Description: Eve and Julie digest what just happened back at Hector of Hollywood's modeling agency where they had been forced to pay two Benjamins for the photos that Glenn Sabine ordered in the first place. Whose fault was it, anyway?
Eve Goes to New York! PART 8.
In the back seat of the cab that wound its way through the inner veins of New York City, Eve Jones was fidgeting. What in the hill of beans had gone wrong back at Hector of Hollywood’s modeling agency, she wondered? One minute she was high on life, a professional supermodel with pose-coaching backstage, a fake ocean breeze through her hair, and a promising future in front of the camera. The next minute her sister was forking over two-hundred bucks of blood, sweat, and tears.
Eve had always assumed that Glenn Sabine would ante up the cash for pretty much everything she did here. Think about it, the hotel bills, taxi cabs, and three square meals for starters. Then there were the tiny indulgences like room service for breakfast that she had ordered with strawberries and cream, and the full-body massage and cucumber-cream facial from the Latin hotel masseur that she would have to cancel later. And obviously, without exception, the photos of the Miss Teenager contestants that Mr. Sabine had ordered… hello… himself! It was like being invited out to an expensive dinner buffet, spoiled to the teeth with all-you-can-eat lobster and wild king salmon, and then having to pick up the tab in the end! For the whole table!
Wasn’t it Mr. Sabine who invited her to New York City after all? Wasn’t he under obligation to take care of all her expenses? Then again, maybe not, she conceded. The man was just the chairman of the board. He wasn’t the treasurer, or something like that. Hector had just kept clicking the camera like his life depended on it. For hours! There must have been hundreds, no… thousands… of photos in the end!
“After all,” Eve said, turning to her sister who sat next to her in the cab, “you could hardly expect Mr. Sabine to pay for those pictures. Could you, Julie?”
Juliet was tight and rigid. “I suppose not, Eve,” she replied with sullen undertones.
Meanwhile, back at Hector of Hollywood’s studio, Glenn Sabine slipped out from the shadows unnoticed, a pipe lodged in his lips. Hector jumped a mile. When he caught his breath, he turned to Sabine. “Where were you hiding, in the elevator shaft?”
“Never mind with the weak humor, Hector,” Sabine muttered indignantly. Smoke billowed from his pipe like a chimney in the dead of winter. “Ten percent of two hundred is twenty bucks. I’ll take it in one bill.”
“You’ll take it, dear boy,” Hector spat back, waving the check in his fingers, “after I’ve cleared this check.”