“Windows you can’t open. From Rikers all you see are windows you can’t open. Your own window and all the windows of Manhattan across the river. But you also see the bridges, and you hear planes taking off and landing at LaGuardia so you know people are going somewhere. But when you get outside all you see are windows. Windows that don’t open.”

“Exchanging one prison for another? It can’t be that bad, Abdul.” Then I thought about my return trip from Comstock State Prison last fall and how I noticed for the first time the locked gates on the windows of my building, especially the upper and lower floors. I was glad my windows had no locked gates. But Jesse looked out of them with the same trapped look I remember Phillip had when I’d seen him last. Jesse was different. It wasn’t a question of windows or gates. He was trapping himself all the time.

“Let’s get out of here,” Abdul said, moving from the heat and the shut glass. He led me down the spiral stairs. I was afraid of missing a step and failing or twisting my ankle this close to opening night. Besides, I still had a rehearsal to make. We hurried to the ferry, and it didn’t seem like Abdul took a full breath until we were nearing Manhattan and finally disembarking at Battery Park. Our hurrying put me a little ahead of schedule. We sat in the park and looked back across the river. The statue seemed small now and hardly important at all. Just somebody’s tarnished rag baby doll.

Tarnished is exactly the way I began to see Jesse after that. Green and rusty brown. As soon as I arrived for rehearsal he started in on me, asking where I’d been for the past few hours he’d been calling on the phone. “Out,” I told him. “I’ve been seeing the city from the outside.” Another cat-and-dog fight was beginning. I didn’t want him to hurt me more than he already did by giving Rodney so much of his time. But I hadn’t expected that he would sound hurt too.

“With Sheik What’s-his-name? He’s probably got you walking three paces behind him.”

“Since when do you care about names? Real names, I mean. You jealous?”

“Not another fight, please, Ruella. I just wanted to tell you about this dance. I’ve found the music for it. Ellington’s ‘Take the A Train.’”

“How original,” I said, trying to turn away. “Then I know what your dance is about.”

“Traveling,” Jesse said, a little too quickly. “It’s about moving from place to place.”

“Rooms to rooms, you mean.”

“What’s gotten into you?”

“Nothing, Jesse. But you’re still moving underground. You haven’t changed at all. I was stupid to expect as much, huh?”

“Why stupid?”