East Side Musings
"I could fall in love with Dallas Winston," she said. "I hope I never see him again, or I will."
The streetlight flickered uncertainly as Cherry Valance stepped away from the cracked cement curb. It was a cold night; an icy wind whipped around her bare ankles, dancing with dead leaves and last week's crumpled newspapers that depicted house robberies and obituaries. It bit into her pale flesh, chilled her very soul. Nights in the West Side were never this empty, hopeless abyss, masked in part by a starry façade. No… they were warmed by alcohol and mindless talk about beer blasts on the river bottom. But still they were better than this meaningless void. When alone, not poisoned by either talk or alcohol, was this what night was really like? So cold and black, a dulled non-existence? She realized then that she didn't know, and had never known.
The Mustang waited just ahead, a greatly appreciated escape from this nothingness that she felt. Its engine was revving in time to a far-off song. It needed a muffler, Cherry thought. It was scratched, too, just along the passenger door, and there was a nick in the windshield; it was shaped vaguely like a heart. The rust above the wheels had simply been painted over; there hadn't been time or a great desire to fix it properly. Overall, it was just an old, worn car, souped up and polished to an illusion of perfection. Wasn't that what its drivers were, anyway? Monotonous, ordinary, stale? Just a name? She'd never met a Soc that wasn't. Maybe that's why she identified and found herself ceaselessly intrigued by Dallas: he was detached, unfeeling. It was almost like he was more her own kind: he wasn't quite a Greaser; Greasers were far more emotional than Dally could ever be. He wasn't quite a Soc, although he had perfected the delusional wall of solid aloofness, the façade of being cool to the point of unfeeling bliss. It was that in-between state of being, that limbo, that Cherry found herself fascinated with. Before she'd met Dallas Winston, the world for her was a black and white place, and she liked it that way. It was easier that way. It was comfortable that way. Dallas blurred her carefully separated shades, tainted her view, turned her world grey. She loved and hated him for it.
The Mustang was within reach now. She could feel Bob's sharp eyes boring into her soul and cutting her into little, insignificant pieces of herself. His gaze was disquieting and agitating, like a deranged sunset, cracked and bereft of its beauty.
What did Dallas Winston see when he looked at a sunset? Was it merely the end of any ordinary day for him, a mixed blessing? Was it the paint-smeared canvas of an artist's loving hands, smudged with fiery reds and passionate yellows in a wonderfully intoxicating chaotic symphony? Did it make him drunk to witness a disguised beginning? …Or didn't he watch sunsets?
Cherry climbed into the back seat of Bob's car and sighed. No, she thought. It didn't really matter. In the end, Dally was a Greaser and she was a Soc, and nothing could change that. In the end, the world was still black and white, not grey, not smeared with fiery reds or passionate yellows. Just black and white. And tomorrow she'd tell her friends all about that beer blast on the river bottom, not because she cared, but because she ached with her entire ordinary being to be saying something that broke this heavy, choking nothingness.