Tony laughed as he gently punched Riff’s right shoulder. “So stop being disappointed. Stop suffering, little man.”

“I’m not a little man!”

“So grow up.” Tony was sharp. “Riff, I’d like to finish up.” He pointed to the cellar doors, thrown wide. “Maybe go to a beach someplace for a swim. You know, I’ve never been to a beach… How about it, Riff?” He was excited. “Let’s go… to Rockaway! We can go swimming at night. How about it?”

“Knock it off,” Riff said.

“I see,” Tony replied. “You’d rather go play with the Jets. Okay, little man.” He repeated this with emphasis. “Give my regards to the juveniles.”

“The Jets are the greatest!” Riff shouted and kicked out the wood slats of a box to prove it. “The greatest!” He raised his voice even higher and looked up at the buildings to see if anyone dared challenge this boast.

“They were,” Tony replied quietly.

“Are,” Riff insisted. “You found something better?”

“Not yet.”

“Then what the hell are you looking for?”

Tony thought for a moment. “I don’t think you’d dig it.”

Riff tapped his chest. “Try me, man. I’m very sharp. Go ahead.”

It had come to Tony one night, alone, on the subway. It was a feeling of discontent at the nagging sense of inferiority that even leading the Jets couldn’t erase. He was ignorant, knew nothing, and all the big-man-in-the-world talk wasn’t going to change it. Sure he was cool, but so was a cake of ice, and what did it know? Nothing. He was ignorant. And the way he was going he’d always be ignorant. There had to be something more than this.

Many hours later that night, because he had ridden trains from Brooklyn to the Bronx, from the Bronx to Queens, and from Queens into Manhattan, he had returned to his block off Columbus Avenue and walked up the dark steps that smelled of every meal ever cooked in the house, every bottle of booze drunk there, every drop of sweat brought on by the summer, the salt of every tear wept in rage or despair, and sat on the roof until dawn.

That was his last night as a Jet, his last night as a leader. The next morning he had looked for a job and Doc had given him one in the drugstore. Frankly, he didn’t know whether Doc had given him a job because it would be cheaper to have him on the payroll than to have God-knows-what done to the store; but he had been working now for four months and if the Jets were upset about it, his mother wasn’t. And it was time, Tony thought with shame—also a new feeling—that he did something to make her happy.

Or was that too square? He dared not tell the Jets, he dared not admit to anyone to what emotional confusion his thinking had led him and the easiest way out was to brush off Riff, Ice, and Action, who had taken over the Jets.