The Studs Lonigan Trilogy - James T. Farrell [325]
Birdies sing in cages, too,
They know that’s the thing to do...
He paid the bill.
“Goodnight,” the proprietor said cheerfully.
“Goodnight,” he said, hurrying out, seeming almost to feel eyes and laughter on his back.
Catherine was energetically walking along Seventy-first Street, her high heels rapping on the sidewalk. Hastening, he caught up with her and strode along at her left, breathing rapidly.
It was clear and pleasant out, and he glanced absently up at the skies, seeing star galaxies as if he were discovering them. It was nice. But he’d get a stiff neck and look like a sap walking along with his hands in his pockets and his eyes raised this way. Ahead, he saw the sidewalk, the red lanterns hanging from . the railroad gates which pointed almost vertically from the street, buildings with darkened stores along the street. His mind wandered to his stocks. He forgot that she was beside him. A frail breeze tickled his neck pleasantly. He became aware of her clicking heels again. Christ, she was sore, all right, and that was just so much added to his grief.
“Listen,” he exclaimed, trying to be forceful, this quarrel dragging too intolerably on his nerves.
“You needn’t talk to me in that tone of voice. I don’t have to stand for it.”
“Well, come on, let’s be sensible. There’s no use in us going on like this.”
“You’re not talking to me, because anything you say goes in one ear and runs out the other.”-
“Oh, all right,” he shrugged.
An electric train passed them with mechanical gruntings. Accompanied by the sound of warning bells, it rolled into the Stony Island Avenue station. Studs watched the lifting train gates. Automobiles and a surface car shot over Seventy-first and Stony Island Avenue. It struck him how queer it was that he should at this moment be walking along this street, past a block-long prairie, and of how, five or six years ago, he had never thought that his life would turn out this way, and he’d have laughed at anybody who’d have predicted that it would. Life was queer, funny, and most of the things that happened to you came without your ever expecting them.
“I suppose you consider yourself clever.”
“I thought you weren’t talking to me,” he answered, his voice as ill-tempered and cruel as hers.
“I’m not. Only you’re walking along here, so self-satisfied, acting as if you were so pleased, with a head like a big balloon full of false pride, acting as if you thought yourself so …indispensable. You men, you think a girl falls head over heels in love with you, and it makes you begin to think that you are the only and the best possible thing that comes walking along. You and your conceit.”
Her remark hurt Studs, made him feel as if he had been socked in the jaw unexpectedly by his best friend, or as if he had suddenly discovered people talking about him behind his back.
“You’re trying to act wise.” His voice cracked, but he continued, “Listen, baby! Don’t start getting top-heavy opinions about yourself, either.”
A rush of blood seemed to charge to his face and he got more hot because he knew he wasn’t carrying it off right. To appease his stricken pride, he silently exclaimed, Why, you goddamn bitch.
“Is that so?” she countered to his last spoken remark, uncontrolled tears running.
He wished they weren’t quarrelling. He didn’t want to hurt her and make her cry. But she made him goddamn sore, and what did she think she was, trying all this high-hat stuff on him, going off the handle the way she had, over nothing at all? And just at a time when he was worried over the money he had risked for their marriage? Just now when he felt he needed to depend on her, she pulled this trick. Goddamn nerve.
“I’ll never forgive you for what you said,” she sobbed as they came to Stony Island Avenue.