The Studs Lonigan Trilogy - James T. Farrell [247]
“And I sez to him, say, chump .. .”
They did not return his hopeful glance, and he tried to think of an especially witty crack to make on his way back. His glance caught two men, one with a shiny face and stuffed appearance, who was earnestly speaking to the other, a gaunt and thin fellow.
“It is the duty of sales specialists like you and me, Joe, to sell confidence .
Might he something in the idea. Moving on, he wondered if the people in the car noticed him, asking themselves who he was and what he was, and wondering if he might be more than they were. Toward the rear of the car he spied two middle-aged people, evidently a man and his wife, who faced each other blank and bored. Waiting for the undertaker, he thought to himself. In back of the woman, who was riding forward, there was a well-dressed young fellow, with a much better build and healthier appearance than Studs, who puffed on a briar pipe and read a thick, black-covered book. Studs sneered, thinking that this fellow was maybe like the guys who used to jaw at the Washington Park Bug Club, saving the world when they had to eat from the pickings of garbage cans, nuts who went crazy from reading too many books, the same as Danny O’Neill had become by going to the University of Chicago, and losing his religion. Guys like that, as Red always said, thought they were too good for the human race.
He entered a cubby-holed door marked MEN. In the lavatory mirror he saw the image of his pale and pasty face with hollow cheeks. He shook his head from side to side, thinking of how the New Year’s Eve party in 1929 had been the ruin of him. Weary Reilley pasting him when he was drunk, and then someone ditching him, letting him lay in the gutter and catch pneumonia. The guy, whoever he was, who had left him like that, in the cold and snow, he was no pal. Hell, he wouldn’t have done that even to a nigger or a dog, he whined to himself. He thought of how he used to worry over getting an alderman, and now, he’d be happy if he could regain some of the twenty pounds he had lost since the party. Funny, all right, he told himself, grinning dejectedly into the mirror.
Returning along the aisle, he saw the two salesmen seated with the girls, telling them jokes. Quick workers, he thought. He couldn’t carry things off like that. Must be something lacking in him. But then he just wasn’t a bull artist the way most drummers were.
“Now, just as I was saying, fellows, we’re older than we used to be. Take Chu Chu Keefe. He and Mickey Flannagan are the same as they always were, and the last time I saw them, they were as cockeyed as ever. They’re both swell fellows, regular, but you come to a time in your life when you realize that there’s no place for everything. Barney and Mickey, the only thing they got a place for in their lives is booze and female bums. Drunk and whoring all the time, with no ambition. And as I said, speaking straight from the shoulder, there’s something more than that in living. A man gets married and settles down some time. Of course, he doesn’t become a mollycoddle and let his wife wear the pants for him, and he drinks with the boys once in a while, but still he does a little settling down, and tries to figure out what the whole thing is all about,” Red Kelly orated as Studs returned.
Kelly was just showing off, Studs thought.
“Red, I think you’re right. Since I got married, and saw how in these times the breaks can go against a guy I’ve begun to think a little the way you do,” Stan said.
Studs lost interest in their talk. Quickly, he thought that he was getting too mopey and the guys would notice it if he didn’t jack himself up and quit mooning as he had been. He determined, he wished, he tried to make himself believe that some day he was going to be a much bigger shot than Red would ever become. He sat up erectly and looked at Red. He wasn’t going to act like a dope.
“Say, Red, some day I’ll bet that you’re going to be sheriff or alderman, or even mayor, a real big shot,” Les said.
“Well, Les,” Red replied, biting on his cigar, rolling it around with his lips,