Page:Levenson - Butterfly Man.djvu/135

Rh author and director slaved from dawn to dawn at his job of creating a new entertainment for jaded Broadway.

Slowly Ken's fellow members of the troupe emerged, their faces friendly, greetings warm. Rosemary Rose, endearingly plump, tiny as a great doll, merry eyes, fascinatingly small feet, a sweet, high, well-trained voice, smiled eagerly to Ken. Old Annie Begley, the low comedienne, raucously hoarse, lisping across her false teeth and through her bubbling laugh, would defy her fifty-year-old body in a thunderous attempt to make her feet patter in a tap break. She kept champagne in her dressing-room and invited Ken to drink with her, comparing him the while to her dear son, now an insurance broker's assistant and, thank God, not an actor.

And little Polly Tucker, the fresh ingenue comedienne, angular, loud-mouthed, addicted to bromo-seltzers and black coffee, garrulous, obscene and witty, platonic sweetheart of a noted caricaturist; at eighteen, on her way, as she said, despite a desperately defended virginity, to drink, the devil and eternal damnation. She wanted Ken to take her to lunch but he became panic-stricken when she politely added that lunch at his expense would not mean that he could take immediate possession of her body. Ken might have agreed, using one of the twenty-five dollars the company manager had advanced to him, if Polly had not employed certain casual and colloquial phrases which failed to shock him but reminded him too painfully of Tia Juana and Anita's vocabulary whenever she lost her temper. The chorus girls were young, beautiful and decidedly enthusiastic about the show. They greeted Ken with smiles.

Because he was a principal, they did not encourage him to invite them to lunch or to dinner. Agnes O'Reilly,