Favorite Passages

   The taxi-drivers in front of the Coffee Pot said, "Hello, baby; hello, sweetheart; hi, kid; how you doin', baby; hey, what's your hurry, sweetheart?" She walked on. They kept it up until she turned her head slightly in their direction and called back at them, "Nuts!" She turned the corner, and her heels felt as though they were biting into the sidewalk, the way they always felt when she was angry. Every time she passed the Coffee Pot, every time she came near the taxi-drivers, she had her mind made up that she was not going to say a word to them. "I won't give them that satisfaction," she would say to herself. And every time she snapped back at them, it made her angry. Some evenings she would be on her way home in a good humor; tired, all right, but with a good day's work behind her and that much more money earned. Then she would come to the Coffee Pot, and the same thing would happen over again, and she would get home full of hatred and with her feet hurting again.