Page:Levenson - Butterfly Man.djvu/305

Rh, her eyes so determined, her chin so firm, that he half understood why he had permitted her to enter his life. Because he couldn't stop her from doing what she pleased … that was the reason.

She chose the mirrored elegance of Miramar, on a by-street in the fifties. Very few people there; imported wine, (despite Prohibition).

"Wonderful food," she said. "You do look peaked. We ought to go South and get some real sun. How'd you like to?"

"Florida?"

"I prefer Havana."

"Do you know …" he suddenly remarked, "I never realized that it is November. And what year?"

"Nineteen thirty."

He shook his head. "I've lost a year and a half. It was summer in '29 when I left home. I haven't worked in two years."

"Let's not talk about the past," she said. "There's the future."

She was dressed in a black lacey gown. Her throat was white. Her hair was sleek. Cheek bones shaded with rouge. Otherwise natural in the artificial light.

After the theatre he escorted Connie to her apartment. In the cab coming home, he felt a mild sensation of pleasure. This, then, was what going out with a woman meant. Restraint, the inability to express one's self freely … that on the debit side of the ledger. The profit lay in an inexplicable sensation of gentility. They were male and female clad in their finest feathers. Each movement,