We're eating sausage biscuits, grits, and hash browns at the Clayton Cafe. A local man — late sixties, thick glasses, pouting lips, paunch — shuffles in, picks up a Sunday edition of the Atlanta Journal Constitution, buys it for three bucks, and leaves.
Up at the cash register, the proprietress presses her lips together and frowns, shaking her head in disgust.
I sip my coffee. "If selling the paper makes her so mad, why do it?"
Clyde spoons down some grits. "You can't get the paper up here anymore," he says. "Cutbacks. If she's selling the paper, she's having to send someone off to get it."
Another Pentacostal woman — hair in a bun, drawn face, long dress — comes in, plunks down three dollars, leaves.
The proprietress shakes her head again. "I bought these papers thinking folk would come in here and read 'em over breakfast!"
From a booth up front, a burly, unshaven guy with lots of teeth says, "Sell 'em for three fifty, and make 'em buy a cup of coffee with it."
She rolls her eyes. "Then they'd come in here, drink six cups of coffee, and leave, and I'd still be out money."
Two elderly women in Sunday dresses step in, pick up a paper each, pay their three dollars, and leave. Right behind them, a mountain of a man scoops up four copies, pays, and leaves.
One of the waitresses can't believe it. "He works up at the hotel. He's gonna sell those for four dollars, you just go up there and see."
The phone rings; the proprietress answers it. "Hello? Have what? Yes, I got some, but I ain't got these as no public service. What? How many? Well, okay, but that's not why I got 'em!"
We finish up. I pay the check. I buy Clyde a paper. We head out the door.
As we leave, three more locals squeeze past us, scoop up papers, and make a beeline for the check-out counter. The proprietress, red-faced, takes their wadded up dollar bills and says, "Next week, this'll be three-fifty."
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