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

hear it. Perhaps it was good. Sitting in Schulte’s with Anthony, she could not take her eyes off the street. And yet it was funny, she thought—if she had been outside at that moment, she would have been staring in, at the tables, the people, probably at Anthony; so in a way you never ended up seeing the place where you really were at all, not that there was much to look at in Schulte’s. The same paper roses had been on the tables ever since she was a freshman; the same people continued to come even though the coffee was awful. Kay was always there. She said she only felt at home in nondescript places, so they usually ended up in Schulte’s on the long, shapeless afternoons when they had both cut classes. Kay had taught her what a significant and necessary thing it was to cut a class, not just an irresponsible act. Her parents, paying bills for “advantages we never had,” would not understand, but stolen time had such a liveness to it; you could really feel yourself exist, knowing that the barrage of facts was continuing six blocks away without you. How long it had taken her to discover this! Peter, Kay and Anthony must have always cut classes. They were outlaws, part of a mysterious underground brotherhood. How was it that she had suddenly become able to recognize them, thinking, There’s one, there’s another, the recognition instant and uncanny. “Screwed-up people,” Jerry called them, seeing them all as casualties, those who would never “make it.” “What’s wrong with Kay?” he would ask. “Why doesn’t she wear lipstick, go back to school?” “I don’t know,” Susan had answered, embarrassed because he made her feel that something should be done about Kay: “Listen, Kay, it’s such a simple thing to put on lipstick.” But for Kay it couldn’t be simple. Sometimes she thought Kay was like one of those captains who went down with their ships, although it was hard to believe in that sort of thing.
    It was strange that Anthony had called her “another one.” But of course she did have a bad reputation. Probably very few people thought she was still a virgin. No one knew how much she lied, how skillful she had become in making adjustments in reality: inferences, suggestions, a few dark strokes, a laugh she had learned from someone. A shy Southern girl in the dorms had once said wistfully, “Susan, sometimes you’re so-o-o bizarre.” Disgusting! She would have to stop lying in Paris. A fresh start, a clean break—she had begun to think like a criminal. It was bad enough to be a coward. It was all upside down for her too; most people were afraid of reputation, not of the acts themselves. It was stupid to ruin your reputation and have nothing to show for it. You didn’t even have the comfort of being defined as an outlaw—that was something to be, one of a community. Instead, she had always been a scrubbed, prissy little girl who ate all her cereal, who sat scared stiff with her hands folded while another little girl poured red ink on the floor “just to see what would happen” or said “I don’t care” to the teacher. It was easier to be good. But she had always secretly watched the wild girls, wanting to be one of them, never daring: eighth-grade Marjorie who had flunked history with a total lack of concern and had tagged after all the cigarette-smoking boys in high school; and now there was Kay. She had brought Anthony where Kay would have brought him, almost automatically. “Let’s go to Schulte’s,” she had said. “I like that place.”
    â€œI don’t know why. It’s no place at all.”
    â€œThat’s why I like it.” They had both laughed—a moment of rapport. Later it might be harder to be Kay. If she spent the day with Anthony and he asked her to go to bed with him, Susan would have to say that he had misunderstood, or