Page:Levenson - Butterfly Man.djvu/31

Rh are going to be fast friends. I don't care if you are La Lowell's protégé, I am going to make you mine … in the dance, of course."

For three days the wine of youth coursed through Ken's veins. He practised until his muscles stretched taut over weary bones. His long legs swung high again and again over his head. Buddy Nolan helped him personally to acquire a back kick. In experimenting with this step, Buddy stumbled upon a side-kick, a natural graceful swooping movement, which he enthusiastically hailed as a novelty greater than any he had created.

The other students of the School of Terpsichore marvelled at Ken's ease. He liked them for their frank admission that he would surely excel them all upon the stage. Yet he was shy and did not join them in their gossip nor in their frequent walks to the corner drug store for sodas and alkies mixed with Coca Cola. A pert little girl, who identified herself as Anita Rogers, "unattached and willing to stay so," challenged him with the taunt "high hat"; but he only smiled at her as she pouted and turned away.

He enjoyed his hours of freedom greatly. The blue Rolls purred easily through highways and boulevards. It took Ken from mountain to ocean, from Beverly Hills to Hollywood, where, in daytime, the papier-mâché quality of the city's homes and business buildings made life itself seem cheap, gaudy and gay.

Ken was tempted to park the Rolls and to roam through the movie city, which lay restless beneath white sunshine at the foot of the endlessly varied hills. But the car and the city were not his to play with. He drove hurriedly on, as if fleeing through a dream.