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Show PART III 11. Downstairs at the Lion's Den on the small dance floor under a spotlight a girl was dancing wearing nothing except shoes, not even a smile, though she held two large soft-feathered fans and with some amazingly deft movements was able to convey just how naked she was without showing anything. Ross Jaeger and I were there with two girls, at a table next to the dance floor, drinking whiskey sours and smoking English Ovals from a box. I wore my new grey suit that was almost a zoot suit, my hair had grown out almost to a zoot suiter's ducktail in back, smoothly parted, smoothly combed, smoothly oiled, and even Ross said I was plenty smooth for someone not yet a year out of high school. The four of us had eaten that evening at an Italian place near Fisherman's Wharf; last week we had eaten in a French restaurant, and often we ate Chinese. Now the fan dancer was beginning to reveal more skin and I winked at Lily and Bess, then looked back to the dancer with the critical eye of a connoisseur I was a thousand miles away from those dances at Arcadia, going outside to pass the bottle around or to piss into the swamp. I'd intended to go to college but with all the talk of war exciting me, Ross convined me to qo to San Francisco instead, get a job and have a swell time while we were still alive. According to him San Francisco girls spent half their lives on their backs, much like the French girls in that magazine I'd read years ago. So for a while we ushered at the Golden Gate Theatre and lived just up the street on Golden Gate Avenue in the Golden Gate Apartments. There in the Golden State I'd found the Golden Life all right. Also |