Читать книгу The Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald онлайн

1005 страница из 1457

I regret to say that I never saw Jim Powell’s famous school in action nor followed his personally conducted tours into the mysteries of Dice, Brassknuckles and Guitar. So I can give you only such details as were later reported to me by one of his admiring pupils. During all the discussion of it afterwards no one ever denied that it was an enormous success, and no pupil ever regretted having received its degree—Bachelor of Jazz.

“If I could keep it dark,” Jim confided to Amanthis, “I’d have up Rastus Muldoon’s Band from Savannah. That’s the band I’ve always wanted to lead.”

He was making money. His charges were not exorbitant—as a rule his pupils were not particularly flush—but he moved from his boarding house to the Casino Hotel where he took a suite and had Hugo serve him his breakfast in bed.

The establishing of Amanthis as a member of Southampton’s younger set was easier than he had expected. Within a week she was known to everyone in the school by her first name. Jim saw less of her than he would have liked. Not that her manner toward him changed—she walked with him often, she was always willing to listen to his plans—but after she was taken up by the fashionable her evenings seemed to be monopolized. Several times Jim arrived at her boarding house to find her out of breath, as if she had just come in at a run, presumably from some festivity in which he had no share.