”We were firmly joined in the hypocrisy to play out the scene, The personal Manager, oh, he’s Mister Cooper, but I’m not sure you’’ll find him here tomorrow. Oh, but you can try. Thank you. You’re Welcome. And I was out of the musty room and out into the even mustier lobby. In the street I saw the receptionist and myself going faithfully through places that were stale with familiarity although I had never encountered that type of situation before and probably neither had she. We were like actors who knowing the play by heart were still able to cry afresh over the old tragedies and laugh spontaneously at the comic situations. The miserable little encounter had nothing to do with me. The me of me, anymore than it had to do with that silly clerk. The incident was a recurring dream encountered years before by stupid whites and it came back to haunt us all. The secretary and I were like Hamlet and Laertes in the final scene, when where harm done by one ancestor to the other we were bound to do it to the death. Also, because a play must begin somewhere. I went further than forgiving the clerk, I accepted her as a fellow victim of the same puppeteer. On the streetcar I put my fare and the conductor looked at me with the usual hard eyes of white contempt. Move into the car. Please move on, in the car. She padded her money changer. Her sudden nasal accent sliced my meditation and I looked deep into my thoughts. All lies. All comfortable lies. The receptionist was not innocent and neither was I. The whole sharade we played out in that crummy waiting room had directly to do with me black, and her white. I wouldn’t move into the street car but stood on the ledge over the conductor, glaring, my mind sharpened so energetically that the announcement made my veins stand out and my mouth tightened into a prune. I would have the job. I would be conductorette.”