Butterfly Man. Lew Levenson

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      Chapter VI

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      AS the motor-bus rolled into the San Bernardino valley, Ken rejoiced. Clear cool morning air swept down from the mountain wall dry and free. The warm tonic sun revealed faraway vistas, firs and pines cresting above the ever-changing skyline, long deep green citrus groves, sand seas upon which hardy grape shoots lay in long lines to the desert horizon. Soon midmorning, it would be hot enough for laziness; if he could be successful, he would have the leisure to enjoy these Southland days. If he could be successful, if he could earn enough, he would ride and swim and dance until, exhausted, he would laze in the languorous sun.

      Anita sat curled up beside him, in the wide leather seat. She had yielded to his insistence that they take the early bus to San Bernardino. She had been up most of the night and would have preferred to sleep until ten. Ken regretted now his selfish impulsiveness. She had done so much for him; she had steadied him, given him self-confidence and an understanding of the comradeship and self-denial which is the casual gift of every member of the theatrical fraternity. She was, in Ken's mind, a great pal. Gazing at her now as she lay cuddled up and dozing, he was reminded of the many long hours and profitless days she had shared with him. When he met her, she was sailing ahead, serenely contented with her lot, lonely perhaps, but certainly a victor in the struggle to defeat her own weaknesses. Then ​she had joined him whole-heartedly in his ambition. He had only to mention his unwillingness to study longer at Buddy Nolan's. She had quit the ornate School of Terpsichore with him. She had even changed her mode of living to suit him. Day after day he had routed her out of her bungalow court apartment with a seven-o'clock-in-the-morning 'phone call. He had lived nearby, in a shabby apartment hotel absurdly named the Palacio del Oro, and they would meet at the Owl for coffee and cake.

      Then, day after day, from nine until five, at Delaney's, they had struggled to overcome the inherent and rebellious unwillingness of their flesh, torturing their bodies in order to dance as they thought capricious booking agents and later the equally fickle public would prefer to see them dance.

      Anita, it had been, Ken conceded, who drove away the fear that he had acted hastily and ungratefully toward Mr. Lowell. She had also prevented him from returning the one-hundred dollar bill in the same envelope in which Mr. Crofton had sealed it that day when Johnson had delivered Ken's clothes. Ken had wanted to write a note to Mr. Lowell, but Anita had advised him to send a single page of note paper upon which would be written only the word "Thanks" and his name.

      Thus that episode ended. Gone were the fabulous glories of Star-ridge; gone the silk-covered bed, the exotic foods, vintage wines, the terrifying beauty of the organ. Gone that puzzling dread which had finally enveloped Ken and which was to be replaced by an almost equally puzzling restlessness until Anita restored his faith in himself. Anita included, of course, the dance. The dance blossomed and grew ripe. He was made for it. It transformed ​him. Now Anita had poured much of it into the mould of her old vaudeville act. She had taught him the difficult Russian acrobatic steps. With the occasional aid of Peter Delaney, she had taught him her soft-shoe routine. And she had taught him the waltz.

      It was marvelous to execute his own high-kick specialty, his own creation, a dance he alone could perform, thanks to the unusual limberness of his legs as well as their length. That was the number that would, Delaney said, "make" him. But the waltz was a new experience.

      In the beginning, when he first rehearsed the waltz with Anita, he decided he was too awkward for ball-room dancing. The long arc of their steps, the break in which she soared up and away from him, the intricacies of the ever-changing figures; and then the slow embarrassing undulation with which the dance concluded, when, body to body, they danced as one—a dance, in short, in which his dashing fiery youthfulness was forced to yield to suave and surefooted experience—this he could not do, he said.

      But she made him do it. For three weeks he did nothing else. At last, when their costumes came, when she was slim and rich in cloth of gold and he was elegantly slender in his tuxedo and they danced to a Paul Whiteman recording and the late autumn afternoon light was growing dim, he knew what it was to dance—as Anita said—divinely. In that moment, twilight descending, he was comfortable again. No remote fears, no obscure problems, no rising tide of anger … instead something precious, like happiness.

      That night Anita had not wanted to work. But Ken had insisted and they had danced the waltz again at Delaney's. At the door of her bungalow, she had seized his head, and ​his lips had felt the swift sharp bruising contact of hers and her teeth had pushed aside his yielding lips and had met his.

      "I'm sorry—" she suddenly had cried. "This will spoil everything now."

      He had felt the need for frankness and had said quietly: "I don't see why."

      "Go home," she had cried. "Hurry—please, before it's too late."

      The next morning, she had had a headache. He had wondered if she had been drinking. She was fond of him, СКАЧАТЬ