The Studs Lonigan Trilogy - James T. Farrell [353]
Studs thought that some guys had a hell of a lot of guts singing them over a measly five bucks a week less when here he was out over a thousand bucks and not batting an eye. He felt like saying so, very casually.
“Well, boys, congratulate me,” Allison said.
“How come?”
“I copped it. I copped that little dame’s cherry. I’m putting her through an intensive course in the Allison Training School.”
“Lucky rat,” Bryan said.
“Lucky, hell! I worked two months before she came across.”
“Is she nice?”
“Nice is the word for what she’s going to be. Listen ... ”
A couple entered the restaurant and Bryan nudged Allison. They spoke low.
“How you feeling these days, Studs?”
“Pretty good,” Studs said, but he was getting damn tired of being asked how he was feeling, as if he was a cripple.
He finished his pie and coffee and noticed Allison and Bryan still talking in whispers. Well, he had things he could talk about, too.
“Nothing much happening, huh, Studs?” Pat said.
“No, Pat.”
“Same here, Studs.”
He sat for a while.
“Guess I’ll be going home and turning in,” Studs yawned. He arose, paid his bill, waved a final so-long, left the restaurant.
He walked home feeling pretty good.
CHAPTER TWELVE
I
Studs walked slowly to the center of the Bryn Mawr station platform, eyeing the scattering of people who waited for a downtown train. He hoped that some of these people would notice him and think that here was a fellow who didn’t have to get up early to go to work but had time to himself. He stopped near the small waiting-room and dramatically stuck his hands in his trouser pockets.
“What else can I do? If our roles were reversed wouldn’t he drive me into bankruptcy? He says it’s not his fault. Well, is it my fault? So he’s got until next Monday to pay up or my lawyer institutes bankruptcy proceedings,” a stout, puffy-cheeked man said to a friend as they stood a few feet from Studs.
Tough tiddy for someone there, Studs thought. Anyway, over the telephone, Catherine’s voice had sounded sweet and friendly. She wasn’t sore. It was just that he had been the right guy and last night had been the right time. His eye caught a girl, neat, all right, walking past the restaurant on the north side of Seventy-first Street. He hoped she would be getting on the train, and he’d happen to sit next to her and they’d get to talking. He was kind of a bastard, and yet, she was damn neat. He lit a cigarette and let his glance trail wistfully after her. Last night had made him think of broads, and he’d had them on his mind all morning, naked broads, and he had kept thinking of making them, harems of them. And it was all damn dirty and unfair to Catherine. But a guy couldn’t always help himself. Thoughts popped into his bean, and anyway he hadn’t done anything but think about them. She was turning around the bank corner, gone. The world was sure full of broads. And this week, he’d had that Jackson bitch and Catherine. He must have some sex appeal to Catherine. He was going to marry her and he liked her, and other girls, they were just umm, nice orders of pork chops on the side, as poor Paulie Haggerty used to say. He saw himself when he was an old man, fondly remembering all the girls he had laid, from Iris down the line. And suppose he still had it in him when he was seventy? He still had years of it to go anyway and that was something sweet.
The warning bells distracted him. He looked eastward down the track at the approaching train and stepped back as it pulled alongside of the platform. Tossing aside his cigarette, he figured that he wouldn’t smoke if he avoided the smoker, and he entered a car in the center of the train. The train rolled forward, and walking in the car aisle he looked to see if there were any girls he might sit next to, or anyone he knew. He took an unoccupied seat in the middle, by a window, and looked out as the train passed houses, vacant lots, people walking along Seventy-first Street.
When he saw Catherine, should he or shouldn’t he mention last night?
“I saw her yesterday on Seventy-first Street, and do you know, she