Good night, I must go to bed.
XII
Dear Kate:
Say, but I am having a good time! And what do you think? I am having my picture painted. Some artist people blew into the cafe the other night, and after I had danced a couple of times they talked to the manager, then they asked me to come over and talk to them. I set down to the table and they were awful nice to me, didn't get fresh, but asked me a lot of questions about myself and where I learned to dance. I told them I could dance ever since I could walk, that I danced as a kid at Coney Island, and Miner's theatre had got in trouble twice with the Children's Society because of me. I laughed and said, "Why, I never learned to dance, I just danced." The artist man said he wanted to paint my picture. It is a funny idea it seems to me. He wants to paint me in this dirty cabaret with the tables all around me and the bum men setting around and me a dancing in the center with the lights on me. He said he is going to call it "Youth." He said to one of the men that was with him, "Can't you see it, Phillip, can't you see it? That pretty girl the very spirit of youth with her gold hair around her face and her wonderful body swaying to the time of the music and all those bloated beasts looking up at her through the smoke?" I don't see how he is going to paint the picture, but that is his business. Mine is to go to his studio every day at ten o'clock.
Do you remember Will Henderson who used to play in the orchestra in the Grand Opera and who lived next to us when we was at 129? Well, what do you think? He is playing the piano in this joint here. Isn't that a come-down? He got to taking coke and he couldn't be trusted to keep his dates and he lost all his good jobs and now he can only get a place in the joints, but he does play wonderful! And when he is not too dopey, he sets down at the piano and makes music that draws the heart right out of you. He won't touch his violin cause it makes him remember, he says. It is a lucky thing for me in a way, as he likes me and he has wrote some music for me to dance by. He wrote a piece for me called "The Poppy," and that artist chap who is painting my picture got me a dress made for the dance, and oh, Kate, it is grand! It is red chiffon, and over it green chiffon like the leaves of the poppy, and I wear red slippers with pale green silk stockings that are so thin I can hardly get them on, and he had my hair all fluffed out and piled on top of my head, where it made a "golden halo," whatever that is. Him and Will explained to me about the dance. It seems that opium is made out of the flower, and they wanted me to show by dancing all the beautiful dreams that come with opium, and then the sleep afterward. I have known a lot of people who hit the pipe, and I don't know as they have ever had many beautiful dreams, but anyway the dance is awful pretty. The artist gave a party the other night, and had me come and do it. All the lights in the room was turned off and a greenish light was thrown on me and I danced fast at first and then I went slower and slower until at the last I dropped down on the stage and the lights went out and I run away in the dark. Everybody was crazy about it, and one of the big restaurants on Broadway is going to have me give the dance every night at midnight. Do you see, Kate, I told you if I got a chance I would get away from Seventh Avenue. I begun at 14th Street, and I am working up. I am up to 42nd and one of these days, I tell you, I am going to be dancing at the Winter Garden. I don't see why I shouldn't, I can dance as well as any girl in New York City, and now that Jim and your gang ain't around to queer me, there ain't no reason why I shouldn't be in the best places in town. I have had to stick to a lot of bum joints just because the managers of decent places didn't want to have a person who was mixed up with the crowd that I was in, around their place.
I am really having an awful good time. I get home about three in the morning and I sleep until about nine. I make my breakfast in my room yet, cause I like my own coffee, and then Jim Kelly who is my dancing partner now, comes up and we practise steps or else Will Henderson and Jim and me go over to Mamie Callahan's who has got a piano, and we work at some new thing. I don't have to be at the cafe till night and most every afternoon, I go around to some of the other places or to the shows to see what the other girls are dancing. I thought I would take some lessons from some of the swell teachers, but Lord, I can dance as well as any of them so what is the use of me spending my money.
I bought a swell new suit yesterday, and I sure do look some going up the avenue and, hear me, it is Fifth Avenue instead of Seventh. Oh, there is some class to your sister, Kate, and when I get on the new lid that the milliner made me, well—I should worry.
I went up to a party the other night at Rose Fisher's. I couldn't blow in until after work, but even as late as it was, I won $4.90 at penny ante, and it tickled me most to death. I have been trying to learn a new game called bridge that the girls are crazy about. I guess it is not in my line cause it is a thinking part. I can't remember what cards are out or what is trumps or what is anything else, and set sort of making over my old clothes or thinking up new steps when we are playing, and you can't do that with bridge. I lost a lot of money the other afternoon, and what is worse, Katie Regan was my partner and she took it hard and gave me an awful call-down. I got sore and felt like slapping her face, but I guess she is right. Don't play a game with other people's money unless you attend to business.