Come and Join the Dance Read Online Free PDF Page B

all the way back to the dorms. I didn’t even wait for the elevator.”
    â€œBut would you have waited for the elevator if you hadn’t been in love?” she asked lightly.
    â€œOh God!” he groaned. “I know you’re not interested.”
    â€œBut I am interested.”
    â€œSusan … why don’t we just go to the movies?”
    They walked down Third Avenue. She had put her arm through his, a young lady on a promenade. They did not attempt to talk, but there were all the antique-shop windows to look at; they stopped methodically in front of each and stared at the accumulations of rickety furniture and ornate china and once useful objects with names that were no longer remembered. Susan hated antiques. It depressed her to think that tea kettles and candlesticks could survive human beings. Her own furniture, she decided, would be as modern and impermanent-looking as possible, and it would fall apart soon after she died. Once, for a moment, she and Jerry were reflected in a massive gold-framed mirror that perhaps had reflected a Louis Fourteenth lady, and Susan saw that they looked like two people who might be walking on together forever, arm in arm, long past the point where Third Avenue ended and there were no more antique shops and the world’s unknown space began—they might have looked that way too to the quick glance of a stranger. She let her arm slip from Jerry’s, wanting to stand alone. “Are you all right?” he asked.
    â€œOf course.” She let him take her hand.
    â€œMaybe we’ll find a French movie,” he said, “all about the dangers of Paris. People hiding out in sewers.”
    â€œI’d love to hide in a sewer.”
    â€œYou just think you would.”
    â€œMaybe I’ll do anything I want to.”
    â€œWell,” he said, “I think you’ll be glad to come back here in the end.”
    She laughed exultantly. “In the end, perhaps. But not in the beginning, not now.”
    â€œOh,” he said quietly, “I see.”
    They had begun to walk very quickly. He was whistling; he whistled “Oh, Susannah” and “Tea for Two.” “Hey,” she protested, stopping for a moment, “I’m wearing heels.” He grabbed her wrist roughly and jerked her along behind him like a disobedient child. She pulled herself free. “I refuse to walk like this, Jerry.” But strangely enough, she was not angry with him; she stood before him laughing, feeling an immunity in laughter.
    â€œThere’s a movie theater four blocks away,” he said. “That’s where we’re going.”
    â€œDo you know what’s playing?”
    â€œNo, I don’t. I just want to get there.”
    â€œJerry … I don’t think we ought to go to the movies.” The sound of her voice seemed peculiarly distinct.
    â€œWhy not?” he said defiantly.
    â€œI think we should go somewhere and talk.”
    â€œOh,” he said slowly, “I know what’s coming.”
    â€œDo you?”
    â€œYes, I think I know. You’re going to say it’s all over—right? That’s that.” He raised his hand uncertainly, then snapped his fingers in the air. “Is that what you mean?”
    He was so permanent, tangible, standing there in the street. It seemed impossible that words could make him vanish. “Yes,” she whispered. “I guess … ”
    â€œJust like that!” he cried.
    â€œJerry,” she said timidly, “it’s been coming on.”
    â€œSure. I know.” He looked up at the street lamp and then at the cars passing and the people. It seemed to Susan as though everything were moving except them. “This is a hell of a place to have a conversation,” he said.
    â€œBetter than the subway.” She tried to laugh, hoping he would too. She couldn’t look at his face.
    â€œDo you feel anything at all?” he