Come and Join the Dance by Joyce Johnson Read Free Book Online Page B

down. “Looks like someone slept over.”
    Susan leaned against the door, her hand on the brass knob. The silence between them now was heavy, peculiarly intense, as though anything said would be dishonest. There was no reason for her to wait for Peter—just because they had run into each other on the street, an accident without significance. It would have been a braver thing to have come alone, or not to have come at all, not to have used Kay for this. What was she looking for, anyway? Something to kill time, that was all it was. Amusement. Kay had come to Peter because she meant it.
    â€œWhat’s the matter?” Kay frowned at her. “You look like you’re going to take off any minute.”
    â€œOh I’m not,” she said tightly, placing herself on a hard little chair near the door. The trespasser’s chair, she thought.
    Kay had tucked her feet up under her and was smoking a cigarette, staring sad and empty-eyed at an invisible point in an unknown landscape; she might have looked that way sitting alone on her bed in the Southwick Arms Hotel. But maybe Kay’s room and Peter’s living room and all the other rooms in the world that had been assembled defiantly just for the time being and then neglected, because after all the arrangement was temporary, were rooms in the same endless apartment, connected by miles and miles of dark hallways and worn linoleum, furnished with the massive, imperishable castoffs that parents whose children had left home gave to the Salvation Army. Susan was just a spy, a sneak thief who lived in a room with pink walls in her mother’s house.
    The rush of the shower had stopped. A door opened, and then there were footsteps coming down the hall. Kay sat up very straight and stubbed out her cigarette. Susan wished she would look at her. “Peter?” Kay called out sharply. “Peter?”
    But the black-haired lanky boy in the blue jeans and dingy white shirt who strode into the living room was not Peter after all, but Anthony Leone. “Wow!” he said happily. “Two women and so early in the morning!” Susan began to laugh, feeling giddy, lightheaded. “Hi.” Solemnly Anthony nodded to her.
    â€œHi,” she said, trying to choke down her laughter. She had been frightened before when she had thought the footsteps were Peter’s; she always laughed when she was frightened.
    â€œThese yours?” Kay asked Anthony, pointing to the army blankets.
    â€œYeah. I’m homeless again. Mitchell finally evicted me.”
    â€œWhere’s Peter?”
    â€œStill sleeping. What did you expect?”
    Kay stood up. “I’m going to wake him.”
    â€œOh don’t do that. He’s in bad shape. We got pretty loaded last night. I got sick, which was stupid.”
    â€œAre you feeling better now?” Susan asked.
    â€œSure,” he said cheerfully. “Now I’m hungry.”
    â€œI’m going in,” Kay said. “He’s got his fellowship paper due at five.”
    â€œLook—why don’t you let Peter sleep. Why are you always so damn motherly?”
    â€œI’m not motherly at all.”
    â€œYes you are. You always have that we-all-have-our-work-to-do attitude. And what’s your work, anyway?”
    Kay’s face went rigid for a moment. “Living,” she muttered. “Just living.” She marched swiftly past him and up the hall to Peter’s bedroom.
    Susan heard her shut the door. The jazz was terribly loud. Someone really ought to turn it off, she thought.
    Anthony was asking her something: “Do you think she’s bugged with me?”
    â€œNo,” she said, “Kay never really gets angry.” But she wondered if that were true.
    â€œWhat’s the matter then? Is she some kind of martyr? I don’t dig that at all. I hate passive people!”
    â€œWhy?” Since she was alone with him, they might as well have a