It was just turning dark when I pulled to the curb in front of the hotel. Alice clutched my arm and whispered, 'Oh, no, Bob, no! I don't feel like being refused. I'm not in the mood for it.'

'What the hell!' I said, startled. Some other girl, but not Alice; she was always going to some luncheon or dinner conference at the downtown hotels. Not so long before, one of the Negro weeklies had carried a picture of her knocking herself out down there with a bunch of city big shots. Then I got annoyed.

'You couldn't be getting cold feet after all the bragging you've been doing about never being refused at all the hotels you're supposed to've stayed in all over the world? What're you tryna do, make it light on me? You don't have to feel you got to look out for me. These folks don't worry me, not today.'

'It's not that,' she argued tensely. 'It's just that it's uncomfortable and it takes too much out of me.'

'I got reservations,' I said. 'You don't think I'm taking you in cold.'

'It isn't that,' she tried again. 'It just takes an effort, Bob, and I wanted to let my hair down and have some fun.'

I was getting sore. 'You seem to have enough fun with the other people you go here with. Scared because you haven't got the white folks to cover you?'

'Shhhh!' she cautioned under her breath. 'Here comes the doorman.'

'Goddamn, let him come!' I said. 'Am I supposed to shut up for the help?' I knew I was being loud-mouthed but she'd shaken my poise and I was trying to get it back.

A big, paunched man in a powder-blue uniform with enough gold braid for an admiral and a face like a red-stained rock put a white-gloved hand on the car door and pulled it open. He helped Alice to the curb, touched my elbow as I followed her.