"Why'd you come back to the motel?"

"To get my wallet. I'm gonna buy us all a meal."

Jimmie had said she was waiting in a music store. It was actually a pawnshop, a dirt-smudged orange building sandwiched between a pool hall and a bar on the edge of the black district. She was sitting on a bench, under the canvas awning, twisting a peg on a Gibson mandolin that rested in her lap. Most of the finish below the sound hole had been worn away by years of plectrum strokes across the wood.

The street was hot, full of noise and dust and smoke from junker cars. "Oh, hi, fellers," she said, looking up from under her straw hat. "I thought you weren't coming back. I was just fixing to leave."

"Did you buy the mandolin?" Jimmie asked.

"It's already mine. I pay the interest on it so Mr. Pearl doesn't have to sell it. He lets me come in and play it whenever I want."

She returned the mandolin to the pawnshop owner, then came outside again. "Well, I'd better get going," she said.

"I'm taking us to lunch," Jimmie said.

"That's nice, Jimmie, but I got to get ready for work," she said.

"Where you work?" he asked.

She smiled, her eyes green and empty in the sunlight, her attention drifting to a car backfiring in the street.

"This time we'll drive you," I said.

"My bus stops right on the corner. See, there it comes now, right on time," she said, and started walking toward the intersection. A throwaway shopper's magazine was tucked under her arm. She looked back over her shoulder. "I've got your phone number now. I'll call you. I promise."

Jimmie stared after her. "You should have heard her sing," he said.

When the bus pulled away from the curb, Ida was sitting up front, in the whites-only section, totally absorbed with her magazine.