Page:Levenson - Butterfly Man.djvu/111

Rh hell out and to bed. And you can move out of the cabana tomorrow."

The next day was Sunday. Ken knew nothing about Anita's demotion. He dropped into the dance hall early in the afternoon. Pete D'Arresto told him Anita was through.

"And that means you," he added. Ken took it philosophically. "I've got dough in the bank," he said. "When I pay old Lopez over in the Casa, I'll be worth one magnum of sour champagne or eighty ham sandwiches. Do you want the costume?"

"Sure thing," said Pete.

"My own suit is sorta out of style," Ken laughed, "but it'll do for a hitchhike home."

He bought a beer and laughed into it. Life had a habit of being anticlimactic. He could have walked across the border and started North or East with plenty of money any time during the past two years. He hadn't had the desire, nor the strength. Now that he was almost ready to escape, he was being kicked out.

What would he do? Return to Selma, plant himself behind a soda fountain or get a job on county construction work, one-sixty a day and callouses on the mitts? No chance of another Mr. Lowell coming along now that he was over twenty and the first blush of youth gone.

Mr. Lowell … what a fool he had been! Better to have sinned in luxury than in squalor. He might have developed into a real dancer, a dressmaker, even a business associate of the old dog.

He felt gay; he felt like dancing. He paid for his beer and walked across the room to the orchestra platform. Because it was Sunday, the doors were open; few visitors rose that early in Tia Juana. The sun drifted lazily across the