# Butterfly Man/Chapter XXI

XXI
IN the train, narrow in a berth, slant wise, trying to sleep, Ken was ill. It was Sunday night. Joe Durazzo hovered over him.
"It wasn't so much missing the show," he said. "Old man Vee will probably forgive you for that. But scaring us. Where was you, Ken?"
"With Rocco," Ken murmured between dry, caked lips.
"I knew Rocco's stuff," Joe continued. "But the others thought you was being kidnapped. I knew different. You ain't got enough to make it worth while snatching you." He talked on. With a sudden start, Ken sat up.
"I got the heebie-jeebies," he said. His face was pale, a thin white fist on his cheeks. "I got the jitters. I gotta have a drink." Joe poured a thimble full of rye in a collapsible silver cup.
"I'll be all right in the morning," Ken spoke reassuringly. "I've been crazy to drink so much. I mixed drinks too. And acted pretty awful."
"You're funny," Joe remarked. "I see lots of wild babies but you take the cake."
The train hurrying through the night toward New York lulled Ken into drowsiness. Joe switched off the light and climbed into the adjoining berth. He was soon sleeping.
Little things counted for much in the morning. The jerky gait of the night before was gone. With it had vanished that curious sensation of an opaque world, ​fighting through streets heavily compressed, the atmosphere weighing down stickily, making each step difficult, like a diver plodding deep upon the bottom of the sea.
In the morning, cloud shapes, queer faces in towering white cumulus, whisk of telegraph poles passing the train, thin emptiness at the pit of his stomach. Coffee, sleep, warm sun beating through the window panes and Ken felt energy returning to his body.
Joe sat beside him.
"Better this morning?" he asked. Ken nodded.
"What happened to the others?" Ken asked.
"They took the Saturday night train to town. You barged into the theatre at ten o'clock that night. You was a sight. Dirty. Clothes torn. What did Rocco do to you?"
"I don't remember," Ken said.
"Lucky you got out alive. I heard he kills 'em afterwards."
Ken laughed. "That's fantastic," he said. Then added: "But so is everything."
Not without trepidation did Ken say, "There's Howard." He saw him in the crowd lining the train exit.
"Why didn't you tell me he was back?" he asked Joe.
"I didn't know."
"Beat it," Ken ordered. "Take your bags and this one of mine to the Gladwell. I'll meet you there."
Howard was pushing his way through the crowd to meet him. He was smiling. He reached Ken's side, grasped his hand, said something about Ken's health and was chatting in short broken excited phrases as he held Ken's arm and guided him to the taxicab gate.
"I landed Friday. Heard you were ill. Had father on the ​phone in Chicago. He was roaring about your being drunk, but I knew otherwise."
Ken thought he looked the same. Leaner, perhaps.
"I never did hear from you. Knew you weren't a writer. But you could have kept me informed."
Then he didn't know, Ken concluded. He had talked to no one, heard none of the gossip … or the truth. The chatter continued. Howard directed the taxi to the Barrington. Almost without Ken's realizing that he was again in New York, that Howard had returned from Europe, that the road tour had ended, he found himself sitting beside Howard, hearing his voice, exactly as if he had not fled from him months before.
New York, as the cab slowly opened a path in the traffic, was rising high above him, narrow streets, the creaking Third Avenue "L" distantly dull now in the clouded noon light, as they turned east away from Park Avenue. A right turn and the cab came to a stop. Ken, still silent, still hearing Howard's enthusiastic recital of events past, London nights, incidents, anecdotes pouring into his ears, stepped out of the cab. A negro ran to meet him.
"Mr. Gracey, sir, a pleasure to see you." It was Rutgers. The ornate facade of the building before which he stood was that of the Barrington.
"Welcome home, Mr. Gracey," Rutgers beamed. "Welcome home."
"I can't stay here, Howard," Ken said. "I don't want to."
"But you must have a reason."
"I'm tired out. I want to be by myself." Ken's voice rasped. He was impatient. He wondered how sincere he ​really was, whether all the preliminary fencing had not been the false parrying of friends who do not wish to harm each other. Of course, the passion was gone out of romance. That was it. What he really wanted was freedom to act as he pleased. He no longer cared whether he harmed Howard. Nor himself.
"I shan't be here much," Howard explained, "and you can sleep all day. And there's no one like Rutgers."
Ken did not answer. Howard was sitting on the piano bench. Ken found a chewing gum capsule in his pocket and slipped it into his mouth.
"It looks so American seeing you chew," Howard said, "after all those months on the other side. You really should go to England. It would lift you immeasurably."
"I wish I could go away," Ken aimlessly suggested. "An automobile trip, perhaps. No destination. Just a trip."
"Take Rutgers," Howard said. "He'll chauffeur you. And be your nursemaid."
Ken's old gay smile flashed briefly.
"Where's the Mercedes?" Howard asked.
"I stored it when I passed through here on my way from Boston to Atlantic City last fall."
"I'll have Rutgers get it in shape. Take him with you and come back when you please. Or at least in time for the new show. I'll have your room ready for you then and you'll once more be in a mood for fun. What do you say?"
"The idea is marvelous. Just what I need. But I'd rather go alone. A chauffeur isn't necessary. In fact, I get a thrill out of driving. And I don't want to live here in the Barrington."
"I suppose you don't care for the mood of my lovely ​apartment. It isn't soothing enough. All right—I'll find a better place for us to live."
It was amusing to be packed high with bags, saying good-byes to Leon Shaw, to Howard and to the solicitous Rutgers. He had no plans—no destination. He was definitely not in flight. He wasn't running away. He was merely finding himself. Establishing himself. Cutting ties. Breaking chains.
He had told Howard about the room Joe had engaged at the Gladwell.
"Let him sleep there," Howard had said. Ken had finally jeered at Howard: "You make me feel like a bashful bride."
Howard, however, was in earnest. He had so much to say. They could sit up all night talking. And go riding in the park, early the next morning.
The next morning, after a night at the Barrington, Ken decided to leave town at once.
He was, at last, free. No superior person was guiding him about the maze-like city, teaching him ethics, etiquette, and where to eat expensively. Free—yet obliged to leave New York. For the first time, free in New York, money in the bank, money in his pocket, more to be had in advance from Leon Shaw. New York, wonderful, magical New York, city of infinite variety. Yet he must go away—for a time, at least. The car plunged into a crowded street. Its long tonneau, its European style, shiningly bright, attracted all eyes. A smile from a fat girl on the corner, a half-concealed glance from a boy at the curb. Ken stared at the boy; suddenly his lips relaxed into a grin. He saw the long face, the searching eyes of Jules Monroe.
​"Julie!" Ken cried.
"Hello," Monroe returned. Then his mouth opened wide in astonishment. "Ken Gracey—how are you?"
"Where are you going?"
"The 23 Club on West Fifty-second. My car is around the corner or I'd hop in with you."
"I'll meet you there." Ken's spirits rose. He stepped on the accelerator and the powerful motor thrust him forward into Fifth Avenue.
The 23 Club, haunt of the more elegant spenders, was intolerant of poverty. Behind its mahogany bar, a mirror was studded with bank notes of many nations and every denomination. Exactly centered was a thousand dollar bill, a gold certificate, crisp, clean, unspent.
Jules Monroe joined Ken at the corner table facing the entrance. It was mid-afternon and the Club was filling with men and women of the city; the recognizable faces of well-known actors, authors, bankers, business men.
The boy, neatly dressed, dark curling hair above soft brown eyes, stood beside the dance director.
"Sit down," Jules said. The boy gingerly sat on the edge of the wall bench. Jules faced Ken.
"How are you?" he purred.
A cat—blinking yellow eyes; a lynx, yellow-eyed in a cavern.
"Meet my friend Jackie," he said. Then smiled: "This is Buddy. Jackie. By the way, are rumors true? I hear you are now known as the Flame."
"Lovely name." Ken inclined his head. "Charming idea, but it isn't my title yet."
​"I think Rosebud is dear. How does it hit you?" Jules mocked. "I can easily popularize it if it suits."
"In Chicago, a swell guy called me the Butterfly Man."
"Too precious, dear, too precious. The Flame for you."
"Not today—I'm burning low, nearly gutted, you might say. And no Rosebud—that is, until I wear a rose in my—hair."
"You have changed for the better. What say to a tasty tid-bit to whet the appetite? Jackie tells me he has a little pal, Gregory Whoosit or what have you. What is his name, Jackie?"
"Gregory Jones," said the boy.
"Gregory Jones—and he wants to get into show business. Now I think, Buddy, we ought to call Gregory and then we'll all go over to my flat where you can show him how a great dancer dances; and I'll teach Jackie the technique of being a chorus boy. Elegant idea, don't you think?"
"Elegant," said Ken.
"Leave it to old devil Monroe to think of elegant ideas." He looked squarely into Ken's eyes. "Like me now?"
"Julie, you are—the last word—the last, last word in what I needed to kick off the blues. Come, let's get started."
"You were very drunk when you drove over the bridge," Grant Beckett said. He was smoking a pipe and the deep orange of the log flames flickered against his nose glasses. Very British looking, Ken thought. His rounded head, now somewhat bald, was symmetrically framed in silhouette by a window. Beyond, in the dusk, was the late spring evening of Cape Cod, sombre, chill, a study in tones of gray.
​"You're not too warm, are you, Gracey?" he asked. "I'm a comfortable sort myself."
"And frank?" Ken asked.
"Yes. Why not?"
"I've heard of you, of course," Ken explained. "I've always been happening upon fellows who studied drama with you or who played up here in the summertime."
"Yes—I'm getting ready for our opening performance, five weeks away. Three fellows are here with me now. Bill Paige, who paints my scenery, saw you careening over the bridge and switched on the flood lights over the barn. That saved your life."
"Damned nice of him," Ken said. "I wonder if my life is worth saving."
"Another of my boys, Dud Sweetzer, saw you dance two seasons ago, in New York. He tells me you're a natural dancer, wasted in musical comedy. He thinks you ought to be developed. Is that the reason why you are unhappy, because you are disappointed in your ambitions?"
"No—not at all."
"You see—you were really horribly drunk the other day. You instinctively plugged down on the brakes or you would have gone on into Norse Inlet, and the mud would have got you."
"I wasn't trying to commit suicide," said Ken. "I had been drunk for about a week. I recall vaguely that someone said you were the wise man of Norse Inlet, that your boys worshipped you and that you knew all the answers. I drove up here, nipping all the way. I didn't really know where I was until a filling station man said, 'That road goes to Norse Inlet. Isn't that where Grant Beckett carries on? I asked. He said, Yes, the old guy is sorta queer.' ​'So'm I,' I said. The man laughed and I saw red. I could have punched his face. Instead I drank half a pint of whiskey all at once—and you rescued me."
"Glad to have you," Beckett said.
"I really wanted to meet you," Ken continued. "Although not in this special way. And your boys—I've heard you have a marvelous bunch."
Beckett smiled, then tightened his grip upon his pipe. "My lads are a trifle Tennysonian. As the poet says:
"And here is truth; but an' it please thee not Take thou the truth as thou has told it me. For truly, as thou sayest, a fairy king And fairy queen have built the city, son."
Ken laughed. Beckett chuckled. "My boys," he said, "are all light and fluff. Actors, or would be. Languid otherwise. I stir them up. You see, son, I am not old, yet old enough to be weary of a commercial theatre. Here I am king. I produce what I please to produce. The world comes to my doorstep. I make very little money and spend less. No more quarrels with producers nor with the guardians of public morals."
"I understand now."
"And I can understand you," Beckett said. "What are you trying to forget? Or should I have said 'whom'?"
"You are a curious blend of the pure physical specimen and of the self-analytical introvert," Beckett said. "Two individuals in one. It took us three days to sober you up to the point where you could talk sense to me. I suggest that you stop being a coward. Stop damning yourself for fancied sins. Stop drinking. Stop running away from ​yourself. Go back to New York and follow your own Inclinations. Drink when you feel like it, never for hatred of yourself.
"I passed through a phase of my development which corresponded to yours. I was older than you—twenty-eight, I think. And successful. A somebody. The other was twenty-one, sleek, mysterious. I was always as you see me, fattish, old-womanish. Occasionally a shrew. He played golf, I played golf. He rowed, I rowed. He drank gin and bitters and I ruined my stomach drinking gin and bitters.
"We carried on until one day I was invited to the Duchess of Toodledeeoo's for a week-end. The Duchess was sixty and powerful. Had a lover once in a show, and she could be brow-beaten into backing ventures—privately, of course.
"Well—I was invited to bring a guest with me. The Duchess would have preferred a divinely tall, robust young Adonis. Walter was hollow-chested, sallow and gigoloish. The Duchess discovered, however, that he held no respect for age, titles of nobility or sex. I'm sure that he would have been made a baronet on the next honor's list, except that the Duchess said to me: 'Beckett,' she said in a deep voice, 'your friend is myopic. I'm sure he mistook me for a scullery maid. And I am short-winded.' Then she winked.
"I cracked young Walter in the face late that night. He admitted he had been bleeding me, that was all. Two weeks later he married the widow of Sir Trevalyan Botts, the tobacco merchant."
Beckett filled his pipe. "Your friend is wealthy, a genius, as you say. You can give him nothing. Already he has taught you despair. Buck up, son. Go your own way. Forget him."