Free The Blacker the Berry by Wallace Thurman

passed, heading for Seventh Avenue. The people in the room began talking again.
    “Dat last job.” “Boy, she was dressed right down to the bricks.”
    “And I told him …” “Yeah, we went to see ‘Flesh and the Devil’.” “Some parteee.” “I just been here a week.”
    Emma Lou’s mind became jumbled with incoherent wisps of thought. Her left foot beat a nervous tattoo upon a sagging floor board. The door opened. The gray-haired lady with the smile in her voice beckoned, and Emma Lou walked into the private office of Mrs. Blake.
    Four people in the room. The only window facing a brick wall on the outside. Two telephones, both busy. A good-looking young man, fingering papers in a filing cabinet, while he talked over one of the telephones. The lady from the outer office. Another lady, short and brown, like butterscotch, talking over a desk telephone and motioning for Emma Lou to sit down. Blur of high-powered electric lights, brighter than daylight. The butterscotch lady hanging up the receiver.
    “I’m through with you young man.” Crisp tones. Metal, warm in spite of itself.
    “Well, I ain’t through with you.” The fourth person was speaking. Emma Lou had hardly noticed him before. Sullen face. Dull black eyes in watery sockets. The nose flat, the lips thick and pouting. One hand clutching a derby, the other clenched, bearing down on the corner of the desk.
    “I have no intention of arguing with you. I’ve said my say. Go on outside. When a cook’s job comes in, you can have it. That’s all I can do.”
    “No, it ain’t all you can do.”
    “Well, I’m not going to give you your fee back.”
    The lady from the outside office returns to her post. The good-looking young man is at the telephone again.
    “Why not, I’m entitled to it?”
    “No, you’re not. I send you on a job, the man asks you to do something, you walk out, Mister Big I—am. Then, show up here two days later and want your fee back. No siree.”
    “I didn’t walk out.”
    “The man says you did.”
    “Aw, sure, he’d say anything. I told him I came there to be a cook, not a waiter. I—”
    “It was your place to do as he said, then, if not satisfied, to come here and tell me so.”
    “I am here.”
    “All right now. I’m tired of this. Take either of two courses—go on outside and wait until a job comes in or else go down to the license bureau and tell them your story. They’ll investigate. If I’m right—”
    “You know you ain’t right.”
    “Not according to you, no, but by law, yes. That’s all.”
    Telephone ringing. Warm metal whipping words into it. The good-looking young man yawning. He looks like a Y.M.C.A. secretary. The butterscotch woman speaking to Emma Lou:
    “You’re a stenographer?”
    “Yes.”
    “I have a job in a real estate office, nice firm, nice people. Fill out this card. Here’s a pen.”
    “Mrs. Blake, you know you ain’t doin’ right.”
    Why didn’t this man either shut up or get out?
    “I told you what to do. Now please do one or the other. You’ve taken up enough of my time. The license bureau—”
    “You know I ain’t goin’ down there. I’d rather you keep the fee, if you think it will do you any good.”
    “I only keep what belongs to me. I’ve found out that’s the best policy.”
    Why should they want three people for reference? Where had she worked before? Lies. Los Angeles was far away.
    “Then, if a job comes in you’ll give it to me?”
    “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you.”
    “Awright.” And finally he went out.
    Mrs. Blake grinned across the desk at Emma Lou. “Your folks won’t do, honey.”
    “Do you have many like that?”
    The card was made out. Mrs. Blake had it in her hand. Telephones ringing, both at once. Loud talking in the outer office. Lies. Los Angeles was far away. I can bluff. Mrs. Blake had finished reading over the card.
    “Just came to New York, eh?”
    “Yes.”
    “Like it better than Los Angeles?”
    The