“I like you, Buster,” she said, “You don’t know what a change you are to the usual guys I get snarled up with.”
Ken smiled at her, not saying anything. He felt relaxed and happy. This night was off the record: hours that didn’t count in his routine of life. In this way, he had got the better of his conscience. He knew he had been extraordinarily lucky to find a girl like Fay to share this stolen night out. By tomorrow the whole episode would be behind him: a memory he would have for the rest of his days. It would never happen again, he assured himself. He wouldn’t want it to happen again. But now it was happening, he would be a fool not to enjoy every second of it.
He looked at Fay as they passed a battery of neon lights advertising a cereal food. The blue, green and red lights lit up the interior of the cab.
She looked extraordinarily attractive, he thought, in the electric blue, full-skirted frock, cut low to show to advantage her creamy white shoulders. Around her throat she wore a necklace of dark blue beads that emphasized the blueness of her eyes.
He had forgotten he had paid her twenty dollars for this night out. It was odd, but he felt as if he had gone back five years and was spending the kind of night he had so often spent before he met Ann.
“Do you like dancing, Buster?” she asked suddenly.
“Sure; do you?”
“I love it. I used to earn a living as a dancer, then things went wrong. I lost my partner, and I couldn’t find another, so I gave it up. We used to give exhibitions at the Blue Rose. It’s not a bad little club. I think you’ll like it.”
“What happened to your partner?” Ken asked, merely to carry on the conversation.
He saw her face tighten.