The Studs Lonigan Trilogy - James T. Farrell [145]
There were lots of things in life he’d been missing. He was doing a lot of the things he dreamed of doing when he’d been a kid. He wanted more and felt that somewhere there was something else for him in life, and it was the ticket that would satisfy the feeling he always got from the movies, from seeing a nice jane on the street, sometimes from walking in the park in summer and maybe looking at the sky, sometimes when walking home from work in the sunset.
Maybe if he married Lucy, it would turn out happy. Or someone like Gloria. If she and Lucy were the same girl! But what about when she would get old, and he’d want younger broads, and she had him tied home like a trained monkey in a zoo, and there’d be regiments of squawling brats coming along; he hated kids. He could just see himself parading in the hall in the middle of the night, carrying a bawling baby, and maybe having the baby let go in his arms. But having a decent girl, who was your wife, must be different than being with whores or bums you took over to the park. Slug said all broads were the same. There had to be more to it than that, more than it was like in a can house, hurrying through with it and being disgusted afterwards. But was it worth having a jane sink the hooks into you, and handcuff your dough? He didn’t know, but on summer nights when he saw guys out with their broads, he felt different about it than he pre-tended when he was with the guys.
“Like the broad I fixed you up with last Sunday night after the football game?”
“Yeah.”
“Nice, huh?”
“Yeah.”
“Say, wouldn’t I like that broad in the pictures,” Slug said with all his mispronunciations.
Hell, what right had he to think of a broad like her? She wouldn’t even spit on him.
They passed the white-tiled Methodist Church at Fifty-sixth and Indiana. At Fifty-seventh, Studs kind of wished that Slug would not turn but that they’d walk down to Fifty-eighth past her old house. But he didn’t have any special reason to give for wanting to go that way, and walked with Slug when he turned east on Fifty-seventh. They turned by the Crerar Presbyterian Church on the corner of Fifty-seventh and Prairie, and Studs remembered one Sunday night when they’d been kids; how they’d gone to services there, put slugs in the collection box, and laughed until a sappy-faced usher kicked them out. They saw a group on the corner. Studs determined he wouldn’t hang around long. He wondered too, if he didn’t marry, would he be an old soak like Barney Keefe. He wanted to be something big in life. But look at what his fat, loud-mouthed old man was! Or Dinny Gorman, the high-hat wind-bag of a politician! It got him all right.
“Lonigan!” Barney Keefe exclaimed with drunken exuberance.
“Keefe!” Lonigan replied with pumped boisterousness.
“Lonigan, you pig-in-the-parlor-mick!”
“Keefe, you drunken flannel-mouth.”
Slug complimented the boys for being polluted. Baby-faced Mickey Flannagan faced them, stupefied, swaying like a reed in the wind.
Studs told them that Schwartz from last Sunday’s game would be all right. They said good.
“Flannagan has his guts pickled in gin,” Keefe said.
Mickey mumbled. Slug caught him as he fell forwards, and set him against the fire plug.
Barney pulled out a bottle, and held it aloft;
Past the teeth,
Down the tongue,
Look out, stomach,
Here I come!
They laughed. Kelly grabbed the bottle. Barney beefed like hell. Taite and Les tried to get a sip from Kelly, but it was all gone.
Mickey mumbled for them to watch his match trick. He fumbled through his pockets and came out with a box of safety matches. He hiccoughed. He lit a match. It went out. He lit another. The flame quickly died. He repeated until they asked him what the trick was. He pawed out a match and lit it. It went out. That was the trick.
“Look out there, Flannagan, your guts are rising!” Keefe said.
Mickey belched.
“Here’s the Bad News Twins,” Studs said, seeing Mush Joss and TB McCarthy approaching.