The Studs Lonigan Trilogy - James T. Farrell [322]
“Apple pie and coffee,” Studs called at the dumpy waitress as she scuttled by him with an armful of orders.
I lift up my finger and I say
“Tweet, tweet, shush, shush, now, now,
Come, come.”
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.
I’m just daffy ‘bout daffodils
And especially you
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 corner 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?
V
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?