“It’s a breeze,” Tony said. He looked at the clock on the wall with surprise. “It’s almost seven. Your mother and father will be worried. Let me walk you home.”

“No, you must go out the back way,” she insisted. “I will lock the store and draw the shutter. Tony, what should I tell my mother and father—I mean about my wearing the white dress?”

“That you’re going out with a boy who’s gonna call for you,” he explained patiently. “And when I get there, they’ll see that it’s me.”

He had felt so good that he just had to walk and smile at the world so that almost another hour was wasted. Then, when he got home, his mother insisted that he at least drink something cold. Only after he finished the glass of milk in two gulps was he able to escape into the bathroom. “Ma,” he called as he rinsed the razor for the last time, “what time is it?”

“Almost a quarter of nine, Anton.”

“I’ve gotta hurry,” he said, as he ran from the bathroom into his bedroom.

“You’re wearing your new suit?”

“Natch.”

“It looks nice on you,” she said. “It’s nice to see you getting dressed up. But I wish you’d stop for a real shoe shine.”

“I’ll do that,” he called, as he slipped a tie under his shirt collar, then decided to put it in his coat pocket and put it on just before he got to Maria’s. Maybe, if things worked out, he would be able to tell Bernardo exactly how things were, and if he wouldn’t listen, then someone was going to have to knock some sense into him, which would be his job, not Diesel’s. Hurry, he told his reflection in the mirror, the sooner you get to the highway, the sooner you get to Maria’s.

Riff tossed aside his beer can, wiped his lips, and looked again at his watch. It was ten to nine and time to get started.

“All right,” he instructed the tense, nervous Jets, “we’ll scatter and move over to the highway. And for chrissakes, watch out for Schrank. He’s been on my tail all day.”

The Jets melted into the darkness. In the next street Bernardo gave similar orders to the Sharks.

“You gonna have to make it home tonight?” he asked Anita.

She pressed herself to him and rotated her hips slowly. “I told my mother I was staying with Maria. She said okay. But just where are we gonna go?”

“We’ll see,” he said. “I gotta run.”

“Take care of yourself, ’Nardo. And hurry. I’ll be waiting right here.”

Bernardo waved again, and moved off down the street. A block away he paused in the hallway to check the spring on his switchblade knife. The hard instant click as the blade sprang out and locked into position gave him a feeling of confidence. With this knife he was going to stab deep into an alien world.

For the knife made him as big as anyone, bigger, because it could cut anyone down to his size, cut someone into little pieces he could kick aside. Bernardo put the knife away.