Men and women will
press together and a pack of bodies will sway on the dance floor. The
tungstens will go out and the spotlight will throw colors--green, purple,
lavender, blue, violet--and as the scene grows darker and the colors
revolve a howl will fill the place. But on the dance floor a silence will
fasten itself over the swaying bodies and there will be only the sound of
feet pushing. The silence of a ritual--faces stiffened, eyes rolling--a
rigid embrace of men and women creeping cunningly among the revolving
colors and the whiplike rhythms of the jazz band.
* * * * *
"Lost souls," says the vice reports, and the vice reports speak with a
calm and knowing voice. Women whose bodies and faces are like shells of
evil; vicious seeming men with a rasp in their laughter. These are among
those present. Aphrodite is a blousy wench in the 35th and State streets
neighborhood. And her votaries, although they offer an impressive
ensemble, are a sorry lot taken face by face.
Izzy, who is an old timer, sits at a table and takes it in. Izzy's eyes
and ears have learned to pick details in a bedlam. He can talk softly and
listen easily through the height of the cabaret racket.
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