PART THREE

PART THREE

Ruella

Ruella

I got to the Village on the #1 train, all out of breath and with sweat in my hair. I found Jesse in a dirty warehouse room at the top of two flights of broken stairs. The place was scary. Truth is, I never would have gone to a place like that, day or night. Not me. And not without someone like Jesse on my mind. What would I look like wandering around abandoned piers and overturned garbage cans? As it was, I still didn’t want to enter the building once I found it. And even after making up my mind to do so I stopped first in what looked like a hall and called his name. “Jesse?” Next up another flight of stairs. “Jesse?” Then I found a cracked open door and peeked inside. “Jesse!” The air went straight out of my lungs. He like to throw me for a loop.

He was lying on the floor in dance tights. His chest was bare. His street clothes were tossed in a pile. Broken floorboards and splinters were everywhere. “Jesse, are you all right?” He said nothing and looked at me like I wasn’t even there. “It’s me. Rooms. I mean, Ruella.”

Slowly his eyes began to focus. He murmured something I didn’t get. “I had to get away,” he said.

“But why this place? I’ve never seen any place like it. Not from the inside, anyway.”

“Metro brought me here once. He asked me to meet him and I was here with him the day he was killed. We danced.”

“Well, I’m taking you home. Now get dressed. You’ll catch cold.”

“I was dancing. Right here. For a little bit, anyway.”

“Look, Jesse. We’ve got an audition to make. Remember?”

I looked at his feet. They were cut and bleeding. I couldn’t look long without feeling I’d be sick right there. There were splinters all on his legs and tights. He shrugged his shoulders.

I tried to coax him into his clothes and out of that awful room where drafts and sagging floorboards boxed him in. He didn’t want to leave at first, as if someone was holding him there. I knew it was Metro, or the memory of him. But what dance could they possibly have done together that last afternoon, the day before Jesse called me frantically and I said, “Come on over, chile, I got plenty of room”? I can see now why he needed so much space. Much more than I could ever give.

“What about Metro?”

“Metro’s dead, Jesse. And they’ve caught the killers. Detective Stone called yesterday. He wants to see us. And there’s the audition, Jesse. God, let’s get you out of here.”

“I was his nigger.”

“What?”

“He called me a nigger, Ruella. Then he came here looking for other niggers. White niggers and black niggers. Anyone more street than I was. That’s what he needed. I was something he couldn’t stand in me or in himself anymore.”