Who-Town

The shoot – a dinner party of a hip crowd of twenty-somethings– had been scheduled in mid January, but the actual story was to be published two months later, at the end of March.
On that bright January afternoon, a wind that felt like bone-chilled fingers seduced its way into the neck of Sarah’s cashmere overcoat as she emerged from the steps of the subway station at Franklin Street in Tribeca.
The blocks, long stretches of unadorned cement, made Sarah think ahead to hot summer afternoons, to imagine smoke rolling up from the ground when the sun pickled the air like a salty furnace.
Winter now whipped the entire city forward to conquer what would come next. No matter the season, there was never time to determine what was precious, and you couldn’t tell a garage door from an elevator lift. Both blanketed the entire area, a ten-block radius, with practical purpose.
Sarah rang floor three inside the metal elevator and was delivered there in one upward swoosh. Like a rabbit hopping forward in haste, she rushed inside, immediately pulling out her pad to jot down her impressions.
It was one of those industrial lofts that dotted the dusty blocks west of the Hudson River. At the turn of the Twentieth century, factory workers had filled these spaces, crammed in against their black sewing machines and button boxes. In poor times, these 2,500 square feet would have fit a couple hundred toiling for their daily bread. But today, they housed only Roxy, a five foot two whippet like creature who called herself an artist.