Red

Popeye, who is himself impotent, brings Red into Temple's life as a surrogate sexual partner for her - turning Reba's "respectable" brothel, as she indignantly puts it, "into a peep-show" (255). When Temple tries to run away with Red, however, Popeye kills him. Red "looked like a college boy" (235), but is part of the Memphis underworld. Temple offers to go with him "Anywhere" (238), and warns him that Popeye plans to kill him, but her interest in him seems entirely sexual; her physical longing for him is graphically portrayed. His death is not narrated, but at the raucous funeral service that is held for him in the same speakeasy where he and Temple danced we see the hole Popeye's bullet made in "the center of his forehead" (249).