Studs Lonigan (100 page)

“Seventy-third-Street beach is much better, but every year you see more noisy Jews there. Pretty soon there won't be a beach in Chicago left for a white man.”

Ahead, beyond the end of the park, they saw several close-packed, tall apartment hotels, lost in webs of sunlight which refracted from the windows and bathed the bricks with soft reflections of color. Looking persistently at them, Studs wondered if they, as well as Phil and Loretta, could afford to live in one of them. If they could, it would be better than living in the old man's building.

At the edge of the park she pulled him toward a bus, and before he realized what he was doing he was sitting toward the front of the upper deck of a downtown bus, idly watching the buildings and the people along Hyde Park Boulevard. They turned north at Drexel Boulevard.

“Lots of flats for rent around here,” she said.

“I know, but this isn't a good neighborhood, like it used to be,” he said as the bus bounced over the Forty-Seventh-Street car-tracks.

“And such nice places and homes, too,” she sighed.

He slumped in his seat, liking the bus ride in the sun, Catherine close to him. He scented her perfume, saw people drifting along, looked at girls in new clothes, thinking whether or not they were nice. But he didn't want to trade her for the girls he saw. She was a damn good kid, best in the world for him. Wanting her to know it, he took her hand, smiled at her, received in return a squeeze of the hand and a grateful smile.

“Love me?”

“Uh huh! you're darn right I do,” he said with false gruffness.

Already yesterday seemed like a blur to him. It was like some happy dream which was forgotten the moment he woke up, and all that was left of it was the memory of having felt good. On the bus with Catherine everything but her and his own feelings had seemed covered by a curtain, and he had felt that in the future only good things and good luck could possibly come to him. He could see now that he had no right to feel that way.

He sucked malted milk through a straw, and watched the soda jerkers hustle orders amid the noise and clatter of the buzz of the electric malted-milk shakers. They worked their pants off and they didn't get a hell of a lot for it, either. He was glad he wasn't in their boots, and he guessed he was better off than most of them. It was a flunkey's job, and a guy must feel pretty lousy working at it day after day, with no future and only hard dumb work. It was something to know that there were others worse off than he was.

He licked his straw and set it back in the glass, swung off the chair by the soda counter, and walked by drug articles stacked on tables to the cashier's desk at the door.

“Hey, Dugan.”

“Oh, hello, Studs. How are you? Gee, I'm glad to see you.”

“See this. The stock market went all to hell today. Where's all the dough I was going to clean up on the Imbray stock of yours?” Studs asked, nettled, showing Ike the account of a stock-market break recorded in
The Chicago Questioner.

“You know what that is, don't you?”

“What?” Studs asked anxiously.

“That's just fluctuation.”

“That stock is thirteen, and I'm out nine hundred and sixty bucks. Is that what fluctuation means?”

“I'm out more if you pay any attention to this. I've been buying Imbray stock every week. But we don't pay any attention to this at the office. It's just fluctuation. You can't lose on Imbray stock with all the public utilities of the Middle West and the brain of Solomon Imbray behind it.”

“That's what you said before, and the stock has lost twelve bucks a share.”

“I know. And I stand to lose more than you do. I've been buying Imbray stock out of my pay for months now. And I'm not worried, I don't bother about whether it goes up or down a little on the market. It's thirteen now, isn't it? Well, when we signed the stock agreement, it was twenty-five, and we're still buying it at that price, and still I'm not kicking, because I got faith. I got faith because I know you can't go wrong on Imbray stock, and some day I know it's going to set me up sweet and pretty on Easy Street.”

“Isn't it dumb, though, to buy it for twenty-five bucks when it's thirteen in the market?”

“Well, by our employee-stock agreement, we pay half and the company pays half for us. But I'm still buying it every week and I'm not kicking. . . . But just a minute, Studs, I've got to call a girl up.”

“I got to be blowing.”

“Well, call me up and we'll go to a show some night.”

He watched Ike hustling to the phone booth toward the back of the drug store. Something sneaky about him. Still, what he said sounded like there was something to it. How could a man as big as Imbray or his companies go bust? And if he hung on, he'd be sure in the long run to get his dough back with plenty of interest.

Outside, he looked to see if Pat or any other fellows were on the corner, and he was disappointed because they weren't, so he started home. Down five points more. Big break in all stocks. He tried to force the belief that Ike was right and it was just fluctuation. Jesus, it better be! And if it wasn't, would he sock Ike Dugan! And he'd take his medicine like a man and not bawl over spilled milk.

He knew that he was kidding himself, because he really was worried about the stocks. Still, how could a man so big as Imbray go bust? With deliberation, he lit a cigarette and calmly inhaled. People seeing him wouldn't know that he was worrying and nine hundred and sixty bucks out on his investments. He was just calmly puffing at a fag, and that, mister, was Studs Lonigan. But was it? And was it true that everything that went up came down, and when it hit the bottom it had to go up again?

A girl approached, and when she came closer, he saw that she was a hefty wench with sex appeal sticking out all over her.

“Going any place, sister?”

He heard her heels rapping over the pavement. Stuck-up bitch. But wouldn't it have been nice taking her to Jackson Park, forgetting every goddamn thing while he loved her up, for all he was worth. He just couldn't feel as confident as Ike Dugan had. Well, this experience should teach him a lesson, at least, he told himself bitterly. Already, the cost of his honeymoon, of a hell of a lot of things, was lost. He tried to make up his mind what he should do, and if he should sell and take his loss. Then the nine hundred and sixty bucks would simply be floating down the creek. Just like a drowning man who'd gone under for the third time. Nothing to say but too bad.

Suppose he should walk up to this doggy-dressed old man coming toward him and say, brother, I just lost nine hundred and sixty bucks, hard-earned bucks, on the brain of Solomon Imbray, and all the public utilities of the Middle West, what do you think of that? Or suppose he should see Red Kelly and pass it off as if he was just losing a nickel. Carry it off and phase Red. But that would show nothing except that he was a good loser, and where did it get him, being a good loser?

He lit another cigarette and thought how easy it seemed for some people to make money. Jesus, why couldn't he have that kind of luck? Others didn't deserve it any more than he did. He wished he could meet someone to talk to, and make himself forget it. Hell, just think how many guys there were in the world who could lose that much dough just like it was only cigar money.

He shrugged his shoulders and tried to squeeze consolation out of the thought that that was the way the world went. Only, hell, it seemed so simple to make money on stocks, so easy for the market to go up rather than down, and after he had cleaned up, for it then to go any damn way it pleased. It had been pie for many guys, why not for him?

It was just like watching a baseball game. The pitcher on the side you wanted to lose would seem to have nothing on the ball, and would only appear to bob it up to the plate with lanterns hung on it. Watching the batters on your favorite team step into the batter's box, you would look over the field. Suddenly it would seem as if there were so many places where safe hits could be driven, and so many breaks could happen to make your side win. And the batters would swing hard enough to knock a house down, massacring the air, popping up, poking out dinky, measly grounders. Or if somebody would connect with a safe hit, he wouldn't be driven home for a run. Inning after inning would pass, and it would still seem so easy for your team to win, and maybe your team would fill the bases with one out, and it would look sure like they were going to put the game on ice. And then pop ups, double plays, and you'd wonder why, Jesus Christ, why, it seemed so easy for the game to be won, and still it was lost. It was just the same with the market and his stock.

He tossed his cigarette away. He was very lonesome, and he didn't want to be alone and thinking about such things. But it was always that way. You couldn't think of anything you wanted to, and when you were in the dumps you thought of all your gripes and troubles and felt yourself to be a miserable no-good, bad-news bastard, and that was just how he felt. He looked around at the quiet street, the night, half dark only because the moon was so full and shiny, and he looked at it, and at clouds covering it, and at the lamp-post-lights cutting areas out of the shadows, and he wanted things, wanted something, wanted his luck to change. He couldn't stand this, and he quickened his steps to get home and read the newspaper, listen to the radio, do anything to get those thoughts out of his head.

“Hello, dad,” Studs said, still breathing rapidly as he entered the parlor.

“Hello, Bill. What's in the paper tonight?”

“A break in the stock market, and it looks like they got the goods on that Methodist minister who's mixed in that divorce suit out in California.”

“The dirty Protestant A. P. A. Fooling around with a decent little girl who sings in his choir. Stringing him up would be too good for him. You wouldn't find a Catholic priest doing a thing like that,” the father said with venom.

“How was Amos and Andy tonight?” Studs asked.

“Oh, they were all right,” Lonigan said.

There was something on the old man's mind. Must be the stock-market break. He could see that the old man had something to say to him, too. He'd need that money now. For a moment, he felt as he used to when he was a kid, and his father was really a boss over him. He grew fearful of his father as he had done in those days when he'd done something the old man didn't want him to do. Then he realized that he wasn't a kid any more and he and his father acted differently toward each other.

“Let's see that paper, I want to look at the stock-market news.”

Studs handed him the newspaper and watched his father's fretting face as he read.

“Looks damn rotten, all right, Bill,” he said as if to himself.

“Think things are going to keep on this way?”

“I don't know what the hell it is, but something is wrong. It's the big fellows, the banks and Wall Street,” Lonigan said laying aside the paper.

“I don't know,” Studs said, because he hadn't listened closely and he hadn't anything else to say.

“Bill, I had my stocks sold out from under my feet today.”

“Gee, dad. That's rotten, I'm terribly sorry. How much?”

“Five thousand bucks more, Bill.”

Studs lit a cigarette and rose to get an ash tray.

“Goddamn robbers.” Lonigan cursed.

They sat in silence.

“Bill, I'm in a hole now. I can't collect on bills long overdue me, and I'm going to have to meet a big mortgage payment in the early fall. And with wages to pay out and the household expenses to meet, I'm in a tighter pinch than I ever was in my life. Can I borrow that money of yours for a little while?”

Studs' face dropped. He looked aside.

“Of course, Bill, I feel that I ain't got the right to ask you, and if you don't want to, why, I'll have to try elsewhere. I've already borrowed up to the hilt on my life insurance, and it's pretty damn hard raising any money these days.”

“It isn't that, it's. . . .”

“What?” Lonigan said with questioning anxiety, as Studs, failing to continue, seemingly groped for words.

“Well, you see, dad, after Catherine and I got engaged, I thought that I'd be needing all the money I could get, and that I ought to put my money in something that paid me a little more than just the bank interest, so I took a chance.”

“You lost it?”

“I bought some Imbray stock at twenty-five a share, and it's down to thirteen. I'm nine hundred and sixty bucks out if I sell.”

“Bill, you should have asked me. You should have asked me,” Lonigan said regretfully, showing that he was deeply hurt.

“I meant to. And well, dad, I just took a chance. I was just a damn sucker.”

“God, Bill! Imbray stock is as shaky as a reed in the wind.”

“I thought that since it is based on public utilities, and with a smart man like Solomon Imbray controlling it, it would be safe.”

“I know. I had money in some Imbray securities, too, and that's why I'm holding the bag. That stock is paper and water. You better get out from under with what you got left in the morning, and take your loss. Something left is better than nothing.”

“Think so, dad?”

“Yes, Bill. Get out, and don't try that stunt again without asking me about it. I've learned now, myself. They just wait for suckers, sheep to fleece in the market. If you'd only asked me, I might have warned you. This is the wrong time to go fooling around in stocks. The reason I lost today is, I bought my stocks on margin, and they slid so I couldn't get out. The broker was carrying me along a little. But today it was the end.