Page:Levenson - Butterfly Man.djvu/184

182 "Why not?"

"I gotta bring this bus to dock safe. Tomorrow after the show, we'll start the real lapping up. You pick your own shots, Frankie, and I'll play the game my way."

"My way is your way," said Frankie. "Let's go."

The Springfield theatre reminded Ken of Southern California days. It seemed lazily provincial, dishearteningly small-townish.

The entire cast was homesick. Old timers, like Rosemary Rose and Annie Begley, bravely fought their way through the indifference of the Monday audience to earn their quota of encores.

Ken's spirit was gone. He had lost the incentive to do his best. No magnet of ambition lifted him to his feet; no lovable friend stood in the wings, watching him, applauding him. This audience was stolid and unappreciative. Beyond the theatre wall lay an alien city. He was anxious to get the show over with, to find some other outlet for emotions and energy which were clashing within him. Rising before him as he danced was the figure of Howard, Howard whom he had sent alone to Europe. Howard had been New York and New York had been Howard. Now he had neither.

After the number, in his dressing room, narrow, dusty, cobwebs suspended from its ceiling corners, he examined himself in the mirror. He was at the apex of the pyramid. Youth flushed in his cheeks as he removed the make-up. His eyes peering at the reflection of his eyes, saw, however, no longer that frank expression which had been theirs on the day he first met Howard. They were harder eyes, colder eyes.