Idiots First Read Online Free

I met Mrs. Ornita Harris. She was standing by herself under an open umbrella at the bus stop, crosstown 110th, and I picked up her green glove that she had dropped on the wet sidewalk. It was in the end of November. Before I could ask her was it hers, she grabbed the glove out of my hand, closed her umbrella, and stepped in the bus. I got on right after her.
    I was annoyed so I said, “If you’ll pardon me, Miss, there’s no law that you have to say thanks, but at least don’t make a criminal out of me.”
    â€œWell, I’m sorry,” she said, “but I don’t like white men trying to do me favors.”
    I tipped my hat and that was that. In ten minutes I got off the bus but she was already gone.
    Who expected to see her again but I did. She came into my store about a week later for a bottle of scotch.
    â€œI would offer you a discount,” I told her, “but I know you don’t like a certain kind of a favor and I’m not looking for a slap in the face.”
    Then she recognized me and got a little embarrassed.
    â€œI’m sorry I misunderstood you that day.”
    â€œSo mistakes happen.”
    The result was she took the discount. I gave her a dollar off.
    She used to come in about every two weeks for a fifth of Haig and Haig. Sometimes I waited on her, sometimes my helpers, Jimmy or Mason, also colored, but I said to give the discount. They both looked at me but I had nothing to be ashamed. In the spring when she came in we used to
talk once in a while. She was a slim woman, dark but not the most dark, about thirty years I would say, also well built, with a combination nice legs and a good-size bosom that I like. Her face was pretty, with big eyes and high cheek bones, but lips a little thick and nose a little broad. Sometimes she didn’t feel like talking, she paid for the bottle, less discount, and walked out. Her eyes were tired and she didn’t look to me like a happy woman.
    I found out her husband was once a window cleaner on the big buildings, but one day his safety belt broke and he fell fifteen stories. After the funeral she got a job as a manicurist in a Times Square barber shop. I told her I was a bachelor and lived with my mother in a small three-room apartment on West Eighty-third near Broadway. My mother had cancer, and Ornita said she was very sorry.
    One night in July we went out together. How that happened I’m still not so sure. I guess I asked her and she didn’t say no. Where do you go out with a Negro woman? We went to the Village. We had a good dinner and walked in Washington Square Park. It was a hot night. Nobody was surprised when they saw us, nobody looked at us like we were against the law. If they looked maybe they saw my new lightweight suit that I bought yesterday and my shiny bald spot when we walked under a lamp, also how pretty she was for a man of my type. We went in a movie on West Eighth Street. I didn’t want to go in but she said she had heard about the picture. We went in like strangers and we came out like strangers. I wondered what was in her mind and I thought to myself, whatever is in there it’s not a certain white man that I know. All night long we went together like we were chained. After the movie she
wouldn’t let me take her back to Harlem. When I put her in a taxi she asked me, “Why did we bother?”
    For the steak, I wanted to say. Instead I said, “You’re worth the bother.”
    â€œThanks anyway.”
    Kiddo, I thought to myself after the taxi left, you just found out what’s what, now the best thing is forget her.
    It’s easy to say. In August we went out the second time. That was the night she wore a purple dress and I thought to myself, my God, what colors. Who paints that picture paints a masterpiece. Everybody looked at us but I had pleasure. That night when she took off her dress it was in a furnished room I had the sense to rent a few days before. With my