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a nudist colony for the blind. He flopped down on the stoop beside me. He poked his chest out, his eyes flashing like a pin-ball machine gone haywire, as he got ready to open up. He hiked the pants legs of his green checked suit to his calves to show his blood red socks.
    The huge zircon on his right pinky glittered under the street lamp as he cracked his knuckles and said, “Kid, my name is Party Time. I am the best flat-footed hustler in town. Money loves me and can’t stay away from me. You see that fine silk broad, I got a double saw to lay her. Course that ain’t nothing, it happens all the time. I could be one of the greatest pimps in the country if I was lazy and didn’t have so much good hustler in me.”
    I sat there listening to his bullshit until two A.M . He was likable and I was hungry for a pal. He was an orphan and he had just done a two-year bit straight up, his fourth, two months before. He had a head full of wild risky hustles he wanted to try. He needed a partner. He tried all of them on me for size.
    I got home at two-twenty. About one minute later I heard Mama’s key in the door. She had served a banquet for her white folks. I just made it into bed with all my clothes on, when she came to look in on me. I was snoring like a drunk with a sick sinus when she kissed me goodnight.
    I lay thinking in the darkness until daybreak, putting myself into, and trying to size myself into one of those quick buck schemes that Party had plotted. When the sun came up fat and bright I knew I would give Party’s version of the Murphy a whirl. I didn’t know his version was crude and dangerous, and only a weak imitation of the real Murphy.
    Years later I discovered that the Murphy, when played by experts, was a smooth short con game with a slight risk. In any section where Negro whores operate white men will flock to trick with them.
    I met Party several times after school at a pool room. He ran my role down to me and the next Friday night we got down with our hustle. Mama was serving a party so I could stay in the streets until at least one A.M .
    Around ten that night in an alley in the heart of the vice section, Seventh and Vliet Sts., we unwrapped the package that Party had brought. I rolled up my pants legs beyond my bony knees. I slipped into the twenty-five cent red-cotton dress from the Salvation Army.
    I put on the frayed red satin high-heel shoes. I pinned a scraggly piece of hair just inside the front inner band of the faded blue straw bonnet. When I tilted it on my head at a sexy angle, the ringlets of uneven hair hung down over my eyes like bangs.
    I stood wide legged, flexed my thigh and hip muscles against the tight red dress, aping the whores stance.
    Party looked me over head to toe. I was wondering how I came off as a broad. He shook his head, hunched his shoulders and walked toward the mouth of the alley to catch a sucker.
    I got the answer when be reached the sidewalk. He twisted his bead toward me and said, “Listen Man, stay outta the light, okay?”
    Within five minutes he gave me the office that some action was coming down the street. I watched Party giving the pitch to a short elderly white man. I wondered if I had enough voltage as a broad to come through with my end of the deal.
    He officed my flash cue an instant before the white man peeked up the alley at me. I jerked my skinny ass in a series of bumps and grinds and hopefully waved him toward me.
    That skinny black bitch he saw must have lit a fire in him all right. He fumbled his hide from his hip pocket and handed a bill to Party.
    The chump started up the alley at a helluva pace for an old bastard. He had paid his money and he was red hot to take his chance to stick that hot Nigger bitch waiting for him in the shadows.
    He had no chance, but in a way he was lucky. Lucky that his hide had not been fat with green backs. If he had been loaded, when I evaporated through that gang way, Party instead of fading away would have come into the