Summary

While she is waiting to head to a job interview as an office manager at Andrews and Stein Engineering Company, Ophelia “Cocoa” Day notices a man in a coffee shop. Cocoa has been looking for a job for six months, and has become a self-defined expert on reading people. After watching the man eating, she is intrigued, and considers going over to offer him a toothpick, but decides against it. Cocoa contemplates the dating scene in New York, and how difficult it is to find a good man.

Cocoa believes racism is rampant in New York, only underground, hidden behind “equal opportunity.” She speculates segregation would have been easier because then at least you’d know for sure whether or not it was worth applying for a given job. The office is on the fifth floor of a six-floor lower-rent office building. The...