West Side Story

Irving Shulman

• Publisher: Gallery Books
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781982191634
• Topic: Littérature
• Subtopic: Classiques

The classic novelization of one of Broadway's most enduring and beloved musicals, updated with a beautiful new cover. Maria is young and innocent and has never known love—until Tony. And Tony, searching for life beyond the savagery of the streets, has discovered love for the first time with her, too.But Maria's brother is the leader of the Sharks and Tony had once led the rival Jets. Now, both gangs are claiming the same turf and with tensions rising to the point of explosion, it seems there is no way to stop a rumble.Tony promised Maria that he would stay out of it. But will he be able to keep his word or will their newfound love be destroyed by violence or even death?Evocative and unforgettable, this novelization brings out all of the depth, drama, and beauty of one of the most enduring stories in the history of American theater.

CHAPTER ONE

Riff Lorton looked at the wristwatch he had rolled off a drunk the week before, saw it was about nine o’clock, and groaned because most of the night was still ahead. Once daylight-saving time was in effect, the action had to start later, after it was really dark. But all day he had been feeling restless, itching and aching to get started, to get the Jets off their ass and into action.

It was all right for juniors like Baby-John to hang around and wait for orders, but nightly he had to show the Jets that he could keep them as busy and as important as Tony had when that missing person was planning their scene.

There were a couple of things they could do. They could move over to Central Park and look for a drunk they could roll because there were a couple of men in the Jets who needed watches. Or they could prowl the bushes until they found some jerk making it with his date and see if they could get into the act. They could even break up and walk through the Park singly with an exaggerated movement of hips, until one of them picked up some lousy fag to bust around before taking his wallet and watch.

No good, Riff decided, to each of these possibilities. Come dark, the Park was filled with cops who swung first and asked questions later. Any guy who was making out in the Park with a dame was probably raping her, so there could be trouble for the innocent bystander, and some of these faggots were surprising guys—longshoremen, truck drivers, judo experts, guys who looked like wrestlers—and tangling with them could mean a broken head. And you couldn’t tell about the swishy-looking kind; they might be plainclothes cops, assigned to the pansy patrol. So the Park was out.

Of course there were the broads, but the Jets liked to lead up to that kind of action and if they picked up the girls now, they’d be stuck with them for the rest of the night; and the way Graziella hung onto him, she was going to make him into an old man before his time.

For a real bright, gone chick, she was getting some awful stupid ideas about getting married, and doing more and more yakking about how more kids their age were getting married every year. For crying out loud! She had even shown him the section of the newspaper that listed the names and ages of all the people who had taken out marriage licenses, and plenty of the jerks were just eighteen.

No sir, Riff told himself, and he knew the other Jets would agree, he was satisfied to do their jazzing without getting married and the rest of that jazz.

“This is Action asking what’s the action?” Riff felt his lieutenant nudge him. “What are we going to do tonight to blacken the name of our fair city?”

Riff picked at his teeth with an I.D. card that listed his age as twenty-two. Of medium height with a square face and chin and hair cut very short so that nobody could get a grip on it in a fight, Riff’s eyes were large, intelligent and well spaced above his nose which had been broken twice.

Like the other boys in the Jets, he wore the standard warm weather uniform: chino pants or jeans, tight T shirts to show his muscular development, and short black boots. Waiting on his decision, the Jets gathered around him as he leaned against the lamppost; eyes bright with anticipation, lips pressed into hard lines of cruelty, fingers tensing into talons, they shuffled nervously, as if anxious to break from the wire.

Riff looked over their heads, as he had done so many nights before, in the hope that he might see Tony coming down the block. Why Tony had kissed them off the way he did was something Riff couldn’t understand, and he was beginning to suspect the gas about his mother Tony had given him. His own old lady, Action’s, A-Rab’s, Diesel’s, Gee-Tar’s, all of them had been threatened every day, but so far there hadn’t been any funerals.

“Stop looking for the Polack,” he heard Action say. “Tony doesn’t want any part of us.”

“You know what’s your trouble?” Riff asked him.

Action took a backward step and knotted his hands together to make the knuckles crack. “Go ahead, tell me off.”

“In your case, two heads aren’t better than one.”

Baby-John hooted. “Hey, that’s all right, Riff. Somebody new must be writing your material.” He ducked to avoid Action’s hand, then skipped toward the curb. “All right, Action. I’m sorry I laughed.”

“Do it again and you won’t have time to be sorry,” Action warned Baby-John and included the other members of the Jets.

In his own mind Action had never been convinced that Baby-John was the kind of recruit they needed. Tony, in sponsoring the kid, had pointed out that most of them had started hanging around the Jets when they were thirteen or fourteen, because a kid who wasn’t in was definitely out and might as well make up his mind to stay off the street. But there were kids and kids, Action thought, and Baby-John—well that was a hell of a nickname for someone who had to be depended on to stay in there swinging with a tire iron when the combat got heavy and the going rough.

With increasing frequency Action had begun to wonder if he ought to challenge Riff for the leadership of the Jets. But if he did, and was successful, he would have to tell the Jets what to do, really lead them; this way he could beef about everything that was done and keep Riff on his toes to prove his leadership.

Because Riff had to work at being leader, the Jets were a close, well-knitted bunch and none of the white gangs on other blocks wanted to tangle with them. Even the dinges knew enough to keep out of the neighborhood. Only the PR’s were around, more and more of them every day, and if the damned cops and the mayor and everyone else didn’t have enough sense to do something about it, the Jets did.

Maybe, Action thought as he continued to rub his knuckles, the mayor might get around to giving them a medal; there would be a great ceremony, lots of speeches, plenty of booze and broads, and at the end when they were given the medals, would they surprise the creeps by telling them what to do with the medals, and how!

“I don’t know,” Diesel said, after he flipped erect from a handstand, “but this seems like the slowest night I can remember.” He looked overhead at the stars, then at the street lights. “I’ve got no inspiration,” he added. “And I’m not tired enough to lay down somewhere and sleep. All night movies, anyone?” he suggested.

“Knock it off,” Riff said. “We’ll take a walk and see what develops. You… you”—he pointed to Mouthpiece and Tiger—“keep your eyes peeled for trouble.”

Shoulders squared, both thumbs hooked behind the heavy military buckle of his belt, moving with stiff exaggerated steps, Riff walked with both eyes fixed at some far point. Anyone in his way would have to move, because this was their turf.

Behind him, the Jets moved in twos and threes, with Baby-John walking as close to Riff as he dared, imitating him as much as he dared, and hoping no one would notice, especially Riff, that he too had his thumbs hooked behind his belt buckle. Now Action, A-Rab, Big Deal, Snowboy and Gee-Tar were also walking in this manner. It was meant to tell everyone that the Jets were on the prowl, ready to take on anyone for anything—you name it—and anyplace, right now.

---

In appearance, manner, determination, the Jets were indistinguishable from thousands of other gangs that roamed the boroughs, and the most frightening aspect was that they had no targets for their hatred. By look, word and deed—even thought—they hated everything and everyone in their path. Without direction, they roamed the city, bent on destruction. Nothing was safe because everyone and everything was their enemy. Therefore, with the viciousness of blind, brainless beasts, the Jets fell upon anything they came across.

Their victim or target could be a man with whom they had been friendly the day before, a boy or girl they had joked with minutes earlier, a storekeeper who had always allowed them credit, a vacant building with a window yet unbroken. Dedicated to blind destruction, incapable of evaluating people and institutions, the gangs destroyed, and when they found no one else to destroy, they turned upon each other.

So the city became a battlefield of a thousand streets, ten thousand houses, roofs, cellars and alleys. The city became unsafe, and people walked and lived in terror.

Until the Puerto Ricans came upon the scene. Then the gangs had a purpose and target and the city became much safer for everyone—except the PR’s. They had come here without invitation so whatever disaster befell them was of their own doing.

Some thinking persons wondered what would happen if the PR’s fled or were driven from the city. It was best not to delve too deeply or project too far. As things were, the gangs warred against the PR’s, the PR’s retaliated in kind. Optimistically, they might exterminate each other; and with this happy hope for the future, the city continued to conduct business as usual—and die.

Because the night was warm, people at the windows and on the stoops of the tenements saw the Jets, and only those who approved openly of their activities called out to the boys. Those who did not looked away or hid behind newspapers and handkerchiefs because the Jets meant trouble and in this crowded block there was more trouble than air, light, or hope. So why look for more?

On other streets there were other gangs that slept late in the day, stirred in the afternoon, and like prowling cats came fully alive at night to stalk the cellars, the alleys, the roofs, the streets of the crowded, decaying West Side of Manhattan.

There was no place to move, no place to go. It was twenty years since the Second World War had begun and ended, but housing that ordinary people could afford was still at a premium; and if a white man wanted to get out of his apartment there wasn’t a landlord anywhere who wasn’t delighted at the vacancy which he could immediately fill at an increase in rent.

And if he wanted to sub-divide three rooms into five, six, or even eight, he could fill every one of them with Puerto Ricans and really make himself a bundle so big and fat that he could spend most of any year in Florida or California. He need never see his buildings, his tenants, or do anything for the maintenance of halls, walls and roofs. If the building fell down the landlord could turn his property into a parking lot.

So in the end, even people who didn’t like the Jets had to admit that the boys were doing something about saving what little was left to them of the neighborhood. If they didn’t like the way the boys operated, at least the boys did something, which was more than could be said for the politicians and the gas they spouted downtown.

None of the politicians lived on the West Side; none of them had to fight for a little room, a little air to breathe; and if the city was unsafe, crowded, depressing, if more and more streets were becoming unsafe after dark, whose fault was it? Not one person in any of the tenements had ever been asked if he wanted the PR’s admitted to the country. They had no voice in the decision but that didn’t mean they didn’t resent it. None of the newspapers spoke for the people on the West Side—only kids like the Jets, who used their voices and fists. It was best not to forget this.

---

Clicking their teeth, striking their heels hard, smirking from the corners of their mouths, the Jets crossed the street slowly, forcing automobiles to grind to a full halt. When one stupid driver leaned out of his car and ordered them to speed it up, Riff paused, glared, then walked toward the car with Action and Diesel behind him, and in frantic haste the man in the car rolled up his window and locked his doors. Like frightened fish in a bowl being attacked by a cat, the driver and the woman at his side could only squirm from side to side as the boys, with practiced coordination, spit all over the windshield and door windows before they stepped aside to release the car. As it passed they kicked the rear bumper, then howled with laughter, for this was another square-driven car they had kicked in the ass.

On the sidewalk again and pleased with himself, Action pointed out a middle-aged Puerto Rican man and woman as they came out of a small Puerto Rican grocery. They saw the boys, hesitated, looked at each other indecisively, and retreated toward the grocery. But they weren’t going to get away that easy. Riff signaled, and Snowboy, who liked to think of himself as a commando, opened the grocery door to lob a small stink bomb into the crammed interior.

“What the hell,” Snowboy said to Baby-John after he caught up with the Jets. “They live like pigs, so they shouldn’t mind eating what smells like pigs.”

Baby-John nodded sagely as he stored this information for future use. Not only had Riff and Action shown him how to handle snotty automobile drivers who thought they bought a street when they paid for a car, but Snowboy had handled the PR’s in a way they wouldn’t forget. And if they went home and told their sons about it, and the sons came looking for the Jets, that was all right too, because any PR who stepped onto Jet turf was really going to be leaned on.

Belligerent, aching for contact, the Jets continued their neighborhood prowl.

This was the second night they had surveyed the scene without anything really happening, and Riff knew the boys were becoming restless enough to turn on him, which was what Action wanted. A leader had to take care of his men, keep things popping all the time, and the man who couldn’t wasn’t much of a leader.

There was only one man Riff would have been willing to turn the Jets over to, and as Riff thought of Tony again he could only be bitter. Maybe that was the trouble, Riff thought; he spent so much time covering up for Tony that he didn’t have enough left over for the boys and the action they required.

Suddenly he heard Mouthpiece call out: three PR’s were across the street at nine o’clock. Turning quickly on their heels, Riff and the boys started for their targets. But the PR’s, in their blue jackets with the yellow trim that identified them as Sharks, darted into a hallway and Riff cursed because it was useless to follow them.

But if three Sharks were in the neighborhood there might be others. Riff heard Action say that he was going to make some mighty poor fish out of them Sharks tonight, and as the Jets echoed this fighting sentiment they began to look harder for the enemy. About to turn a corner and break into two squads, to cover more territory, Riff raised his hand in the signal that meant the worst kind of trouble: cops. Having acquired a wide experience of cops, they slowed to a walk and waited for the prowl car to pull a little ahead of them before it stopped.

Certain the Jets appeared innocent—out for a walk, nothing else—Riff was the first to approach the prowl car. Mouthpiece had ducked off because he carried the knives, two pairs of brass knuckles, and two lengths of bicycle chain that bulged one of his pockets. Riff smiled to himself as he saw how expertly Mouthpiece disappeared into a tenement basement. By using backyards and going up an...