Free Come and Join the Dance by Joyce Johnson Page A

surrounded by all those books. It’s stupid, though—I need the money.” Her face was very tired, as if she knew too much. Perhaps she would look that way all the time when she was forty. “I’ve had a hundred afternoons like this,” she said. “No one doing anything—me, Anthony … I knew Peter wouldn’t try for the fellowship, you know.”
    â€œKay!” Susan cried. “Do you think I use people?” She had been rehearsing those words for a long time. “Jerry said so last night. Do you think I do?”
    â€œWe all use each other,” Kay said.
    â€œBut I did use Jerry.”
    â€œAnd Jerry used you. Everybody uses everybody. That’s the way it is.” Kay’s voice was flat.
    â€œBut there has to be more than that, doesn’t there? There has to be love. Maybe I’ve never really loved anyone.” Her confession terrified her. She had only half thought of it before, had never meant to say it.
    â€œI think you’re worried about words,” Kay said. There was no absolution.
    â€œBut I don’t want to go on using people!”
    â€œIt’s just the way you look at it,” Kay said.

CHAPTER EIGHT
    I N AN ODD WAY , Peter’s car was the place where he really lived—he only inhabited his apartment. It was true that, like most of the things Peter owned, the ramshackle black Packard should have been allowed to die quietly ten years ago, but a curious desperate joy possessed Peter at the wheel as long as everything went fast, and he always kept the back seat littered with the fragmentary preparations for a journey: blankets, an old raincoat, books, aspirins, a box of crackers, can openers, socks—as though the chaos of his living room had simply been extended. Peter didn’t seem to care that the car shook every time it hit a bump and that its insides were ticking so loudly that everything had to be shouted. “This car is going to shake itself to pieces one of these days!” he called out cheerfully.
    â€œWhy don’t you get it checked?” Anthony asked.
    â€œBecause I’d find out too much was wrong with it. I’d never be able to bail it out again.”
    They were all in his power that afternoon; he had made the car their only reality. “Sing,” he’d command them, and they’d sing. No unfinished work existed in their world. He was golden and they were golden. They drank a lot of beer. Is it because of the beer? Susan wondered. Even Kay was smiling. She sang all the choruses low-voiced, but anyway she sang. They drove twice through Central Park, then all the way down to the Battery, passing gray office buildings, processions of gray people down avenues—“You’re too serious!” Anthony shouted at them through the window. By four o’clock, they were uptown again, passing 116th Street, the red buildings of the college somewhere behind the apartment houses. “Are we going to New Jersey?” Susan asked, but she knew it didn’t matter. They had destroyed logic three hours ago, made the afternoon their midnight. “I’m drunk!” she laughed, letting her head fall against Anthony’s shoulder. “I’m so drunk. I feel like everything is twenty miles away.”
    Anthony kissed her. “Am I twenty miles away?”
    â€œOh … maybe fifteen.” She liked having him kiss her. It was all part of the ride. Everything fitted. “You smell of soap,” she said, “like a little boy.”
    â€œHow come you know so much about little boys?”
    â€œNone of your business.”
    â€œSusan, why don’t you adopt me?” Anthony said. “I’m young, I’m hungry, I’m broke, I’m miserable. We’d have a ball.”
    â€œI can’t adopt anyone,” she said, enjoying the game. “I’m going to Paris in a week.”
    â€œWe’d have a whole week,” he said.
    â€œNo.