Had she gone into the welfare office each month she would have needed to check her haughty disposition above all else since the uneducated chattering clients, the wait, and the lowly workers abounded and it all was such an indignity. Her tacit repugnance of the apparatchik would not have been something that she could have restrained fully. She would have needed to let bits of it ooze out gradually and undetectably or the intake workers could have forced her to go back to the IM worker's office and explain why she hadn't gone on very many job interviews and why someone with a Master's degree from Rice University would need assistance at all. She would have hated them not for any petty personal grievance (she didn't "give a flying f--" what they thought of her) but for reasons totally outside herself: if it weren't for derelicts and freeloaders, these welfare workers would have been unemployed so it was outrageous of them to be condescending if not outright hateful to the monthly recipients; and if it were not for such do-nothings, breeders of illegitimate children, iconoclasts, and antisocialites (all which summarized her in such a unique blend) these client-intake workers would not have known the difference between being indolent and being industrious. Not having anyone to compare themselves to, they might have lived their lives in ignorance as to the meaning of such concepts, or worse, found their own paper producing jobs as the lowest tier of the caste. Had it not been for prostitution, she would have been leeching onto public assistance as a menace to herself and society at large. Each month Gabriele Sangfroid's hard expressions would have probably intimidated the intake workers more than the useful amount and she might have found herself forced to wait all morning and afternoon on an income maintenance worker whose only wish would be to avoid dealing with such a mad woman. Then in late afternoon a supervisor might have called her name and she would have needed to encounter hateful stares for being a flagrant mutineer of the American work ethic. There might have been the undulating of the tongue reminding her that she was a Master's degree holder. Such a supervisor, or a brave IM worker, would have shot missiles of time consuming bureaucracy and lack of kindness at her and Gabriele's laser eyes would have needed to shoot them down gently, cordially, and politely. "I understand that someone with a Master's Degree from Rice University could be gainfully employed. I realize that there are professional jobs available to me. Right now I'm poor and I have a baby. I'm searching for the right job that will allow me to continue to devote as much care for him that I can do. You know the way it is with mothers. It is hard to find that employer who is sensitive to the fact that one is a mother." Something like that might have been what she would have communicated. It would have been