Kit descended into the subway at Eighth and Broadway just as an “R” train arrived at the platform. The noise of its arrival was deafening, the cars packed. He waited patiently to the side as several passengers got off, then edged his way in and found little more than breathing space. To the extent he was able, he looked around for interesting faces or situations. Today, however, there was apparently nothing of note. And so, he studied the ads over the subway seats—some well done; most, just cheap rip-offs of someone else’s creative efforts. With little of interest to look at and nothing to read, Kit was happy the trip to Twenty-third Street would be quick.
He was out and back up to street-level within minutes, then walked four blocks south from Madison Square to his studio located near the corner of Nineteenth Street and Fifth Avenue.
The neighborhood was home to bibliophiles and photographers alike. For their mutual benefit, daily and throughout the day, droves of drop-dead gorgeous women descended—if already successful—from cars driving down from the Upper East Side or in from Westchester County. Others ascended—if just starting out or only of catalog beauty—on foot from the Lower East Side or from subways coming in from Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx or New Jersey. He’d never heard of a model from Staten Island, but he’d been in the business for only ten years. He figured almost anything was possible in the fashion world: ‘anything’ might even one day include a lovely from Staten Island.
Kit knew that few of these women had grown up on the Upper East Side or in any of New York’s five boroughs for that matter. The supermodels might be from Stockholm, Milan, Paris or Tokyo—even, on rare occasions, from somewhere like Boise. They looked like a masterfully stirred martini of genes, nutrition and personal hygiene. Education didn’t necessarily figure into the mix, though some of them had an extra olive or onion’s worth of that, too. They promoted their bodies and their faces quite simply because they could. Nobody forced them to—though in Kit’s experience, very few could’ve managed on brains alone. If they were at least street-smart, or had a good manager, they might have a few years’ run and never ever have to work a titty-bar, the street, or a hotel room by the hour. They could simply retire on their savings and dividends—or land themselves a part-time gig as a trophy wife, hang out the rest of the time with the girls at the Club playing cards or just toying with a tan.
If they weren’t smart, didn’t have a good manager, or simply liked to burn or snort through the cash, well, then—it might be another story altogether, and usually not a very pretty one
