Jack Kelly, despite being a talented actor and a creative manipulator of reality, knew that in the end, there was only so much a newsie could do to sell a bad headline. Sure, he could scam the odd literate factory worker or barber; tell him that the newspaper had a full photograph of Roosevelt naked with vaudeville's Medda Larkson. But he also had regulars. Regulars whose trust he couldn't afford to jeopardize.
So he went for their pity. Twisted at their hearts—a handsome carefree boy with a devilish grin who, despite prodigious talent happened to be down on his luck for only a day. A helpless victim of the powers that were.
The headline was about the state of paved roads.
He scuffed the dirt a bit and told this with an air of desperation to his regular customers, who winced and shook their heads and, more often than not, saved their pennies.
The sun was high in the sky and he was hawking his thirty sweat-damp papers at a prizefight, when he found a likely target: a woman. Women were always likely targets for him, because his smile was generally worth their pennies and the papers were terrific excuses to pay for the service. He worked up a bit of charming humility and sauntered up.
"Buy me last pape, ma'am?" he asked, hand on his heart.
She cocked a brow at his stack of more-than-one newspapers. She was short, he noticed, with wild blonde curls and what was in his limited experience a fashionable dress.
Her face looked sort of like a foot.
"You have a lot more than one last paper there," she said.
He gave her a you-caught-me-and-I've-got-an-impish-sense-of-humor laugh, and shrugged. "I was diggin' for an excuse to talk to you, ma'am. That was the best I got."
She giggled. "What paper are you selling?"
"What paper are you selling, Jack Kelly ."
"What paper are you selling, Jack Kelly?" she returned gamely.
"I—Jack Kelly—am selling The World . Which besides mediocre journalism boasts some of the most piss-poor headlines in New York, with respect, ma'am," he doffed his cap minutely, "which I have on good authority is not a quiet town."
"Mediocre is not the word I would use to describe the journalism, Mr. Kelly. I would use 'terrible'."
"You know much about newspapers, ma'am?"
"Not really. I write for one, the New York Star . A little column."
He was surprised. A woman writing for a newspaper—but it was a strange old world in much more alarming ways. "And whose name shall I look for in the Star ?"
"Carrie Bradshaw."
"Jack Kelly".
She giggled. She gave him a penny. She giggled again. And grabbed his hand, the thirty newspapers falling forgotten to the cobbles.