ABSTRACT
Isabella lived on a hard glass floor. It had long ceased to remind her of a shimmering pond because now there was nothing soft or refreshing about it. It was a glass floor and a gliding life, hard, unresilient, and you kept it up night after night because you too had grown hard and unresponsive to everything in life except dancing and you were too numbed to soften into a change. Every night since their first furtive appointment she would meet Murray Burns in front of Gray’s Drug Store on Broadway and 43rd Street. He always looked the same, a lean figure foppishly dressed in the same suit of extreme Broadway cut which clung to him as if it were fashioned of elastic. Above his stiff purple collar which cut tightly around his long neck was his mocking, scooped-out face with the hair plastered back. There were no doubts in him that to be able to dance was the supreme gift of the world, and he looked down with contempt at the couples who were not dancers, spat with his eyes at the fat little men whose movements lacked grace. When his eyes lit on Isabella, dutifully waiting for him, a flicker would light up in his eyes and quickly vanish, and a bored, possessive air would govern his face once more. Like a secret password he would utter between his teeth, “Huntspoint Palace to-night. We’ll pick up a cup.” She felt his talons clutch her arm and they moved down to the subway.
