked the patrolman.

  “As they were coming out, Sarge.”

  “Where was that?”

  “1120 Ainsley.”

  “What’s that? Near Twelfth? Thirteenth?”

  “Thirteenth.”

  “What’s the name of the place?”

  “Abigail Frocks,” the patrolman said.

  “She does?” the sergeant asked, and all the men—including the two in handcuffs—burst out laughing. Roger didn’t see what was so funny.

  “It’s a dress loft up there on Ainsley,” the patrolman said. “I think they use it for storing stuff. Anyway, there’s hardly ever anybody up there, except when they’re making deliveries or pickups.”

  “Just a loft, huh?”

  “Yeah.”

  “They got a store, too?”

  “Yeah.”

  “In this precinct?”

  “Yeah, it’s just a little place on Culver.”

  “Abigail Frocks, huh?” the sergeant said, and all the men giggled again. “Okay, boys, what were you doing coming out of Abigail Frocks?” the sergeant said, and again everyone giggled.

  “We was after the pigeons,” one of the men said, suppressing his laughter and becoming serious all at once. He seemed to be about twenty-five years old, badly in need of a haircut, and wearing a gray suede jacket with gray ribbing at the cuffs and at the waist.

  “What’s your name, fella?” the sergeant asked.

  “Mancuso. Edward Mancuso.”

  “All right, now what’s this about the pigeons, Eddie?”

  “We don’t have to tell him nothing,” the second man said. He was about the same age as Mancuso, with the same shaggy haircut, and wearing a dark-brown overcoat. His trousers seemed too long for him. “They got us in here for no reason at all. We can sue them for false arrest, in fact.”

  “What’s your name?” the sergeant asked.

  “Frank Di Paolo, you know what false arrest is?”

  “Yeah, we know what false arrest is. What were you doing coming down the steps from that dress loft?”

  “I want a lawyer,” Di Paolo said.

  “For what? We haven’t even booked you yet.”

  “You got nothing to book us on.”

  “I found jimmy marks on the loft door,” the patrolman said dryly.

  “That must’ve been from some other time it got knocked over,” Di Paolo said. “You find any burglar’s tools on us?”

  “He knows all about burglar’s tools,” the sergeant said, and then turned to Di Paolo and said, “You know all about burglar’s tools, don’t you?”

  “If you live in this crumby neighborhood, you learn all about everything,” Di Paolo said.

  “Also about how to break and enter a dress loft and steal some clothes? Do you learn all about that?”

  “We was after the pigeons,” Mancuso said.

  “What pigeons?”

  “Our pigeons.”

  “In the dress loft, huh?”

  “No, on the roof.”

  “You keep pigeons on the roof of that building?”

  “No, we keep pigeons on the roof of 2335 Twelfth Street, that’s where.”

  “What’s that got to do with the dress loft?”

  “Nothing,” Mancuso said.

  “We ain’t got nothing to do with the loft, either,” Di Paolo said. “We were only in that building because our pigeons were on the roof.”

  “We only went up to get them,” Mancuso said.

  “What’s the matter?” the sergeant asked. “Don’t your pigeons know how to fly?”

  The patrolman laughed.

  “They’ve got pigeons that don’t know how to fly,” the sergeant said, encouraged, and the patrolman laughed again.

  “They know how to fly, but sometimes they don’t come back when you call them. So from where we were on our roof, we could see these two birds sitting on the roof of the building where the dress loft was in—”

  “Oh, you knew there was a dress loft in that building, huh?”