The Studs Lonigan Trilogy - James T. Farrell [251]
The train swept overhead through a town, and below him Studs saw, as if they were part of some warm life that he did not know, people moving in rainy streets, automobiles, lighted signs, and windows and stores and lamp-posts. And if he was dead, maybe Lucy would be there. But the hell with her and all that.
He didn’t care, and he was alive, and he was going to marry Catherine. She was a damn swell kid, who would really do anything for him, go to Hell for him, and he really cared for her, and she would make him a good wife. Red was married and coming along. So would he. And tonight, goddamn it, he was going to pop the question. He was coming back, Studs Lonigan was.
The fellows were still talking. Let them chin, he told himself, still emptily staring out the window as the train passed through the industrial belt surrounding Chicago, a passing scene of factory chimneys, squalid and dimly lit streets, houses in rows like barracks, and then stretches again of country lost in blackness. He felt dirty and nervous, and he made up his mind right then and there that he was going to pull together. He wanted to get back to Chicago quickly to start on it, too, make a fresh start, regain his health, fight an uphill battle and show the world that Studs Lonigan could be somebody. He was conscious, acutely, of the gratings and strainings and clatter of the train, the squeaking windows, and again he heard the piercing, siren-like train whistle. He did not hear Red Kelly gently remark:
“Studs must be in love. He’s moping so that he doesn’t even hear us talking about him.”
CHAPTER TWO
I
Chewing on a toothpick, Studs vacantly stared through the bay window, seeing the fat and loose-faced proprietor waddle from behind the horseshoe-shaped marble counter, and cross, against a background of hustling waitresses and people eating at white-clothed tables, to the counter case in front of the window. He noticed the sag in the man’s broad trouser seat, and then he watched the dark, sexy-looking waitress scurry with a large tray of food. Three fellows, toward the front and close to the wall, were leaning across their food in talk and suddenly stretched back and laughed. Studs glanced in their direction. Three regular lads having supper, and then out to make a night of it! Where to? Show? Dance? Party? Canhouse? Speakeasy? There was a quality of warmth and friendliness, not for him, in the sight of these people eating fifty- and seventy-five-cent suppers, and he wished he were back inside, eating the meal he had just stowed away. He read the slanting line of enamelled lettering across the window, merely to waste time...
MARCEL’S RESTAURANT
Still a half hour before he’d meet Catherine. Chilled, he turned up his coat collar and about-faced. He saw that Dearborn Street, lined with tall and old flat-sided office buildings, with lighted windows seeming like pieces of yellow paper pasted against a dark setting, had only partially dried from the mizzling rain, and the raw snap in the air seemed to stab through to his bones. A few people walked down the deserted street, an automobile sputtered, turned a corner, and an elevated train rumbled by at Van Buren Street. Perhaps it was a south-bound train. It would stop at Fifty-eighth Street, and shines would bolt down the station steps to the street that he had once known so well. One night, a year ago, when he had nothing to do, he had gone walking in the old neighborhood, feeling very much like a stranger who had no right to be there. Shrimp