Page:Levenson - Butterfly Man.djvu/240

238 fool! Crazy! Mad … a crazy fool of a …" His voice died. His lips were contorted. He saw them twitch in his mirrored reflection. Then he forced himself to smile.

"Am I …?" he demanded, "am I going to have fun? I'll say I am," he answered. With a sweeping movement of arms and legs his clothes were ripped off. The body he had always had, the fine graceful body, was still his. And he could still dance.

Into the bedroom, he danced wildly, an animalistic vulpine encircling, a sheer pagan savagery in his leaping, careening charge. Ken danced. Chairs tumbled over as he struck them; he swept the table clear of lamp, books; the telephone jangled. He danced, naked. Then exhausted, happy, he fell to the floor.

Howard called it "The King's Own." It was a replica of his London success. Its stars, the Farraguts, had been imported from England. Ken appeared at rehearsal following Leon Shaw's command. He discovered that others of the troupe had rehearsed for ten days.

During the eight weeks since he had signed the contract with Howard, Ken had lived at the Sandringham. He had avoided Broadway and its night clubs. Through Jean, he had met innumerable little people of the chorus. Harry Cobden, who had been in the original "Sweeter than Sweet" company, frequently joined Jean and Ken. Through Harry, chorus man for twenty years, Ken met Daisy Hartzell and Widgie Waters, two chorus girls who lived uptown near Central Park West. Daisy and Widgie occupied two apartments in an old fashioned red brick flat. Their doors were forever unlatched. Boys and girls came and went. Gin, weak, diluted alkie, was plentiful. It drenched