The Studs Lonigan Trilogy - James T. Farrell [332]
He paused at South Shore Drive and looked across at the arched entrance-way to the club grounds, wondering again what should he do now. Carroll Dowson had just joined South Shore Country Club, he remembered, and was getting up in the world. Well, the day would come when Studs Lonigan could join a swell club like that if he wanted to. A train pulled out of the station, curved around onto Seventy-first Street, clattered along toward Jeffrey. He watched a passing succession of automobiles. He leaned against a mailbox and looked at the faces of people on the sidewalk, the women, the babies, a tall woman with a good figure whose face was crumbling. She must feel pretty rotten, he guessed, knowing that she was getting old. Tough luck, sister! And suppose she wasn’t married. She had to go on living, knowing she would have to die probably without ever having known what it was really like. Well, he knew that much, anyway. But it was like candy. The more you eat, the more you want, and damn it, he wanted it now with a dame as neat as some of the ones he’d seen along Seventy-first Street this morning. It was only natural for a guy to want some tail when he didn’t have anything to do, and he was natural. And it would relieve the tedium of the day. He watched a mongrel dog scamper along, avoiding people, smelling at mail-boxes and lamp-posts. He saw a train swing around into the South Shore station. Christ, what a life!
Walking back toward Jeffrey, he stepped into a corner drug store and got a slug. He perspired in the booth. No, he wouldn’t call her. He inserted his slug.
“Return please, operator.”
He laid the slug on the counter, picked up his nickel, stopped by the magazine rack near the door and thumbed through a copy of an art magazine, looking at the pictures of naked and veiled women. Hot babies, but why the hell didn’t it show them in different positions to give the whole works. He set the magazine back and selected a copy of True Confessions, opening it at a photograph of a dishevelled girl. Her dress was torn down one shoulder as she gripped a door knob, her face trapped in fear, with a man looking beastly, lurching toward her, his shirt torn, his face scratched and bleeding. Studs quickly skipped through the story, written in the first person, coming upon the scene represented in the paragraph where the girl was attacked. He hoped the fellow would succeed, and it would be described. But she escaped, and his eagerness sapped away.
Now, I learned my lesson.
The clerk stared at him with cold suspicion. He replaced the magazine and left the drug store. Girls weren’t always so lucky as the gal who’d written the story. Not that dame named Irene whom Weary Reilley had raped. And with a lot of girls, when a guy got that far they wanted it, too, and a rape became a nice jazz. He nodded at McGoorty, who doped by a squat mail-box, looking dumb. He crossed over Jeffrey and stood at the newsstand in front of the bank, idly and half-interestedly looking at the headlines.
WOMAN SLAIN IN CICERO FLAT
Jealous Husband Shoots Unfaithful Wife
SCHOOL TEACHERS DEMAND PAY
Mass Meeting Tonight
NOT TIME FOR DRASTIC EXPERIMENT: DAVIS
Cabinet Member Addresses Chamber of Commerce
He yawned, and started home for lunch. Another day, and it was only half over. Christ, what should he do? And had she telephoned? Would she?
II
Studs entered the cigar store thinking that maybe she would call him up after work. Well, if she didn’t, phrigg you, Catherine!
A runty Jewish clerk with a peaked sensitive face sat leaning forward against the counter, as if in mysterious confab with a group of fellows who looked like poolroom hangers-on. Studs caught the clerk’s eye.
“O. K.,” he called lackadaisically.
A door opposite the entrance door opened, and Studs stepped into a familiar passageway.
“Let’s have it,” said a fellow of the slugger type in a soda-jerker’s white coat, his unintelligent face built upon a solid muscular neck; and a door behind him closed, bolting.
Although he knew there was no cause for fear, still he felt queer facing this bouncer.