Page:Levenson - Butterfly Man.djvu/66

64 She sat up.

"What are you thinking about?" She smiled knowingly.

"I don't know."

"Me?"

"No."

"You look so serious. Relax, Ken, if you want to get anything out of this try-out."

"I'm not nervous."

"Then why so all-fired grim? Listen, buddy, we're not working in the Follies yet. We're not even playing the Orpheum in L.A."

She took his hand. "Maybe," she said, "if you was a bit more human, you'd feel better."

In the Mission House, they rented two rooms separated by an ell in the corridor of the shabby little hotel.

"In my language this is a dump," Anita said as she unpacked her bag. "And I let you get away with this double room stuff because you looked too innocent for words downstairs at the desk; and I'm not going to San Quentin for corrupting the morals of a minor. But we coulda taken a twin bedroom and saved seventy-five cents a night. I won't bite you and if I do the marks won't show later than nine the next morning."

They couldn't find the theatre. Its narrow lobby hid between a market and an automobile salesroom, "looking like nothing but a very old vacant lot," said Anita. They found their names on the house-board. They were one of three acts, "Mme. Blanco, the famed Swiss Sharpshooter; Prince Zarah, the International Mystic; and the Metropolitan Dance Team Par Excellence, Rogers and Gracey."