Page:Glitter (1926).pdf/241

 ing over the tops of tight bodices. Silken insteps swollen fat above tight shoes. Heavy yellow powder and piercing perfume. Love words in crow voices. Laughter, high-pitched, hideous. And eyes. Greedy eyes. Weary eyes. Eyes like sucked wells. Bloodshot eyes. Roadhouse eyes, as bright and glossy and hard and cold as the marbles children play with.

The patrons of Terrace Tavern liked the new entertainers, liked them immediately and immensely, and learned to anticipate them with increasing impatience. "Wait'll you see this red-head!" the men would say, smacking their lips. The women, saying nothing, would fasten their glances on the little door at the right of the orchestra's alcove and watch for the dark tall boy with the crooked impersonal—so darned impersonal!—smile. There would be a hush of expectancy over all the room. . . a flare-up of bright lights. . . a crash of clapping as the little door opened and Yvonne and Jock appeared.

It was a simple thing they did. Perhaps its very simplicity was what made it appealing. They came out together, hand in hand, Jock immaculate and imposing in a "tux" to pattern after, Yvonne brilliant as some exotic bird in one or another of the daring gowns she had selected for this purpose. They walked to the center of the floor, nodding to the applauding throng as though to a single intimate friend. ("Some night," Jock had predicted, "they aren't going to applaud, and then that march across the floor in dead stillness will be ungodly awful." But his prediction had not come