Lucinda is on guard. Standing motionless by the doorway of the cafeteria, three days a week, eight hours a day; her feet are swollen like delicate balloons. The job, which is not to be taken seriously as the pay is minimal and like her efforts, requires little of her, nonetheless demands a suit jacket be worn, navy blue with gold braided trim, which she wears with her black slacks, inexpensive polyester, and her sensible black shoes, in which her feet softly inflate. On quiet days she thinks she can almost hear them, a gentle hiss like the steam from a manhole.
There is no chair. A chair would appear lazy, and so there is nothing to lean on but the wall. Occasionally the customers, all of whom seem incredibly white, white as butter, or else pinky soft as baby, or sometimes, in the case of the older men, red like raw meat. These are the colors of whiteness: varying alarming shades of reddish flesh. They come in, one hand in pocket jingling imaginary change, or else a hand delicately holding on to the strap of a purse. They come in dressed in neatly pressed clothes, beiges and grays and blues, strangely pinched faces like undiscovered dinosaurs, and smile their pitying smiles. They assume, due to her brownness, her required silence, that she cannot speak English, and so they choose not to address her in words but in curt and embarrassed nods and toothless, close-lipped smiles.
Lucinda is tired of them, these neatly pressed people, these office drones that feel, to her, incredibly rich, incredibly powerful, but essentially dim. Afterall, its them who cannot form sensible lines around the salad bar, and mix the lettuces up with their tongs only to complain about it afterwards, or who haggle with the cashier over pennies. Like the children of the wealthy, they are frustratingly spoiled and insanely dangerous. They represent the class that gets its way, can shift its weight around, and unlike her, can be taken seriously. Their clothing is just pricey enough, their jobs just white collar enough to earn them respect. Men wearing the pink collared shirts their wives picked out for them, eating bean salads and drinking vitamin water; men with limited but nonetheless existent power, the power to look right through Lucinda, to smile dutifully at the wall behind her head and register nothing.
