Free The End of a Primitive by Chester Himes

would stand patiently beside the door, merely waiting his turn, until the girls cleared out, then he would enter and lock the door. They despised him.
    “Seems he could shit somewhere else while we’re making coffee!” Anne flared.
    “He’s a son of a bitch if ever there was one,” Kriss murmured consolingly.
    “I’m going to curse that man yet,” Anne declared.
    Dorothy heard them talking about Watson and came from next door. “Kirby says he’s going to have a water closet installed in Watson’s office,” she said, grinning at Kriss.
    “Well, I’m going back and knock,” Anne said defiantly. “He’s had time enough.”
    Kriss chuckled. “He’s not a duck, dear.”
    Anne had to laugh. When she left, Dorothy came around the desk and looked over Kriss’s shoulder. But instead of commenting on the work, she tenderly fingered Kriss’s curls and said, “Your hair always looks so fresh.”
    Kriss was slightly embarrassed. She didn’t like women to touch her. But Dorothy was different. She knew that Dorothy had a crush on her that amounted almost to worship. Dot was forever complimenting her on her dress, her carriage, her poise, telling her how pretty she was, how brilliant everyone considered her. Every now and then she wondered if Dot were a lesbian. She was disconcertingly affectionate, and awfully jealous. Whenever another woman came to Kriss’s office—even Anne, who was as soft as butter about men—Dot would find some excuse to come in too. But she liked Dot. And it paid to be nice to her. As Kirby’s confidential secretary she had inside information about everything that went on at the executive level—and she told Kriss everything she wanted to know, in strictest confidence of course. Besides which, Kriss felt sorry for her. She was such a shy woman and so sensitive, so easily hurt; really a virgin at heart despite the fact she was almost as old as Kriss. She had such an enormous capacity for emotion; she wanted to be loved violently, but was petrified with fear by the very thought of it. Kriss often wondered if Dot had ever slept with a man. Probably so! She’d never heard of the stone lions roaring when Dot passed the library at 42nd and Fifth, which they did whenever a virgin passed.
    “It’s just my country look,” Kriss giggled. “That’s a very pretty blouse, baby.”
    “Oh, this old thing!” It was a soft white nylon of a mannish cut, worn with a large black bow. “You’ve seen it before.”
    Kriss wished that Dot would wear things that were more feminine. It would do her good. “Quit despising yourself,” Kriss wanted to say. Dot’s air of wistful self-deprecation always slightly angered her. She quickly changed the conversation from clothes.
    “Watson’s going to keep on until Anne sits on him someday,” she said. “And he doesn’t know how much Anne weighs.”
    “Oh, that reminds me of a joke I want to tell you. Mrs Donahue told it to me last night.” She grinned. “I don’t know where she hears such things.”
    Kriss knew Mrs Donahue, the eighty-two year old semi-invalid with whom Dorothy lived, and she knew why the old lady told Dorothy those Rabelaisian jokes—she thought her prim genteel roomer much too respectable for her own good. So did Kriss. She gave Dorothy a wicked grin. “Tell me, baby.”
    Anne came in at that moment with the coffee and Dorothy hesitated. She couldn’t bear to be intimate with another woman. But when Kriss urged, “Go on. Dot, tell Anne, too,” she began. “Well—” then looked at Anne and blurted, “I got this from my landlady.”
    Anne flung her a quick look and continued serving the coffee.
    “She knows, dear,” Kriss said, but the sarcasm was lost on Dorothy.
    “Well—there was a Texan wandering about the city wearing a ten gallon hat—”
    Now Anne looked solidly at Dorothy, but bit back the words, “You don’t say?” Instead she put her sting into the anonymous Texan. “With water on the brain.”
    Kriss