The Studs Lonigan Trilogy - James T. Farrell [324]
“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.
I’ll walk down the lane with a happy refrain,
Singin’, just singin’ in the rain.
“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 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.
Singin’ in the bathtub, happy once again,
Watchin’ all my troubles go swingin’ down the drain,
Singin’ through the soapsuds, life is full of hope .. .
“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.”
“Gee, is that all it is?” he smiled, but carefully so as not to give her grounds for thinking that he was laughing at her.
Catherine pouted, and stabbed at her pie with a fork. Studs concentrated on his pie and milk, and felt a tenseness hanging between them like a curtain dividing two sides of the table.
Reachin’ for a towel, ready for a rub,
Everybody’s happy when singing in the tub.
Studs looked up at her prepared to smile if she did, or if she gave a sign. She held her eyes on her pie, sipped coffee with the pout remaining on her plumply pretty face. He shrugged his shoulders and thought to himself, the goddamn women, how in hell could a guy please and satisfy them, and what the hell did they expect? Didn’t he have enough serious stuff on his mind without this silliness?
“You’re unbearable and insufferable,” she said with excessive spite.
“What’s eating you?” he countered, stunned by the unexpectedness of her remark.
“Eating me? What’s eating me? I’ll tell you what’s eating me without any waste of words. You!”
“Oh, I am, am I? Well, isn’t that just too bad!” he said, unwittingly raising his voice, attracting amused glances from the counter and other tables, flushing because they were putting on a show for strangers.
“You needn’t tell the whole world, either. First, you insult me. Then you try to make a public disgrace of me,” she said in a muffled but angry voice.
Hell, he guessed women just couldn’t listen to reason. He finished eating in silence and waiting for her, smoking in assumed nonchalance.
Little brooklets breaking free,
Work their way down. to the sea.
He smirked fatuously, and, catching him, she looked back in disgust, and he hadn