Studs Lonigan (103 page)

Studs thought that they were just drying the milk behind their ears. He toyed with his knife and fork, and thought about how hungry he was.

“Hey, Katie,” the baby-faced high-school student called out at the clumpy waitress.

“What?”

“How'd you like to be my big moment?”

“Come around on Sunday. I have kindergarten then,” she flung back.

Studs smiled. He followed her with his eyes as she moved to the slot opening back to the kitchen and shoved a pile of used dishes into it. He gulped down the glass of water and saw, as she turned, that she was no chicken, and her breasts almost fell down to her belly. Not worth the making. How did broads like her feel, because they had so little to offer a guy? They must know they look like hell and that a guy would have to be pretty hard up before he tried to play around with them. In fact, they must, in dolling themselves up to be made, have a hell of a lot of nerve and think a lot of what they had. And from the looks of her tough face, crusted with powder, she didn't look decent, but the type that would go with anything in pants.

Still, some guys went for dumb broads like her, and would be glad to get her. At times, he might himself, because a guy got that way.

“What'll you have?” she asked in a strident voice.

“Roast beef and mashed potatoes.”

“My pater's sobbing the blues, too, about dough. He's cut down on my allowance, but the mater slips me something and doesn't snitch to him,” the athlete said.

“My dad's swell, a real pal. He always says to me, ‘Jack, I had my fun when I was your age and I don't want my kid to be an angel.' He doesn't want me to kill myself studying, either.”

“My pater's a babbitt.”

The plate of food, soaked with greasy gravy, was set before Studs. He dumped catsup beside the meat, and commenced eating rapidly. His mouth jammed, he thought that these kids didn't know how lucky they were, having a good time and a chance to get an education in high school, and they ought to make the best of their chance. An education didn't hurt you.

“I tried to date Daisy Dell for the Alpha dance, and she was oh, so sorry. So I said to her, ‘Say, don't cry, baby, you're not Clara Bow.' She hung up on me,” the baby-faced lad said, and the athlete laughed.

“Apple pie and coffee,” Studs called at the dumpy waitress as she scuttled by him with an armful of orders.

He wished he'd gone to high school and college and belonged to fraternities and had a good time. But then, wasn't he a Christy? Wait, too, until the next initiation in his council. It would be a knockout. And he ought to start going to meetings.

“Apple pie and coffee.”

She didn't even notice him. He wanted to get out, too, away from all these high-school boys. Goddamn bitch! She ought to be glad she had a job these days instead of gassing like she was now with a punk down the counter during a rush period like this.

“Apple pie and coffee.”

“I got it the first time, mister,” she called back.

Nervy bitch, who did she think she was, getting so tough? But then, what else could you expect from such a dumb-looking waitress? She set a slab of pie and a cup of coffee, with the coffee slopping over onto the saucer, before him. Coffee dripped onto his trousers as he took his first sip of it.

He slid off the stool, and walked by a table of giggling girls.

“And her new dress was simply stunning.”

He took toothpicks at the counter, and stood outside, with a toothpick in the comer of his mouth, hearing the noise of the elevated trains, of street cars and automobiles, seeing high-school students drift by him. His stomach turned sour from the meal.

What next?

Maybe he might pick up a girl, a neat, sweet little Park High girl in the park, he thought hopefully, strolling along a shady gravel path which circled around the northern extremity of the lagoon. Other guys did, why not he? But did he really love Catherine when he wanted to do this? Love was one thing, and a good time with a stray pickup was another. He was only human and that was just natural, and when a guy went with a clean, decent girl like Catherine what else could he do?

Ahead of him was a burly girl hanging on the arm of a fellow who wore a checkered cap and needed a haircut. He walked close behind them, trying to hear what they were saying, wondering whether or not she was the fellow's lay. Looked like she knew her onions and liked them, too. Tough, hard kind of broad, he decided, hearing her loud and rather cracked voice.

“But, Charlie, I didn't. I didn't. Jesus Christ, I couldn't.”

“Don't crap me, sister, because I'm not the kind of a guy who lets himself get crapped. See?”

He couldn't imagine a fellow talking that way to a girl if she was decent. They selected an unoccupied bench, and Studs, walking by, noted the concerned, pleading expression on the girl's cheaply decorated face, and the fellow's curt and unbelieving look.

“Charlie, you just got to believe me,” she said in a throbbing voice.

He would like to have stayed near and heard more, but he couldn't just stand gaping while a guy scrapped with his girl. He guessed that the lad thought she was two-timing him. He wouldn't put it past that kind of a broad, either. He smiled, thinking that Catherine was different, and wouldn't ever pull such tricks behind his back.

He walked on, his feet dragging, in no hurry. Lots of people in the park, fellows with nothing else to do, he supposed. Like the one ahead of him on the bench, sitting like a mope, half asleep, looking ahead of him at nothing. Maybe he was a poor bastard more down in his luck than Studs Lonigan.

“I knew Dopey Ahern when he drove for the Continental Express Company. But he went in the beer-running racket, and they put him on the spot,” a fellow said to two companions as they strolled by Studs.

He thought of how when you went out and listened to what people said, you heard all kinds of things, people washing their dirty linen in public, talking about friends and business and gash, and it made him think how the world must be, at every minute, so full of people fighting, and jazzing, and dying, and working, and losing jobs, and it was a funny world, all right, full of funny people, millions of them. And he was only one out of all these millions of people, and they were all trying to get along, and many of them had gotten farther than he. Hell, what right did he have to expect to get anywhere with all these millions and millions in the same game, with fellows starting out with dough and an education, and better health than he had? He felt small and a little goofy. He looked around, seeing old men on a bench, a woman with a baby buggy, three fellows who looked like college boys on the grass, a skinny park policeman. How many of all the people around him, how many of all the people in the park, were ahead of him so far?

His feet began to ache and he flopped again on a bench. One-o'clock factory whistles blew from somewhere. A long afternoon still ahead of him. Did many fellows sitting around the park feel the same as he did, wanting something exciting to happen? A fleshy, light-brown Negress came along the path, her dress splitting against her thighs, her breast nipples clear against her black-and-white dress. A tight feeling gripped him. Whee! And he whiffed strongly an odor of cheap scent. Plenty of guys would like what she had. Plenty of white broads would like to have as much as she had. It was a goddamn shame, too, that a broad with all that stuff should be black and not white, he told himself, wishing someone was around so he could have sprung such a witty crack on them. Should he follow her even if she was a nigger? He looked after her at her slender brown silken legs, and he was tempted to whistle, to get up and follow her. Hell, she might just be a whore, because he guessed most black gals were hustlers anyway. And even if she wasn't, a dark-skinned baby ought to fall all over herself with joy if a white guy propositioned her. But kissing one of them. Ugh . . . He eagerly watched her disappear from sight, and he saw her naked in his mind. Jesus, he was pretty lousy getting so het up over a dark-skinned wench. And still, brother, white or black, she had it. But here he was engaged to a decent girl like Catherine, and wanting a nigger. Lousy . . . If the nice girls men married knew the dirty places they went playing around and . . . that was another witty one he wanted to spring sometime.

He yawned and watched a baby toddle bow-legged ahead of its mother. What would he do? An old man with an ear phone. He drowsed, fell asleep, awakened stiff and dirty. Two-thirty. He started strolling toward home. He felt like a wreck. The day was more than half over anyway. And maybe his stock had gone up too.

AFTER the movies, Studs and Catherine went to a small restaurant on Seventy-first Street. Studs hung his coat on a hook beside the table and absent-mindedly sat down while she was removing her coat. He missed her frown, lit a cigarette, and settled comfortably in his chair. He thought of how his stock was now down to ten, and he had to make up his mind whether to hold it or sell. A drop from two thousand to eight hundred dollars, and Ike Dugan had said fluctuations. That bastard was going to have fluctuations the next time he met Studs Lonigan.

“You seem awfully interested in me,” Catherine said, sitting down with a great fuss.

“What? What's the matter?” he asked absently.

“Nothing. Oh, nothing's the matter, I was just so pleased at the interest you show in me,” she said with increased irony.

He looked at her, puzzled, hoping that she wasn't set on kicking up a row with him.

“You act like a perfect gentleman who is keeping within the proper bounds before a girl he doesn't even know, or something like that.”

“Why, what's wrong, Catherine?” he asked, a vague whine in his voice.

“Nothing . . . Nothing,” she snapped with mounting exasperation.

A bony waitress hovered over them, and Studs blushed, wondering if she had heard Catherine quarrelling.

“What'll you have, Catherine?” he asked solicitously, while she made faces at him.

“Coffee and lemon cream pie,” she said haughtily at the waitress.

“One coffee and lemon cream pie, one milk and apple pie,” he said, wondering what the devil was wrong.

He watched the waitress retreat to the counter, and to avoid Catherine's eye until she cooled off he glanced around the restaurant, at the neat pale green walls and the black-topped counter running almost the length of the opposite side. There were two fellows slouched at it over coffee, and two couples at tables near the window toward the front.

The proprietor emerged from the counter and dialed on the radio.

One of the fellows in the basket-backed chairs by the counter swung around, and Studs glanced back at Catherine, her expression revealing persisting displeasure.

“What did I do now?” he asked in a restrained voice, jittery because of her mood, thinking that if all girls were like Catherine, they all liked to fight with a fellow more than he liked to fight with them.

“Nothing,” she said sharply, planting her elbows on the table, resting her fattish, dimpled chin in her palms, closing her lips poutishly, her eyes cutting intently upon him.

“Well, we're never going to get anywhere with you acting this way and expecting me to be a mind reader and read your mind when you're sore and I can't see the reason why,” he said haltingly, hoping that she would snap out of it.

The waitress set the orders before them and went off.

“You men . . . You can't see farther than your noses. You've got as much delicacy and imagination as a . . . hound,” she flung at him.

“Oh, come on. What the hell,” he said with attempted persuasiveness, wanting at the same time not to lose his dignity or seem weak in her eyes.

“I cannot say that I distinctly approve of the language you use.”

“Gee, don't you expect me to be a little bit natural, what's biting you?”

“Natural. I don't understand the same thing by natural that you do. And nothing is biting me. That's what I suppose you think, though, that just because we're engaged and I let you kiss me, that I am safely captured and won, and you can disregard me, even walk all over me, and I don't require any more consideration. You men, you're all alike, and think you only have to show consideration for a girl until you feel you are certain of her. Then you drop all politeness and reveal your real nature. You act
natural.
Well, if that's how smart you think you are, think again,” she said, her anger feeding on itself as she spoke.

“Listen, I wish you'd snap out of it. I don't want fights, and don't like them,” he said low, leaning over the table toward her, feeling like a clown with the two guys at the counter watching them and listening.

“Yes, you don't like fights. You're a gentleman, too. Yes, a gentleman. You've hardly spoken a word to me all night, and you let me take off my coat, and sit down ahead of me. I know . . . You think you've won me, so I can be ignored. Well, I tell you this, I can play the same tune as you can, and just as long, too.”