Album: West Side Story

The Dance At The Gym



The Gym - 10:00 p.m.
(By the time the mambo music starts the Jets and sharks
are each on their own side of the hall. At the climax of the
dance, Tony and Bernardo's sister, Maria, see one another :
as a delicate cha-cha-cha, they slowly walk forward to meet
each other.)

Meeting Scene

TONY: You're not thinking I'm someone else?

MARIA: I know you are not.

TONY: Or that we have met before?

MARIA: I know we have not.

TONY: I felt I knew something-never-before was
going to happen, had to happen. But this is ...

MARIA (interrupting) : My hands are so cold. (He
takes them in his) Yours too.(He moves her hands
to his face.) So warm. (She moves his hands to her
face.)

TONY: Yours, too...

MARIA: But of course. They are the same.

TONY: It's so much to believe. You're not joking me?

MARIA: I have not yet learned how to joke that
way. I think how I never will.

JUMP
(Bernardo is upon them in an icy rage. Chino, whom
Bernardo has brought Maria from Puerto Rico to
marry, takes her home. Riff wants Bernardo for
"War Council"; they agree to meet in hall an hour at
Doc's drugstore.)