"Riff, this whole thing is getting out of hand. It was fun when we made the Jets, but it's getting too much."
"What do you mean it's 'getting outta hand'?"
"I mean, Riff, you bought a gun for a little rumble that shouldn't be happening!"
"You ain...
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A can sails through the air and is caught by a boy with brown hair and brown eyes. He puts the can in a open wooden crate in which there are many other cans. He then holds his hand out for another. "Can?" He asks.
Riff stands by a neatly-made cot in the corner. Next to the cot, a small lamp and crates holding old paperbacks and folded clothes: this is where the boy lives. Above his bed, are pictures from magazines of outer space.
"Come on, just for a hour, only a little hour, you used to like dancin'! Remember dancin' with Annika? No monkeyshines-"
"C'mon, Riff. Can." He pushes, making Riff blow a cloud of thick white dust off of the can as he walks it over to Tony.
"Christ almighty, ya know, there's dust on everything, ever since-" The boy reaches for the can, but Riff pushes his arm aside.
"Hey, I swear on what's holy, it is just girls sippin' punch and music and-"
"And the Sharks, and-"
"And the spics, right, which all you gotta do is help me haggle over the terms of the rumble-"
"A rumble?! You're on your own, pal-o-mine, you don't need me helpin ya screw up-"
"You know how I get, I'll start runnin my mouth. You, you got command, you are West Side legendary! And Tony! The Jets! I give em my word you'd show with Annika." Riff confesses.
"Why would you do that?" He asks softly.
"Because, because it's a rumble! We need you if we're goin to war, you can't refuse us now." The boy begins to count the cans in the wooden box.
"Because I know you, or I thought I did, before you got all... unlike yourself, before you went upstate." Riff complains. The boy stops what he's doing, and puts everything down.
"And what about Annika? The whole reason why she left home was because of the things you, and the Jets, do. She won't turn up." He says to his best friend.
"Oh, well how come when I saw her, and I talked to her she said she would come." Riff answered.
"What? She's going to arrange a-"
"No. Pfft. Of course she's not. She wants nothin' to do with a rumble. We're goin' to the zoo after the dance, of course she doesn't know that yet. The Jets miss her, I miss her-"
"Hey, remember who your takin' to buddy boy, you broke my sister's heart after you ran off with Grazi, and she mentioned in letters what you said to her that night I got locked up, so don't-"
A woman's voice suddenly calls from above through the cellar door: "¡Tony, muévete!"
"I'm comin'!" He calls from the small stairway.
"It's like you're still in prison, and the old witch is the warden." Riff says, looking at the can in his hand.
"She gave me a job and a place to stay, she even told Annika where to go after that night." After picking up the wooden tray of beans, he slams it into Riff, making him lean against a wall.
