The food is piled high on platters. The driver thinks of the last bit of food he ate, a pitiful apple, on the ranch late last night. The hitchhiker thinks of the disgusting “nigger food” he was offered at the illicit club, and hatred burns in his belly. The teenager hasn’t eaten since this morning. He wouldn’t dare to even think of touching the food in this rich, white person’s party. Although no one has eyed him, which in itself is disconcerting, he is too ingrained with the severe restrictions on the behavior of a black person, when found in the company of anybody other than other black people. His momma would laugh, and then yell, if he ever told her where he was this evening. Even the servants are white (and not necessarily poor).

The hitchhiker decides to wait until he has separated from the driver and the teenager before he digs in to the leg of lamb, just set down on a table and steaming in its own juices. The smell makes his stomach grumble as his tongue wells up against the roof of his mouth. The driver unabashedly grabs at a pile of lobster tails and sucks the meat. He continues his stroll and passes casual glances around the room, as if he didn’t have the sizable hunk of pink-red armor sticking out of his mouth: the strange pacifier of the black-tie set. The teenager looks at a ransacked and discarded tray of crackers and hunks of cheese. His hand unwittingly reaches toward it, but the pangs of guilt -actually a complex grab-bag of emotions based upon the blacks’ hatred of their own stereotype, combined with the constant fear of fulfilling it- keep it from going any further.

The hitchhiker spies the black band, about six or seven “smokeys”, including Smokey himself, in the corner. They look more impressive in their eggplant and taupe suits here -under lights so brilliant, they seemingly come from nowhere, and everywhere- than they did in the darkened club. They stand huddled in the same semi-circle formation that they always fall back into as a default. No one says anything in particular, but they are content to merely look around and take in the scene that couldn’t be more opposite to what they are used to. Smokey has on display his usual look of a proud owner: even though he may not know a single soul in this room, he can still gaze out upon it as if everyone here is working under his auspice, even if they do not yet know it.