Guanagaspar. Present day.
“Yes, it was hard for her that you show up at Miss Cassie house just so, with no warning. And you right, she was not expecting Harry St. George, the Eggman from home, to know wine from water. She hide away the bottle to spare you the embarrassment. But when Boss take a sip and liked it, she say she wanted to laugh out loud with happiness.
“She say next day when you drive them to do shopping, Boss get discouraged-discouraged. He find everything too dear. He had to count out his money and calculate how much everything cost in Guanagaspar dollars in front you, and when he realize how expensive everything turning out to be, and that in front of you he was having to change his mind about buying this and that, he get vex and start talking rude-rude to her. Then, in a store, he was waiting in the line-up to pay for something, and a white woman step in front him like he didn’t even exist. The sales-clerk, like she, too, didn’t see Boss, she take the woman goods and money. And Boss say nobody ever treat him so. How up there nobody have a clue who he is, and that get him vex for so. Madam say you pretend you didn’t see, but Boss not stupid. He feel you was watching everything. She say Boss make demands to speak to the manager, and when he ask the clerk for the manager, she say is she self who is manager. Up there, his money, by the time he convert it, ten to one, couldn’t buy him what all his life he know to be his right. That is why Madam tell you to go and wait for them in a coffee shop while they finish up their shopping. Not so, you had to do that? You see? I tell you, she tell me everything. Madam say she know she was slighting you but she was just doing what she had to do until Boss leave.
“Boss didn’t want you to know that she was staying on longer than he. He vex for so, from the start, when he hear that she had telephone you. By the time you show up at Miss Cassie house, they had already had words about you. But she was buying time. Time teach her how to get from Boss what it was she want, in all kinds of ways, without him even noticing. But I think she wait too long in the end.”