"Say, yuh're kiddin'. Why anybody kin dance. It's as easy as rollin' off a log."
"Not for me."
"Aw come on, git up anyhow. Yuh can't help dancin' wid me. Jes' listen to de music. One, two, t'ree, tra la la, it gits yuh by itself. Come on."
To Jerome's amazement Jean rose. The boy took a heavily scented and soiled handkerchief from his pocket, adjusted it between Jean's shoulderblades, clamped it fast with his grimy hand, and standing at a distance that marked his knowledge of Jean's difference, swung her into step. Jerome rose, shook his body as if freeing it from a net, and walked to the space beyond the last row of chairs.
In the moving mass he caught Jean's face. She stood a head above the pimply face smiling up to her. She was smiling, too. Jerome drew deeper into the shadow. He lost Jean in the crowd, then she glided again into his line of sight. She was still smiling, apparently unconscious of that disgusting hand on her back, and the red, pimply face below her own. The thin, rouged girl was crying now. Jerome stepped further into the shadow to escape the circle closing about Jean, the ferret-eyed boy and sobbing girl.
He tried to drag himself back to the first moments of the evening, alone on the roof with Jean, but he could not do it. Something within was pushing to the surface, dragging up from the years memories of his own youth, hours that did not concern Jean at all, moments of need baffled by Helen's fragile strength, her misunderstanding and colorless desire. And then, of Jean's white neck and arms and the thick, soft whiteness of her flesh.
The music stopped. Jean was on the edge of the dancers looking for him. He went slowly forward. When the boy saw Jerome coming, he sidled away with a grin.
"Why did you do that?"
"Why did I do it?"
"Yes. Why?" Jerome saw the surprise in Jean's eyes but his need to know drove him on. "Yes. Why?"