She didn’t dare put on make-up; the thick blue eyeliner and fake lashes that her girlfriends liked to wear were totally forbidden in her mother’s house. But she blasted her hair with Mama’s dryer until it swung choppy and sexy around her face, grabbed her stacked sandals that she’d got from the bargain basement at J.C. Penny and raced downstairs with her purse and her magazine. Vogue. She loved it. Sometimes she got to read a copy her frieni3s might have bought to share, but money was tight everywhere. Lita’s dollars she saved and hid in a sock under her chest of drawers. Every cent she had went there. She didn’t trust the bank. Sometimes she did the homework of one of the richer chicks, or wrote a study paper for a senior, and cleared a couple of dollars. If it was an all-night deal for a test the next day, Lita charged a flat ten bucks. They complained, but they paid up. They had no option - it was better than flunking.
Today there was over six hundred dollars in that sock, not counting the ten dollars she’d slipped into her purse. Someday she would need that cash. Lira hoped it would be someday soon.
Lira raced down Westchester Avenue to the subway station. She bought two tokens and jumped on to the six train. It was filthy, covered in obscene graffiti and anti-war signs. She didn’t like to think of the war. All those young boys dying. Thank God her mama had bribed the doctors to write Chico up as mentally unfit. They had been going to get a used car with that money, but it was better to have her brother alive, royal pain in the butt that he was. She was passionately against the war.
‘Don’t you think these men should fight for their country?’ Mr p,.ichards, her political science teacher, asked his angry class. ‘What do you say, Lita Morales?’
Lita knew he’d turned to her because she was the quiet one, the only student in his class that had a shot at honour roll.
‘Sure, they should fight for their country. But this ain’t their country.’ She waited till the cheers had died down, then added, ‘And this war is illegal.’
‘I suppose you support the Commies, too,’ Mr lichards sneered. ‘No, sir, I support the Constitution of the United States. And under the Constitution, the President has no power to declare war. There is only one body that can do that, and that is the US Congress. Congress never declared war on Vietnam.’
There were low whistles around the room. Lita knew that being smart didn’t always mean you were popular, but she didn’t care. She faced her teacher down.
‘Well … technically this isn’t a war,’ Mr Richards replied.
‘Tell that to all the boys who are dying. Tell that to the men coming back with their brains fried,’ she said.
The class cheered, and nobody louder than the boys, finally showing some enthusiasm in Social Studies. They reached their ma.joriW pretty soon, and nobody wanted to `join up. Some of them were heading for Canada. Others tried to get discharges and still others `joined the National Guard. Those were the real smart ones, she thought. But some of her classmates wouldn’t be coming home.
‘America has never lost a war. It’s young people with your attitude who are going to make this the’first,’ Mr P,.ichards said. He had a ring of red blood around his shirt collar, like the blood vessels were going to pop.
‘No, sir. It’s old…’ she nearly said ‘jerks’, but stopped herself,just in time … Then like President Nixon who are going to make this a first. He’s going to lose a war that Congress never authorized. And now he wants to blame kids for it.’
Mr Richards stared at her with fury, but he had no reply. The class had moved on and Lita got an ‘F’ for that week’s study paper, a paper which was well reasoned and lucid. She had only grinned. Mr lichards wasn’t going to beat her generation like that.
The train rattled out of the station, getting her away from Soundview, away from the Bronx. She was going to Grand Central, to head out to the Village. She’d find a coffee shop and sit in the sun, on the sidewalk, and read her magazine, and dream of all the clothes she’d buy when she was a rich lady.
Which Lita Morales was determined to be.
The Village was a trip. She thought it was her favourite part of Manhattan, not that she got out here too often. There was too much studying and cleaning to do. Lira had her heart set on a scholarship, maybe to NYU, maybe to Columbia. Anything that would qualify her for more than the dead-end jobs Pappy had marked out for her, or the married-before-she-was-old-enough-to-drink route that so many of her girlfriends had taken. But if it was a weekend, a Sunday, after Mass, she liked to get on the six and get into the city. Manhattan had such a vibe to it. Sure, it was dangerous after dark, and there were needles in the parks from the hippies, and graffiti over the buildings, but still … the concrete and glass canyons stretched up, almost for ever, and they affected Lita like a hit from the drags everybody but her seemed to be taking.
Adrenaline crackled across her skin when she came here. She wanted an apartment on Park Avenue, on one of those buildings with silk awnings and a doorman in livery. She wafited to be like those rich young wives she saw walking out of Saks, with flunkies carrying their purchases on garment hangers and in stiff cardboard boxes. Lira could almost see inside those boxes. Delicate satin and lace lingerie wrapped in folds of gold-embossed tissue paper, tied with tiny ribbons perhaps, or a funky Fiorucci minidress, a swirling print with a flared hem, something Mick Jagger’s girlfriend Bianca might wear with a fabulous pair of oversized white sunglasses and a large velvet hat. Lira loved fashion. Just because she didn’t get to wear much of it didn’t mean she didn’t want it.
And the Village was fashion. It was as in as flared jeans and beaded shell tops. The flower children and the black power students moved side by side through the leafy streets with their low-slung brownstones that looked as though they’d come from another age. Hip, new car& were full of guys with long hair and guiFars, pumping the latest hits from England - ‘Abbey 1Koad’ was her favourite record fight now - and serving fancy coffee at a quarter a cup. Ridiculously expensive, but worth it to sit on the sidewalk on a sunny day like this and watch the world go by. Lira was an expert in making her coffees last an hour,
maybe more. Nobody ever told her to hurry up either. She was gorgeous. A beautiful girl could do whatever she liked.
She turned onto Christopher Street and headed into Incense, the best joint on the street. Pushing her way in through the curtain of gaudily coloured glass beads that jangled and flashed, Lira strutted up to the counter and ordered a black coffee with cinnamon sprinkles.
‘Ten cents,’ the boy behind the counter said, spooning a liberal
amount of sprinkles on to the frothy drink.
Lita blinked. ‘But it’s a quarter.’
The guy smiled at her, flipping his long curl, back over his brown corduroy collar. ‘Honey, for you it’s a dime.’
‘Thank you,’ Lira murmured, rewarding him with a rare smile. It lit up her face like a flash of light on the water, and the kid mentally dumped both his blonde girlfriends and proposed to her all within the space of two seconds. But she was gone, dropping the coin on the counter and heading outside to the street, and all he could do was watch the sway of that amazing round booty as she sauntered out of the door.
‘Your mouth is open,’ said the guy who had been sitting at the bar, sipping a whisky sour even though it was only five o’clock. He wore the kind of real expensive suit that meant you didn’t make smart-ass comments about the hour when he asked for booze, not if you lived on tips.
The barkeeper sighed. ‘Can you blame me? Did you check out that
ass, man? That is one hot chick. I dig that, I tell you.’
‘Yeah, she had nice skin.’
‘Nice skin! Forget the skin, did you see the set she’s dragging around? And those eyes. Damn.’
The man glanced at him in an assessing way he found kind of off putting.
‘This should take care of the check,’ he said, pulling out a crocodile wallet and laying a twenty on the counter. ‘Keep the change, OK?’
‘Are you sure? I mean, thanks,’ he said, instantly regretting the question and pocketing it before the man could change his mind. That was the better part of a week’s rent. And with that huge gold lolex, he looked like he could afford it. The guy got up and followed the hot chick into the sunlight in a rattle of beads, blinking as he emerged from the dark, smoke-filled caf.
The barkeeper shook his head. Eye-candy and bread. Pity neither one of them had stayed. He liked money and he liked hotties. Oh, well, he was twenty bucks to the good. He started to hum a Stones number.
He had no idea he’d witnessed a moment that would change two lives.
Lita sat in a patch of bright summer-evening sunlight and stretched out her calves. The delicious scent of cinnamon wafted up to her from the table and she breathed it in, enjoying every second as she flipped through the magazine. There was Jane Asher, snapped in an awesome orange minidress with thigh-high leather boots, and there was Twiggy, exotic and limber in a long knitted skirt and a little pussy-bow blouse against the London cold. Swinging London was so hot. She wondered if she would ever go there. Maybe someday, when she had some money. Paris, too. Paris was more violent, though; it was still recovering from those student riots last summer. Lita preferred how the English girls dressed, with that thick, chalky white eyeshadow and extra-dark mascara. Dusty Springfield was rumoured to wear seven coats. She flipped the pages, drinking up the skirts and leather-bead waistcoats and almost-sheer white blouses with the broderie anglaise at the collar. All the models were lily-white, skinny like Twiggy with no butt and no boobs. Row after row of California girls with long blonde hair and light tans. Lita felt a little insecure and tugged her coat around her to hide her breasts. She knew she could only drool over these dresses. Even if she travelled to some alternate universe where she could actually afford them, she wouldn’t be able to fit into them.
It was easy to drop weight on drugs. Lita was sure half these chicks never ate real food. They inhaled their sustenance through tiny silver spoons, like the whacked-out dealers that hung round Soundview. Anyway, she tried to reassure herself, she wasn’t fat. She had curves. It wasn’t her fault that women’s bodies were oht of style now. She was still a woman. She could diet herself to death, but she’d never have the ass of a ten-year-old boy. Lita smiled ruefully. She’d need to have one of those plastic surgeons chop it right off for that to happen.
‘Excuse me, miss?’
Lita glanced up. A man of about thirty-three was standing over her. He wore a fancy suit and a gold watch. She stiffened. This was her dine out, and it was precious. Why did men think they had the God-given right to hit on any female that happened to be sitting on her own?
‘Peace and love.’ Yeah, that was cool, that was all right … and that was a good line for getting girls to drop their panties, Lita thought cynically. Just like it had happened to Elena, and nine months later she
had two babies that you couldn’t take back to the store for a refund. ‘I’m kind of busy,’ she said waspishly, ‘mister.’
‘You look like you’re sitting reading a magazine,’ he said mildly. ‘Exactly. Like I said, I’m busy.’
He grinned, liking her fire. Man, she had some looks on her. Bill was gay, so he had an objective opinion, and this girl was hot. In the daylight
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you could sec it all the clearer. Straight guys would sit up and pant whenever that body walked by, but he was more concerned with her ce. Her skin was just fantastic. Caf au lair, with long, glossy hair, pouting lips and angles on her cheekbones that meant she would keep her beauty well into middle age. Her heavy-lidded, chocolate eyes reminded him of… who was it, he could almost see it … Oh, sure - Sophia Loren. That was exactly who she looked like. A teenage Sophia Loren, with slightly darker skin and a Bronx accent. A real tough-girl. Of course, she’d be too short for catwalk work, and that was a bummer, but he just could not pass up the face. It was different, and at Models Six, different was what they were looking for, at least theoretically. It was true that every girl seemed to be a skinny blonde beatnik from Frisco, but he just had a feeling about this one.
‘I won’t take up too much of your time, miss. I’m not here to hit on you. I don’t swing that way, OK?’
He fished out a card from an inner pocket and handed it over. ‘This is for real. My name’s Bill lisher, and I work for a model agency.’ Seeing the look on her face, he added quickly, ‘A legit model agency. None of that nudie stuff. Some of the girls take their moms along to shoots.’
She didn’t say anything, so he bent forward and gestured at her dog eared copy of Vogue. ‘Page sixty-seven - that’s Tabitha, she’s one of ours. And on the next page, we rep Samantha, she’s the redhead on the left.’
‘So? What do you want with me?’
Lita told herself to be cool, but her heart was hammering at a million beats per second.
‘I’d like to take some shots fist. Test shots.’
‘Tests for what?’ Lita demanded.
He looked at her like she was crazy. ‘To be a model, of course.’
Lita told herself she shouldn’t go. She had taken her break, and now it was time to get home to her books. Mama would want help with dinner. And what if they stacked the dinner plates in the sink again and left them? The apartment would get roaches. Roaches the size of mice …
It was no use, though. She was acting like he didn’t care, but this might be the most exciting thing that had ever happened to her. Things like this just didn’t happen. Of course, there was no way she’d make a model. Hadn’t she just finished Vogue? Almost every girl inthere was a white-bread, skinny blonde, not to mention tall and willowy. The kind of chick with money, with no roaches in her kitchen. But this gay dude, and from the way he was checking out the boys in tight pants on
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Christopher Street, he actually was gay, this dude thought she had a good face. Good enough that somebody might pay her to take pictures of it.