The observer enters the Chinese takeout.

Behind the counter toils a middle-aged Chinaman and a shapely Chinese woman with off-putting, yet endearing, mouse-like facial features that crease in a squinting smile as she takes his order.

Next to him paces a tall, fat, box-torsoed white man of emasculated aspect, fearful of eye-contact, soon to receive his feast and skitter jigglingly away.

Behind him sits and squirms a mսlatto boy, a bundle of undirected and neglected energy—a boy of the type that might have once been trained to manage a plantation or conduct sensitive affairs for his master, who might have joined a literary circle—but who is currently enslaved, and held for ransom by the beast that sprawls across the table from him.

An expensively manicured, pale hand takes up the space on the table before the boy that should have been reserved for his study or diversion. The hand held a large smart phone, gaudily dressed in pink, as a ring-bearing thumb tapped its long purple nail on the screen, scrolling for pictures of mixed-race celebrity icons.

The arm was heavily tattooed and widened from too thick to obese as it terminated in an affluently sweatered shoulder—for on this hot day a whore must continue her gaudy display—rubbed by golden earrings larger than the palm of her hand.

The thick black hair was recently styled and hung limply in the humid air around the purple eye-shadowed eyes which shone but bleakly beneath their heavy lids, over a scowl, that overhung a frown, that accented a chin doubling down over a gold pimp chain, which hung upon pushed-up breasts, themselves resting upon the dirty table top as her expanding incubator—the very sorrow belching belly that is about to double her State stipend for imprisoning and retarding energetic children—projects below.

The swollen belly swayed between two v-shaped thighs jammed into designer slut jeans with fishnet panels inset in the purposefully torn denim. High, plastic-gilded heels of the blocky variety, chromatically buckled about the swollen ankles, spread in slothful repose.

The brown boy, about eight, dressed in jeans and designer T-shirt proclaiming thug life values via loud hip hop imagery, pulls his shoulders back over his chair, hands behind his neck, looking around for something to concentrate on, rather than the beast-mother before him who ignores his every silent plea for attention, for direction.

Within five minutes the pork fried rice is cooked to order and the mousy woman chirps, “Happy day, sir,” as she hands the brown paper bag over the counter and he leaves tomorrow’s enemy pawn to the slovenly neglect of the agent of human decay that birthed him into bondage.