A roar as loud as her own crying rocketed through the Geary Street apartment, the din's vibrating rattle making the stereo groan, then skip a cut. Chris pounded an angry fist into her knee. And this hole! It was filthy and noisy, snorted Chris. You couldn't listen to a record album without a bus interrupting everytime its brakes ground to a halt to repeat its never ending route up and down Geary Street all night. But you could hardly complain to a landlord about cockroaches and broken windows when you still owed last month's rent and had no prospects for paying the current month's either. You bit your lip and endured: that was city living.
What could she do? Chris bit into her trembling lower lips and stared blurrily at the yellow cracked wall. She might as well call her parents collect and humiliate herself by asking them to send her a one-way ticket back to Detroit and forget there was any part of America west of the Mississippi River. No. That would be giving in, sniffed Chris, wiping her nose with the back of her hand. She'd rather work at the telephone company, God forbid, than do that – if they were hiring.