“By heck, there’s a good idea for a sob song! What a title—‘Aching Hearts’!” He grasped Berel’s hand with genuine friendliness. “Your lines have the swing I’ve been looking for. Only a little more zip, a change here and there, and——”
“Change this?” Berel snatched the verses and put them back in his pocket. “There’s my heart’s blood in every letter of it!”
“Yes, it’s heart stuff all right,” placated the composer, realizing a good thing, and impatient as a hound on the scent. “Come along!” He took Berel by the arm. “I want to read your sob stuff to a little friend.”
Flattered, but vaguely apprehensive, Berel followed Shapiro to the delectable locality known as Tin Pan Alley, and into the inner shrine of one of the many song houses to be found there.
“Maizie!” cried Shapiro to a vaudeville star who had been waiting none too patiently for his return. “I’ve found an honest-to-God poet!”
He introduced Berel, who blushed like a shy young girl.
“So you’re a poet?” said Maizie.
Her eyes were pools of dancing lights as she laughed, aware of her effect on the transfixed youth. Berel stared in dazzled wonder at the sudden apparition of loveliness, of joy, of life. Soft, feminine perfume enveloped his senses. Like a narcotic, it stole over him. It was the first time he had ever been touched by the seductive lure of woman.
Shapiro sat down at a piano, and his hands brought from the tortured instrument a smashing medley of syncopated tunes.
“This needs lyric stuff with a heartbeat in it,” he flung over his shoulder; “and you have just the dope.”