Studs Lonigan (109 page)

“Yes,” he said, ill-at-ease, wanting to look at her, not certain how she'd take it. “The others are coming.”

One of her breasts flopped out from her brassiere as she shut the door, and clumsy, forgetting everything, he clutched at it, kissed her, tried to force and press himself stiffly against her.

“I'm not sorry I came to see you,” he said, roughly pawing at her, his voice hoarse.

“Wait, please,” she said, struggling to untangle herself.

The bell rang. She pointed to the parlor.

“Well, this is certainly a surprise,” Coombs said dully.

“Would you wait in the parlor, please?”

“I s-say, Lonigan, this is certainly a surprise, and this little woman is going to be a nice little treat,” Coombs said, entering the small parlor which seemed overcrowded with cheap, gaudy furniture.

“She looks like she's got a high-powered engine of passion in her,” Studs said, lighting a cigarette.

“I see you covered up, girlie,” Coombs said when she entered the parlor, her body draped in a bright red kimono that kept slipping down one shoulder.

“Now, please don't talk too loudly. My baby's asleep in the next room,” she said, striking a seductive pose with her abdomen flaunted outward.

“Oh, the baby,” Coombs said.

She turned away to answer the bell.

“Well, sister, here we is, a-rarin' to go,” Cohen said, rubbing his hands as he entered the parlor.

“And too much delay and anxiety now will weaken me,” Burke smirked.

“I'll be right in,” she said.

“Don't talk too loud. Her baby is asleep,” Coombs said.

“Certainly low, isn't she? But still, she's the goods, and it ain't our look-out,” Burke said quietly, shaking his head, his face showing disgust.

“I hope one or two of you boys go first and get the lady cranked up right for me,” said Cohen.

Studs was reminded of the gang shag they had once had at Iris' on Prairie Avenue, when he had lost his cherry. Since then he had never had it and gotten as much out of it as he hoped for, except maybe once with that little bitch from Nolan's who had dosed him. He wished he was only as old as when they'd gang-shagged Iris, and going in to this woman.

“I never had tail under such queer circumstances,” Burke said.

“Life, my boy, is stranger than fiction.”

“It's much better than a can-house, and only half a buck more,” Burke said.

“When I came, she answered the door in her drawers. Nice, isn't she, Lonigan?” Coombs said.

“Getting down to business, boys, take these to keep yourselves out of the rain,” Cohen said, going around to each of them.

She entered carrying a pack of playing cards, and each drew. Studs was highest with a ten of diamonds.

“Lonigan, save us a little,” Burke said.

“Listen, if you think you can say such things, you better leave. This is my house. I'm not going to stand for your lewdness,” she said.

“I'm sorry. No harm meant,” Burke said meekly.

“Watch your tongue then!” she said, softening her challenge.

She collected two-fifty from each of them.

“My baby is taking its nap in the bedroom off here. Please be quiet. And you can come into the bedroom down the hall in a minute,” she said, looking at Studs.

Studs nodded, trying to keep himself under control. As she left the room, Burke laughed, shook his head quizzically.

“Treat us like a pal. We'll be waiting anxiously out here,” Burke said.

Grinning foolishly, Studs walked down the hall, opened the bedroom door.

“All right?” he asked.

“Come in,” she said.

He entered the small, neat bedroom and saw her, naked, her black hair falling down her back, reclining on a high poster bed, with feminine clothes and a copy of
True Stories
magazine on a chair beside it.

“Well, I suppose we better get started,” she said coldly.

“Three cheers,” said Cohen when Studs re-entered the parlor, interrupting them as they cut cards for nickels.

He was disappointed, because it had all happened so quickly.

“Boys, wish me luck,” said Coombs, arising.

“How you like the lady?” asked Burke.

The baby began squawling as Studs grinned knowingly at Burke.

“Hey, Coombs, tell her the brat is bawling. Ask her what we should do?” Burke called. Turning to Cohen, he said, “That big mugg Coombs is dumb. Let's tell him to mind it.”

Cohen grinned.

They saw her, naked, enter the bedroom, carry the baby back. It still cried as she closed the door behind her.

Coombs was in the room with her, and the baby let out a long wail as Studs put on his hat and left. All over so quickly. He wanted more, but she'd said no encores without another two and a half. And he'd rather go back alone some morning than now with the others there.

He felt lazy, too, and he thought of how when he went back it would be better. She was nice, and he remembered her naked on the bed when he'd entered the room. But a married woman and mother who'd do such a thing, lower than a snake. What was the difference between her and a whore? None. And what a chump and sap of a husband she must have.

Women like her, and a girl like Catherine, now there was all the difference in the world between them. After being with her, and then thinking of a girl like Catherine, a guy wanted to go and fumigate himself. But what the hell? Just as Slug Mason had always said, tail was tail. Catherine didn't know about it, and what she didn't know wouldn't hurt her. If she wanted to be tough, as she had last night, let her, and then she could see what she was going to lose. Lighting a cigarette, he thought that this was a just revenge on her.

He stopped at a newspaper stand at Seventy-first Street, bought a paper, quickly opened to the day's stock-market quotations. Eight and a half. Hell, wouldn't it ever go up? Hardly any use now in selling it, losing so much dough.

The street was alive with people, women rushing through their lastminute marketing, people coming home from work. Suppose one of these men coming along was George Jackson. Nice surprise for Georgie.

Catherine. Was she home yet? What was she doing at this minute? And that broad, he wished he hadn't seen her, a broad who would do as lousy a thing as that made a guy feel contaminated. Still trying to kid himself. He'd wanted her, and he'd gotten just what he needed, and she was better than a whore. Catherine, though, was she home yet? Didn't she really give a damn about him? Had she meant the things she'd said to him last night? He couldn't make up his mind about it, or about her. Call her up? Forget her?

And now that the day was finished, he had to get through the night. Christ, things sometimes got dull for a guy.

But maybe she'd call up after supper, and he'd go over and see her. He thought she would. She really cared for him. Maybe when he got home there would already be a message for him from her.

WAS it going to turn out the same way as it had with Lucy? There had been a little scrap, and he'd waited for something to happen and for Lucy to take the first step, and days had dragged into months, and then it was about two years gone by and one day he discovered that she had moved. It was already three days since the quarrel with Catherine, and no word. He didn't want it to drag along and die out as it had with Lucy.

Since then, he would feel free and forget her, and then he wouldn't want to feel free, and the thought of her would pop right back in his mind. Then he would want to call her up, but he wouldn't because it might seem like he was crawling back, ready to eat dirt. So he had just had it on his mind, the fight, thinking of how they would act about making up, how they would get along better after they made up, and he would go off all over again into day dreams, and they would be busted wide open in disappointment with the question, What was he going to do about it?

He walked over to the parlor window, looked out at the street, wet and gloomy under the raw day, and he guessed he would just have to sit around home and not do much of anything. An automobile sloshed by. He stared at a space of blackened pavement, seeing the rain patter on it. He watched a man in a tan raincoat hasten by. A woman wearing a bright green raincoat came out of the apartment hotel building, buried her head under an umbrella, half ran in a clumsy, feminine way.

He turned away from the window, yawning, feeling imprisoned. And the damn gloomy weather made him feel twice as rotten. He looked wistfully at the crumpled copy of the morning paper, regretting that he had already read it. He picked up a copy of
The Argosy Magazine
, slumped in his father's chair, fitfully glanced through it until he came to a story of secret-service men who thwarted an effort of Chinese and shaggy-bearded Bolsheviki to blow up the Panama Canal. He read on, how the hero took a general's daughter into his arms, kissed her, and in the last paragraph they stood by a steamer rail, looking shoreward at the dimming outlines of land in the red sunset, kissed, talked of how happy they would be back in the good old U. S. A. where he would receive a higher salary serving Uncle Sam, kissed again. Drowsy, emitting a noisy yawn, he dropped the magazine, thinking that they would then have gone into their cabin and on to the next step after kissing. Interesting story, fast and full of action, with good descriptions, too. He saw himself as a secret-service agent, on the trail of Bolshevik agents and smugglers all over America. He didn't have the imagination to go on thinking how he would track them down, and he rested his eyes dreamily on the ceiling. Anyway, he wished that he had lived and was living an adventurous life, like a secret-service agent.

And instead of anything like that, here he was, nearly thirty, and just in a hell of a pickle, getting just about nothing but the sour grapes of living. He had lost nearly all of the money he owned, on the market. He had lost his girl. His health was on the fritz. The way things were going, pretty soon he probably wouldn't even have a pot to take a leak in. And just a couple of months ago when he and Catherine had become engaged, he had hoped for and planned on so many things. Already that night by the lake seemed long ago, and he was lonesome for it. He was still where he had always been. Just hoping. And where was his dough that was going to be backed by the public utilities of the Middle West and the brain of Solomon Imbray? The stock at seven. Wait till he saw snaky Ike Dugan again. . . . Now, too, didn't he realize how having a little dough of your own gave you confidence!

He leaned forward and turned on the radio, hearing an oily masculine voice.

 

One of the blotches on the name and civic reputation of Chicago is that during all these years of astounding growth in this great Athens of the Middle West no consistent and scientific method of solving the traffic problem has yet been devised.

 

Tough luck, Teddy, he thought, dialing on a new station.

He returned to the window and forgot his worried thoughts by watching the rain hit the street, turn silver, almost bounce. The drops hung like crystals to the leaves of the small tree in front of the apartment hotel, slid off. An automobile passed with a clatter, and the rain splattered on its tarpaulin top. The sky, dull, heavy black clouds ranked above the tall apartment hotel. Bells, warning of a train at Seventy-first Street.

A girl with tan raincoat and galoshes, a few inches of silk stockinged leg showing. Neat. Who was she? Had she ever been made? How did being made change a girl? And before they were made were they as curious about what it was and how did it feel as he'd been as a punk kid? Good girls from good homes, once they got started, became the hottest. Or did they? She was out of sight. Neat little girl anyway.

He had to do something, think about something, say something. And all he could do was curse and mope and look out the window at the rain and at a passing girl. He realized how so many times in his life he had just kept on living on wishes, and the days had dragged along, and the wishes hadn't come true. He returned to the chair.

He told himself that he was a clown clean through. Every time a fly ball had been hit to him with men on the bases, he'd muffed it. Hoping for one thing, then another, and when he did get his chances—foul ball.

Girls, too. He'd never held one. Twice Lucy had given him the cold shoulder. That girl he'd knelt next to at Christmas mass in Saint Patrick's once—cold shoulder. Never got beyond wishing about her. Now Catherine.

Football. He'd wanted to be a star high-school quarterback and he'd not had the guts to stay in school. Fighting. His kid brother had even cleaned him up. In the war when he'd tried to enlist, a leather-necked sergeant had laughed at him.

He was just an all-around no-soap guy.

And he didn't have anything ahead of him that looked so keen. The old man was just about washed out and when he died, he wouldn't hardly leave a nickel. And he had always counted on that, too.

He jumped from his chair, determining that, goddamn it, he had to break through somewhere. He looked at himself in the mirror and frowned in an ugly, menacing manner. He walked back and forth across the parlor, clenching and unclenching his fists.

He swung viciously through the air, as if he were ripping into some bastard in a fight, slugging.