Page:Levenson - Butterfly Man.djvu/273

Rh a small furnished apartment in a new building. Three rooms, shiningly bright with the varnished freshness of a shop-window setting, paint still sticky, chairs yet to be sat upon, tapestries new from factory machines, lithographed reproductions of Remington, Millet, a plaster Rodin "Thinker."

Perhaps the first realization of change came to Ken when he revisited Broadway, a Broadway where the triangle of Times Square lay sulking in a mid-summer sun. Pedestrians crawled. Taxis rolled slowly. The sky was dull, the pavements steamed. Ken went straight to Jimmy Pierce's dance studio. He was eager for a work-out, eager to feel the hard floor beneath his feet, to use again his softening body, to bring back in the dance the rich sensation of hot blood racing through veins.

A season had passed. The colored dance director was breaking in new pupils as Ken appeared. He was received with the warmth due a new client. The stocky negro stood near the window as Ken began a series of setting up exercises.

"I need a few new routines and some tap work," Ken confidently suggested.

When he attempted the aeroplane kicks, oblique lacing of legs in a sweeping arc, he found his muscles heavy, his breath hard. He sat down. "I'm hot," he panted.

"You need plenty of work," said Jimmy Pierce.

Max Price, the agent, was an old-time vaudeville booker. Tall, gray-haired, eyes penetrating as a needle-point, he traded on the Broadway market, shrewdly choosing his human chattel. Price was nearing sixty. He had a reputation for ruthlessness. To be under his management was