West Side Story

A Novelization by Irving Shulman

West Side Story

A novelization of the Broadway musical West Side Story

Based on a conception of Jerome Robbins

Book by Arthur Laurents

Music by Leonard Bernstein

Lyrics by Stephen Sondheim

Entire original production directed and choreographed by Jerome Robbins

WEST SIDE STORY began on the Broadway stage and was immediately recognized as one of the most creative musical productions of the twentieth century. Its success as a motion picture was equally spectacular.

A classical story with a modern setting, it still stands as one of the major contributions of the American theater.

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CHAPTER ONE

Riff Lorton looked at the wristwatch he had rolled off a drunk the week before, saw it was about nine o’clock, and groaned because most of the night was still ahead. Once daylight-saving time was in effect, the action had to start later, after it was really dark. But all day he had been feeling restless, itching and aching to get started, to get the Jets off their ass and into action.

It was all right for juniors like Baby-John to hang around and wait for orders, but nightly he had to show the Jets that he could keep them as busy and as important as Tony had when that missing person was planning their scene.

There were a couple of things they could do. They could move over to Central Park and look for a drunk they could roll because there were a couple of men in the Jets who needed watches. Or they could prowl the bushes until they found some jerk making it with his date and see if they could get into the act. They could even break up and walk through the Park singly with an exaggerated movement of hips, until one of them picked up some lousy fag to bust around before taking his wallet and watch.

No good, Riff decided, to each of these possibilities. Come dark, the Park was filled with cops who swung first and asked questions later. Any guy who was making out in the Park with a dame was probably raping her, so there could be trouble for the innocent bystander, and some of these faggots were surprising guys—longshoremen, truck drivers, judo experts, guys who looked like wrestlers—and tangling with them could mean a broken head. And you couldn’t tell about the swishy-looking kind; they might be plainclothes cops, assigned to the pansy patrol. So the Park was out.