“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.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Shit. At least I do for once. What a goddamn fool I was.”

“You loved him?”

“Yes, I loved him.”

“That makes all the difference,” I said. I gathered up his things and pushed him out in the air. “Now, come on, Jesse. Let’s go home.”

We took a taxi uptown to my place. I made Jesse take a shower and sleep. I did my exercises alone again. The next morning we were back at the precinct. Detective Stone greeted us eagerly, as if arresting those guys was the easiest thing they had to do, showing how prompt and professional the officers were. I didn’t like his smile. It hesitated at the corners of his mouth then wrinkled out.

“Well, we got them. All of them,” he said proudly. He showed us mug shots of four boys who couldn’t have been more than sixteen years old. Truth is, only two were that young. The others looked older than Jesse or me.

“We found the first guy crazy out of his head. He’s the one who confessed.”

“And the others?” Jesse asked.

“They came later. You’ve seen these guys before? Somewhere in the neighborhood?”