Lillian’s chorus girl wages from Pretty Girls were going to the overdue bills that had accumulated in the year since they’d relocated to the city. They’d celebrated her first paycheck with a small cake from a bakery on Columbus Avenue, but other than that, they were still scrimping.
“Better money, maybe,” conceded Kitty. “But what else will he be expecting?”
She finally relented after Lillian hounded her for a full week, provided Lillian stayed quiet and let her do all the talking. “He’ll see soon enough what he’s up against.”
The man who showed them into his West Side studio didn’t come across as lecherous in the least, and Lillian breathed a sigh of relief when he didn’t balk at Kitty’s presence beside her, and gently offered them tea. While he made it, Lillian looked around. The studio was a haphazard mess of clay-smeared workbenches and tool cabinets, the disarray softened slightly by the northern light spilling through the steel casement windows.
She didn’t know then that the mess was the sign of a true working artist, versus the imposters who were trying to lure in stupid girls by appealing to their vanity. Eventually, Lillian and Kitty would turn around and leave if the artist’s studio was too clean, if it featured a smattering of Persian rugs draped across the floors or candles glowing beside pristine velvet settees.
“More like a bordello than a workshop,” Kitty would say loudly on their way out the door.
When he returned with the tea, Mr. Konti addressed Kitty, not Lillian. “I don’t usually go to the theater.” He was in his late fifties, and had a soft Bavarian accent and a graying beard. “I was brought by a friend, and struck by your daughter’s expressive face.”
“What is it exactly you’re working on?” Kitty asked.
“A piece for the Hotel Astor, called Three Graces. Grace, Charm, and Beauty, with the same woman figure representing all three.”
Kitty sat up a little straighter, and Lillian’s hopes rose. The Hotel Astor was an elegant anchor of Times Square, with a thousand rooms. “Where in the hotel would it be located?”
“In the ballroom.”
Even better.
“However, the muses will be lightly draped.” Mr. Konti shrugged when Kitty gasped. It was a simple fact of the job. “She’ll get paid forty-five cents an hour, and the work may take several months.”
“Lightly draped?” Kitty gripped her purse tightly, like she was about to bat Mr. Konti about the head with it.
“I imagine two of the muses will be bare-breasted, one will be covered. You can see, looking around at my work, that there is nothing unsavory about my art.”
Although Lillian wasn’t entirely confident about posing in the nude, she had to admit that the studies around the room were beautiful, even to her untrained eye. His work had a languid elegance, and in the faces of his figures, she recognized glimpses of her own features, the long, straight nose and narrow jaw. She didn’t know then that she had the ideal body for the times: slim shoulders, narrow waist, shapely hips that tapered down into long legs.
“You can decide, yes or no.” Mr. Konti finished his tea. “We can start today. Or not at all.”
“Not at all.” Kitty rose, shushing Lillian’s protestations. “My daughter is only fifteen, far too young for you.”
“For me?” Mr. Konti wasn’t angry, only amused. “What I do is not for my own gratification. It is to bring beauty forth in the world at large.” He pointed a finger toward the door. “That sordid world, the city outside that’s teeming with people whose lives are full of toil and trouble. If they walk by one of my statues and look up and see something beautiful, an idea or person who inspires them, then I have done my job. I do this not for me. It’s for humanity.”
“Grandiose, I must say.” Kitty grabbed Lillian’s arm. “We are leaving at once.”
Outside, Broadway was indeed teeming with a rush of workers heading home after a long day. Kitty’s face was red, and Lillian wasn’t sure if it was from Konti’s proposal or the afternoon heat that shimmered up from the concrete sidewalk.
“Mother, are you all right?”
Kitty leaned on Lillian, panting slightly. Lillian pulled her back into the shade of the building, out of the way of the pedestrians.
“I’m fine.”
Lillian thought back. Her mother hadn’t had breakfast with Lillian, saying she’d eaten before Lillian woke up. At lunch, she’d said she wasn’t hungry as Lillian had finished up a generous helping of beans on toast.