Steffie Can't Come Out to Play by Fran Arrick

Feltcher is worried because his wife is pregnant for a second time and what if it’s a GIRL? Yarbro and his wife have some hinted-at tragedy involving fertility issues, leaving them childless. Interspersed with Steffie’s journey into Times Square’s underbelly are passages featuring two NYPD officers, 20 year veteran Carl Yarbro and rookie Ed Feltcher. It takes a cringe-inducingly long time for Steffie to figure out that Favor doesn’t want to be her boyfriend, but a week later she’s picking up her first John on 8 th Avenue.

There was also a tiny marble fountain built into the floor that had real water running through it. The bedroom had mirrors with black steaks like marble running through them. He finally introduces himself as Favor and takes Steffie out for a steak dinner, a new wardrobe and finally back to his luxuriant apartment: Hearing music like that, in something small and closed like a car, I don’t know, it does something to you. It seemed to fill up my head, it was all around me. Here, come on…” He leaned over and pulled out a tape. My very specially-constructed, built-in, nothing-else-like-it-in-the-world tape deck.

“Ohh! What is that?” I asked pointing to something very-complicated looking on the dashboard. The man soon whisks her into his bronze-colored Cadillac (RED FLAGS!): You had to be rich to afford things like that.Īpparently Covenant House wasn’t shipping out literature en masse to Clairton because girl! Only pimps wear fur coats! His coat was so beautiful, and that gray suit.

He could have stepped out of a fashion magazine, too. He was sure no street bum, like I’ve seen hanging around the corners in Clairton. She is immediately spotted by a man offering to help:Ī tall man, handsome, he was wearing a dark fur coat- all fur– and it was open, so I could see this gorgeous gray suit he had on… and a silk tie. Taking a city bus to Pittsburgh, where she boards a Greyhound, she arrives at the Port Authority Bus Terminal with $9 in her pocket and no idea what to do next. Already the primary caretaker for her much younger brother, Danny, Anita’s difficult pregnancy is just one more burden for Steffie to shoulder. The Plot: The catalyst for Steffie’s leaving is the return home of her 19 year old married sister, Anita, put out of the house by her husband when she becomes pregnant. Runaway teen stories if this era can be numbingly repetitive- when 14 year old Stephanie Rudd explains that’s she ditching her terrible family and terrible mill town of Clairton, Pennsylvania, to grab her chance at being discovered as a fashion model in New York City, you know exactly where this one is going, right down to what block she’ll be working as a prostitute in no time flat. To meet a man like Favor on her very first day in New York City…

Steffie Can't Come Out to Play by Fran Arrick