Page:Levenson - Butterfly Man.djvu/301

Rh perfectly. You're a messy neurotic who needs attention, mothering, loving. You've never been really loved, have you?"

He relaxed in a smile.

"Perhaps not."

"Why not? You're good-looking. Women ought to fall for you in squads and columns."

"They don't."

"But boys do …"

Ken blinked.

"Squirm," she said. "You deserve to squirm. And now that we've hit it, you were plenty unhappy last night. You attempted suicide by leaping off the roof and later by trying to catch pneumonia."

"I was drunk," he faltered.

It wasn't easy to realize that such a person as Connie Leeds existed. During the first few days, he was sometimes inclined to believe that he had imagined her, that she was the creature of some benevolent drug; that she was a good angel who reigned over a happy Paradise into which he had mercifully escaped. Quietly she tended him and paid his bills as well.

For the first thirty-six hours he lay in bed. She watched over him as the jitters brought him close to collapse. For hours he craved a drink, "An eye-opener," as he repeated over and over. Repeatedly he lifted the French telephone from its cradle and was ordering a bottle of gin from the bell-captain. On each occasion she countermanded the order.

"We'll eat first," she always said. "No gin."

To the astonished bell boy who appeared following Ken's