"Himes, Chester - If He Hollers Let Him Go" - читать интересную книгу автора (Himes Chester)

Alice gave me a sharp look. 'You haven't been called, have you, Bob?' she asked.
'No, of course not,' I said too fast, then slowed up some. 'I don't think I'll be called.' I tapped the cocktail table. 'I'm knocking on wood anyway.'
'You won't be called,' Mrs. Harrison said. 'You're what they call a key man.'
'They better not calf him,' Alice said, brushing her fingers lightly down the back of my neck. 'Where are we going, darling?' she asked, standing up.
I grinned at her. 'It's still a secret.'
She made a face at me and ran upstairs after her wrap. Mrs. Harrison looked curious but didn't say anything. Alice returned with a black velvet cape and I held it for her, pressing her shoulders. Mrs. Harrison followed us to the door.
'You both look so nice, it's a pity you're not going to some inter-racial affair,' she said. 'I think now is the time we should make more social contacts with white people.'
'Oh, Mother, I don't want to always be running after white people whenever I go out anywhere,' Alice protested. 'I want to go slumming down on Central Avenue.'
'You sound just like the other white people,' I said to Alice.
Mrs. Harrison followed us out on the porch. 'You shouldn't feel that way about it,' she said to Alice. 'You should take pains to show them that you're not seeking their company, but you should seek more social association with them, I'm sure.'
'I'd really like to see how that's done,' I mumbled under my breath. Alice pinched me.
We said good-night and climbed into the car. At Western I leaned over and said, 'Kiss me, gorgeous.'
She touched my lips lightly with hers so as not to muss her make-up.


CHAPTER VII

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.
"Tis a lovely evening,' he said in a rich Irish brogue. His small blue eyes were blank.
'Fine,' I echoed, giving Alice my arm. 'I'll pick the car up after dinner.'
He didn't bat an eye. Beckoning to his assistant, a tall, sallow-faced youth in the same kind of uniform, he said, 'Park the gentleman's car,' then walked with us to the glass door and held it open. That went off all right.
But when we mounted the red-carpeted stairs and stepped into the full view of the lobby we brought on a yellow alert. The place was filled with solid white America: rich-looking, elderly couples, probably retired; the still active executive type in their forties and fifties, faces too red and hair too thin, clad in expensive suits which didn't hide their paunches, mostly with wives who refused to give up; and the younger folks no more than half of whom were in uniform, with their brittle young women with rouge-scarred mouths and hard, hunting eyes. There was a group of elderly Army officers, a brigadiergeneral, two colonels, and a major; and apart from them a group of young naval officers looking very white--ensigns perhaps. I didn't see but one Jew I recognized as a Jew, and nobody of any other race at all. And I only noticed a few couples in evening dress.
It seemed that to a person everyone froze. It started at the front where we were first noticed, and ran the length and breadth of the room, including the room clerks, the porters, the bellmen, the people behind desks. Many were caught in awkward positions, some in the middle of a gesture, some with their mouths half open. Then suddenly there was a concerted effort to ignore us and only a few continued to stare.
'The great white world,' I said flippantly, leaning slightly toward Alice as we walked the gauntlet of the room. 'Strictly D-Day. Now I know how a fly feels in a glass of buttermilk.'
She moved like a sleepwalker, her nails biting into my arm as she clung to it. Her shoulders were high, square, stiff, and her face was set in rigid lines, making her seem a hard, harried thirty. She didn't speak.
'Relax, baby,' I said as we passed a group of middle-aged people. 'I'll show 'em my shipyard badge and if that don't help, all they can do is lynch us.' I didn't try to keep my voice lowered and the people must have heard; they drew away as we passed.
Alice blushed a deep dull red, but some of the stiffness left her. 'You don't have to prove it,' she said. 'They expect you to be a clown anyway.'
'Well anyway, I'm running true to form,' I said. We were both just making words.
Looking up, I caught a young captain's eye. He didn't turn away when our gazes met; he didn't change expression; he just watched us with the intent stare of the analyst.
The head waiter came quickly up the four steps from the dining-room with bleak eyes and a painted smile. He was a slight, round-faced man with a short sharp nose and thin, plastered hair. 'We are sorry, but all the tables are reserved,' he greeted us blandly in a high, careful voice.
I looked down at him with a broad smile that went all down in my throat and chest. It was all I could do to keep from putting my finger in his face. 'Don't be sorry on my account,' I said, slightly slurring the words with too much throat. 'I have one reserved. Jones--Robert Jones.'
The painted smile came off, leaving slackness in his face, and his eyes looked trapped. 'Jones, Mr. Jones . . .' The 'Mr.' almost strangled him, but he recovered quickly. 'Certainly, sir. I'll have to consult my lists for tonight. We have so many unexpected officers whom we must serve, you know.' This time his smile included me.
But I wouldn't accept it. Alice squeezed my arm.
He turned, left us standing on the platform at the head of the entrance stairway, walked the length of the dining-room, and disappeared through the doorway into the pantry.
'He must keep his lists in the icebox,' I said, and Alice squeezed my arm again.
I jerked a belligerent look at her, then suddenly felt good all over. She had regained her control and she looked so poised and assured and beautiful, standing there among the white folks, I filled right up to the throat. I noticed a number of the white men sliding furtive glances of admiration at her, and I thought, 'You just go right on and keep yours, brothers, and I'll keep mine--and won't miss a thing either.' Alice looked up and caught me looking at her and I winked.
'You're a cute chick,' I said. 'How 'bout a date?'
She smiled. 'It's nice to go out with you,' she whispered. 'I feel so well protected.'
I didn't get it so I just grinned. But when several other diners came up, walked past us down into the dining-room, and were seated by the captains, her smile faded. I began getting on my muscle again; I looked down over the sea of curious faces disdainfully. Breath started choking up in me and I thought, Tomorrow I'm going to kill one of you bastards, and it loosened up again. I lit a cigarette to steady my hands, thumbed the match toward the sandbox.
Finally the head waiter returned from the pantry and now he was affable. It was more insulting than hostility. He led us down to the last table by the pantry door and beckoned a crooked-faced, slightly stooped Greek waiter to take our order.
'We came here to get something to eat out of the kitchen, not to eat in it,' I said.