The Crossroads by John D. MacDonald Page A

friend ran away to New York. Sylvia, at sixteen, looked twenty-one. Indeed, at twenty-four she looked twenty-one. The girl friend looked younger than sixteen, and her family was apparently more eager to have her back. She was picked up and held. Her parents came down and got her. Sylvia, by lying about her age, got her first job in a big five-and-ten in Brooklyn. But she wanted to be in Manhattan. That was her dream. And be a model. Her second job was in a dress shop on Twenty-sixth Street. She was calling herself Sylvia Marlowe, had pruned the last of the baby fat off her hips, adopted an exotic hair styling, learned the colors that suited her best, had begunto wear barbaric costume jewelry, had invented a mysterious past which gave her mixed English and Indonesian blood, had acquired a little trace of very suspect accent, and felt herself to be in the midst of life. Through her new contacts she became a store model for a large Jewish furrior on Thirty-ninth Street, and learned how to walk and turn and smile. As many of the potential customers were of approximately the same build, she did well. It was understood that she was to be available for business entertaining. Scintillating conversation was not a prerequisite. She became familiar with the cuisine and decor of most of the expensive second-class night spots in New York, as well as the interiors of too many of the more tolerant hotels. She did not like the sneaky little inward voice that kept telling her she was being Bad. But it did not happen often, and then only with men she thought were Cute, and the gifts of money were sometimes surprisingly generous. But she still wanted to be a Real Model. She registered with several agencies. The camera made her look much chunkier than she was.
    When she was nineteen she finally got a call from the least reputable agency with which she had registered. She took the day off and reported at ten in the morning at a basement studio way down on Eleventh Street, dressed in her best. It was a dreary, grubby, damp place, cluttered with jury-rigged spots and floods and weary props. Butts were stamped into the concrete floor. A few people were standing around aimlessly. The man in charge was sallow and cynical. He took her name.
    “Strip down, sweetie,” he said.
    “Right here?”
    “Right here, sweetie.”
    Feeling as if she were in a confusing dream, she went to a small couch and took off her best clothes, not looking directly at anyone. “You can keep your shoes on, sweetie. The floor’s cold.”
    She turned toward the man, looking beyond him at the dark wall. “Turn around, sweetie. Now back. What you think, Archie?”
    “Okay, Clyde.”
    “What’s this … for?” Sylvia asked in a small voice.
    “Didn’t they tell you? This is photo illustration, sweetie, for a string of true crime books. They keep sending down malnutrition cases, so I ask for a girl with a little meat. Now let’s go to work, kids. Use you in this one, Joe. It says here teen-age killer backs away in horror from girl’s body on motel bed. Knifed in back. Archie, put her diagonal on the bed, face down, hair and arm hanging over the edge, you know. End of the sheet across her bumpus. Stick that bloodstain on her back left center. Joe, get yourself that big switchblade out of the gear box.”
    It was a long and exhausting day. Rather than explain exactly the pose they wanted, Archie would shove and pull her into the right position. His hands were like ice. He moved her around in a completely impersonal way, like a butcher shifting a side of beef in a walk-in cooler. And sometimes they yelled instructions at her in such a nasty irritable way that she felt close to tears. “Hold that scarf higher, sweetie. Higher! You got a pair of pretty things, but we can’t use them in the picture. Okay. Hold it. We’ll try again. Baby spot, Archie.” And, “Chrissake, can’t you look scared? Come on, sweetie. Bug your eyes, show your pretty fangs. Think of snakes or