According to Liz Jessee— the world’s friendliest landlady— Hell’s Kitchen, in the heart of Manhattan’s West Side, was once a desolate stretch of the city. Now, Hell’s Kitchen— and thus, Liz Jessee’s no-frills five-story brick building—is in a desirable location, entirely conve-nient to restaurants, theaters, and midtown office buildings. Laura is headed toward one of them right now, having just received a new short-term assignment from her temp agency. As she descends the last flight of steps from her top floor studio apartment, she consults the address she scribbled on a scrap of paper when the assignment came in twenty minutes ago. She’s been in New York long enough to know that she’ll have to head uptown, and east, to get there. She’ll walk, of course. She doesn’t take the subway unless an assignment takes her all the way down to the financial district. Not just because Laura finds the subway unnerving, but because she can’t afford it. She still has three more days until payday, and she’ll be lucky if she can scrape together enough money to eat.
