Chapter 17 Summary

Lutie is walking around Harlem thinking about $200.00. She is trying to find a way to come up with the money, but the people that she knows gets money in small driblets. She did not even own anything she could sell for that amount of money. She finally thinks about Boots Smith and decides that she will make him loan her the money.

She looks him up in the phonebook and gives him a call. He was sleeping when the phone woke him and he does not comprehend what she is saying to him, but he tells her he wants to see her and invites her to his apartment.

When she arrives at his apartment, her only reaction to the lavish building is, "if Boots could afford to live here, then lending her two hundred dollars would present no problem to him."

While telling...