Page:Levenson - Butterfly Man.djvu/83

Rh A doctor put her in the massage racket. He taught her a few little tricks which came in handy later on, when she was stranded in Seattle and couldn't get a job. She gave a prissy old health board inspector a fancy rub-down and got an official license to pick up a few dollars here and there. She rented a little flat all to herself and chose her customers carefully, preferring men over thirty because their blood ran coolish and she could tame them and enjoy it. Anita learned to avoid husky young Goliaths. One night when she attempted to put a certain college football captain out in the dark after having entertained him with every trick in her repertory, he confused her with the Washington State scrimmage line and broke her collar bone attempting an off-tackle slant for a fourth or fifth touch-down … she couldn't remember which. A masseuse with a lame arm was worthless, so Anita's career went from her clavicle to her feet. She became, thanks to Gus, again a good girl and for the first time in her life a dancer, Gus paying the bills.

In several seasons of small time for Pantages and backwoods offshoots of the Orpheum circuit, she developed into a fair performer, especially when she was a little tight. If she went on without a drink, the audience saw a tired girl in a tinselled dress doing her best to keep up with an impatient orchestra. So she drank, moderately, at first.

Gus, who could sing well enough to get by, gave her the air because he preferred an idle life as an old lady's home companion to the insecure and picaresque career of a song and dance man. He decided, too, that Anita was fading and with plenty of luscious fruit clinging to the trees, fairly asking to be picked, why shouldn't he go to Denver and live with the druggist's widow who kept writing him