Butterfly Man. Lew Levenson

cared to study dancing," Mr. Pawne remarked.

      To Ken's query, Mr. Pawne explained that Buddy Nolan taught dancing on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood. He was the very best teacher in the city, said Mr. Pawne.

      "And may I drive a car there, myself?" asked Ken. "Certainly. You may use the Rolls roadster."

      With Mr. Pawne at his side, Ken drove the high old Rolls-Royce down to Hollywood. The School of ​Terpsichore occupied a Grecian temple on the Boulevard. The Muse, in person, adorned the portal. She was weather-beaten but still graceful.

      Buddy Nolan interrupted a class to greet Mr. Pawne and to show Mr. Gracey his establishment. The School of Terpsichore supplied many dancers to the movies and the theatre. Neophytes in practise clothes, boys in shorts, girls in trim bathing suits, stretched and rolled and bent their bodies earnestly.

      "Will this do, Mr. Gracey?" Mr. Pawne whispered, as the tour of the school ended.

      "It's great!" Ken cried. "I'll stay here today."

      A day at Buddy Nolan's ripped away the veil from Ken's mind. He felt alert, alive for the first time since arriving in California. These languid semi-tropic days and moist nights, the rich food, the luxury in which he lived had deadened the nervous resilience which had characterized his activities back home in Selma. Now that he danced, the crafty face of Mr. Lowell vanished temporarily from his memory. The cajoling voice, the unctuous manner, that mystifying wizardry, compound of wealth and sinister devotion, was withdrawn as if it had never been.

      At the conclusion of Ken's first class, Buddy Nolan sent for him.

      "You're marvelous," beamed the dancing teacher. "My dear, you are marvelous. I have never had such a beginner since I opened the school. You already possess a definite style. You are as graceful as a woman."

      Nolan was tiny, frail, with a light, shrill voice. He dressed in slacks and smoked incessantly. On his ring finger was a huge moonstone, which he rubbed from time to time against his cheek. "My boy," he continued, "we ​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.

      ​Star-ridge, like Hollywood, was unreal. Mr. Pawne became an incredible character, a pottering nuisance; Kari's innumerable attentions and his pidgeon English fluttered annoyingly about. The vast house held Ken imprisoned as in a gilded sarcophagus.

      He could not meet his dancing-schoolmates on their own plane. He could read in their eyes the fear and contempt they felt for him. He was rich; many of them were very poor. He was "different"; they were "ordinary."

      One of the boys—a snub-nosed, pleasant Jimmy Smith, who was very adept at picking up new and sensational tap "breaks"—watched Ken's performance with envy and admiration.

      "Been working long?" he asked.

      "Two weeks," said Ken curtly and turned away. In Ken's mind at the moment was exhilaration at the discovery that he could kick straight and true to the back of his head. He was surprised to hear Jimmy Smith say: "Because you're old Lowell's latest chicken doesn't mean you can lord it over me, Gracey."

      "What do you mean by that?" Ken asked.

      "As if you didn't know—" said the other and turned away with a gesture of disgust.

      Buddy Nolan met Ken at the gate.

      "Going home?"

      "Not for an hour or two," Ken replied. "Mr. Pawne said Mr. Lowell might fly in from Tanopah today. He owns mines up there in Nevada."

      "How about a drink with me at the Rendezvous?"

      "What's that?"

      "A spot on Hollywood Boulevard."

      "I'm on."

      ​As Ken drove the dance master to the Rendezvous, he heard lavish praise of Mr. Lowell.

      "La's a powerful friend, Ken," said Nolan. "Would it surprise you to know that he put me in business?"

      "Not at all. But tell me, Bud, how come Jimmy Smith doesn't like him?"

      Nolan rubbed the moonstone on his cheek and gazed quizzically at Ken. Then he began to chuckle.

      "Called you a name, I bet."

      "No—"

      "He's not the type, Ken. Forget him."

      "Don't say anything to him about it, will you?"

      "I never talk to that kind about personal matters. Don't let La Lowell hear you gossip about him to outsiders."

      "I didn't say a word, Bud."

      Ken was vaguely nervous as he entered the Rendezvous. It was a large, rambling house of shingles streaked with patches of faded color. A low wall almost hid it from the view of passersby. Within, a long room, tables set before benches which lined the walls.

      Bud was greeted by Jackie Jackol, a square-chinned woman of forty-five, husky-voiced, loose-limbed, hair plastered closely against her rounded head.

      The Rendezvous was half-filled. Nearly all the guests were men although, in a dim corner, sat a quartette of young women.

      "This is the place to come if you want to be free," said Bud. "By that, I don't mean that you can't enjoy yourself elsewhere. But I'm sure you feel the peace of this room. I'd rather drink bad gin here than champagne at the Cocoa-nut Grove."

      ​"Why?" Ken asked naively.

      "Look around," said Bud. "Everyone knows everyone else. Jackie's a true friend. The boys and girls come to her with their problems and their troubles. She solves everything by serving gin. If you can pay—great. If you can't—great.

      "That's Hal Romans, over there. He's a psychic, on the side. Odd chap, a little demented perhaps, but true. That's Jean Duval, the little fellow—stealing an hour from his studio—he is an artistic publicity man, catering to the more decadent movie stars.

      "The girl in the center, Kay Regan—she's a young lawyer. She doesn't practise because she spends too much time worrying about the fate which made her a woman instead of a man. I call her a bi-sex, flat-feet, the result of a lover who beat her, but she's convinced she was born wrong—so what can poor Buddy do?

      "That stringy blonde next to her would be quite pretty if she'd bathe regularly. She hails from up North where she got religion. She preached the Four-Square Gospel for Aimee until she was thrown out of the Temple for using the dressing rooms for odd purposes."

      "You mean she's queer?"

      "Divinely so, dearie," said Buddy, and rubbed the moonstone against his cheek. "Jackie, for