Just as he sagged onto one side of the mattress, I jumped off the other side and made it to the door, slammed it shut, and bolted down the stairs. My feet twisted against the steps, missing a few, but I kept on running, past the TV room and the sauna, past open rooms, past the exhaling mist of the steam room and its fog of memory, past everything there that descended into nothing but a row of lockers and vending machines selling Coke and cookies and condoms and KY. I got into my clothes, returned key and towel, and hit the streets. From the seventh-floor window came a voice yelling, “You mine, nigger.” And there was Clementine waving a fat fist.

I walked quickly, mindlessly, until I came to the subway. The smell of burning electricity turned me right around, and I was back on the street, not knowing where I’d go next. But there was only one place I could go, the battered room Metro and I shared the last time I saw him alive. I wasn’t Metro’s nigger, or Clementine’s. I was my own beautiful black son of a bitch.

I found West Street, dodged traffic, and entered the abandoned warehouse. And there I was, face to face with the splinters.

“Jesse. Oh, Jesse. I knew you’d come.”

“Do you love me, Metro?”

“Call me baby,” he said drowsily.

“Is that why you asked me here? Just to call you baby?”

It wasn’t always like this, I told myself. A quick fuck in an abandoned warehouse. It wasn’t always like this. Once, we strolled across campus holding hands. Once, underneath the streetlamp behind the library at the marble stairs leading onto the quad, he kissed me. Once, anyone studying all night in the reserve room or just getting high late that night could have seen us. Once, someone did. Once, we marched together in the commencement procession. Then I arrived in New York first because Metro went to Louisiana to visit his family. When he came back North he seemed different, as if the change of place had given him new eyes and a different voice. Then there was something strange and desperate about him. But I showed him, didn’t I? I showed him who the real nigger was. I kept my hand closed over my palm. I wouldn’t let him smell it. And I didn’t have to dance that time, did I? Like I’m dancing now that he’s gone, Dancing, dancing…

And he was in my arms…was in my arms…

One step, two steps, three steps together…

One step, two steps…