When they went out to the car there were just the very finest bits of white powder coming down, with an almost comical little ethereal hauteur, to add themselves to the really important, piled-up masses of their kind.

And it wasn’t cold.

Evelina laughed happily to herself: it was pleasant out, and tonight she and Paul were very close to each other.

He held the door open for her—instead of going on around to the driving side, getting in, and leaving her to get in at her side as best she could. When he took this way of calling her lady and informing her of his love, and he took it only on special occasions such as these movie Saturdays, she felt precious, protected, delicious. She gave him an excited look of gratitude. He smiled indulgently.

“Want it to be the Eagle again?”

“Oh, no, no, Paul. Let’s not go there tonight. I feel too grand inside to be going there tonight. Gum-smacking. Haw-hawing. Cursing. Feet. Let’s go downtown?”

She had to suggest that with a question mark at the end, always. He usually had three protests. Too hard to park. Too much money. Too many white folks. And tonight she could really expect a no because he had come out in his blue work shirt. There was a spot of apricot juice on the collar, too. His shoes were not shined. . . . But he nodded!

“We’ve never been to the World Playhouse,” she said timidly and all in one breath. “They have a good picture. I’d feel rich in there.”

“You really wanta?”

“Oh. Please!”

“Sure.”

It wasn’t like other movie houses. People from the Studebaker Theatre which, as Evelina whispered to Paul, was “all locked-arms” with the World Playhouse, were strolling up and down the lobby, laughing softly, smoking with gentle grace.

“There must be a play going on in there and this is probably an intermission,” Evelina whispered again.

“I don’t know why you feel you got to whisper,” whispered Paul. “Nobody else is whispering in here.” He looked around, resentfully, wanting to see a few, just a few colored faces. There were only their own.

Evelina laughed a nervous defiant little laugh; and spoke loudly. “There certainly isn’t any reason to whisper. Silly, huh?”

The strolling women were cleverly gowned. Some of them had flowers or “flashers” (Evelina) in their hair. They looked — cooked. Well cared-for. And as though they had never seen a roach or a rat in their lives. Or gone without heat for a week. And the men had even edges. They were men, Evelina thought, who wouldn’t stoop to fret over less than a thousand dollars.

“We’re the only colored people here,” said Paul.

She got mad at him—a little. “Oh, hell. Who in hell cares?”

“Well, what I want to know is, where do you pay the damn fares.”

“There’s the box office. Go on up.”

He went on up. It was closed.

“Well,” sighed Evelina, “I guess the picture has started already But we can’t have missed much. Go on up to that girl at the candy counter and ask her where we should pay our money.”

He didn’t want to do that. The girl was lovely and blonde and cold-eyed, and her arms were akimbo, and the set of her head was eloquent. No one else was at the counter.

“Well. We’ll wait a minute. And see—”

Evelina hated him again. Coward! She ought to flounce over to the girl herself—show him up. . . .

The people in the lobby tried to avoid looking curiously at two shy Negroes wanting desperately not to seem shy. The white women looked at the Negro woman in her outfit with which no special fault could be found, but which made them think, somehow, of close rooms, and wee, close lives. They looked at her hair. They liked to see a dark colored girl with long hair. They were always slightly surprised, but agreeably so, when they did. They supposed it was the hair that had got her that tall, yellowish, good-looking Negro man.

The white men tried not to look at the Negro man in the blue work shirt, the Negro man without a tie.

An usher opened a door of the World Playhouse part and ran quickly down the few steps that led from it to the lobby. Paul opened his mouth.

“Say, fella. Where do we get the tickets for the movie?”

The usher glanced at Paul’s feet before answering. Then he said coolly, but not unpleasantly, “I’ll take the money.”

They were able to go in.

And the picture! Evelina was so glad that they had not gone to the Eagle! Here was technicolor. And the love story was sweet. And there was classical music that silvered its way into you and made your back cold. And the theater itself! It was no palace, no such great shakes as the Tivoli out south, for instance (where many colored people went every night). But you felt good sitting there, yes, good, and as if, when you left it, you would be going home to a sweet-smelling apartment with flowers on little gleaming tables; and thick rich rugs; and wonderful silver on night blue velvet, in chests; and crackly sheets; and lace spreads on such beds as you saw at Marshall Field’s. Instead of back to your kit’n’t apt., with the garbage of your floor’s six families in a big can just outside your door, and the gray sound of little gray feet scratching away from it as you drag up those flights of narrow complaining stairs.

Paul pressed her hand. “We oughta do this more often.”

And again. “Yes, we’ll have to come here often. And go to plays, too. I mean, at the Blackstone, and Studebaker, and Opera House.”

She pressed back, smiling beautifully to herself in the darkness. Though she knew that once the spell was over it would be a year, two years, more, before he would return to the World Playhouse. And he might never go to a legitimate play. But she was learning to love moments. To love moments for themselves.

When the picture was over, and the lights revealed them for what they were, the Negroes stood up among the furs and good cloth and faint perfume, looked about them eagerly. They hoped they would meet no cruel eyes. They hoped no one would look intruded upon. They had enjoyed the picture so they were so happy, they wanted to laugh, to say warmly to the other outgoers, “Good, huh? Wasn’t it swell?”—If only no one would look intruded upon . . . . . .