Half of Paradise

“I want a room upstairs for the afternoon.”

“It’s a little early. I don’t know if any of the girls are in.”

J.P. took out his billfold and put five ten-dollar bills on the bar.

“Let me ask my wife,” the bartender said. “Emma, come over here a minute.”

The woman who had been sweeping propped her broom against a table and came behind the bar. She was stout and had big arms like a man. There was a large wart on her chin. She didn’t look at J.P.

“Mr. Winfield wants to go upstairs. I told him it was a little early for the girls,” the bartender said.

She took the money off the bar and rang the cash register and put it in the drawer.

“Come with me,” she said.

J.P. followed her off into a narrow hallway at the back. She opened the door to a stairway and climbed the steps with J.P. behind her. The upstairs was divided by a hallway with a series of doors on each side. The floor was covered with a tattered maroon carpet. The hall ended in a single large room that served as the kitchen. There was a curtain pulled across the doorway. The woman left J.P. standing at the top of the staircase and went down the hall opening doors and looking into rooms. She came back and went past him to the kitchen, not looking at him.

“They keep their rooms worse than niggers,” she said.

He watched her pull aside the curtain and look into the kitchen. Four women were sitting around the table eating. She held the curtain and stepped back for him to look in.

“You want one in particular?” she said.

“Is Margaret still here?”

“She got sick.”

“It don’t matter, then.”

“There’s a customer, Honey,” the woman said.

“Yes, ma’am,” a girl at the table said, and wiped her mouth with a napkin and got up from her chair. She came out into the hall. Her hair was long and honey-colored. She wore a pink flowered house robe. She was a little overweight and the pink polish on her fingernails was chipped away.

“Honey is one of our best girls. We never had complaints about her,” the woman said.

The girl smiled at J.P. He put a bill in the woman’s hand.

“Tell Jerry to send up a bottle and some glasses,’ he said.

“This has always been a good place. We never had trouble with townspeople or police,” the woman said.

“I ain’t going to tear up your place. Tell Jerry to bring the bottle.”

The woman put the bill in her dress pocket and went back down the stairs. J.P. followed Honey into her room.

“Say, aren’t you that singer? The one on the Louisiana Jubilee?” she said.

“No.”

“You look like him. What’s his name?”

“I don’t know. I’m a vitamin tonic salesman. You want to buy some vitamin tonic to keep strong in your work?”

“You even sound like him. You sure you’re not him?”

“I sell vitamin tonic to working girls that keep late hours,” he said.

“Salesmen don’t have money for an all-afternoon date.”