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By Root 10644 0

leaned his weight on the back of the pew in front of him. He tried to keep her face in his mind, but he forgot what she looked like, and had to side-glance to recall the features on her thin handsome face. He stared straight ahead at the priest, whose reading made disturbing indistinguishable sounds to him, and the image of her face thinned out, and then, it suddenly bloated with fat, as if he was seeing her in one of the crazy mirrors at the Fun House in White City. He looked at her again. There was an icy quality about her, too. It made him afraid; she was too proud for him to make her love him, but no, it would be different and she would go for him as he did for her. Me for you, baby, he told himself. He determined once again to put exterior thoughts from him and hear mass in the right way. He forced himself to listen:

And the shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all that they had heard and seen as it was told to them.

After the gospel, Studs sat down with the other people and perfunctorily blessed himself as the sermon began. The sermon seemed like a drone to him. He recalled the phrase from the gospel, “glorifying God,” and a mood of repentance struck him with a sorrow that was almost abject. He said an act of contrition, trying to make it rise from a penitent heart. This was the first Christmas morning since he had made his first Holy Communion upon which he had not received. Glorifying God. Doing what he had done on Christmas Eve. Drunk, in a whore house, watching a filthy performance by two of the lowest women there could be, going up with a whore..

Oh, my God, I am heartily, heartily sorry for having offended Thee, I am not worthy... He had come home stinking from drink, looking like a sow, worse than the prodigal son, spoiling everybody’s Christmas day at home. Oh, my God, I am heartily sorry... and he had been in bed with the whore. The noise of the raid, the disappointment in that moment of discovery, came back, and recalling how it had just been before the moment, hot desires flushed his thoughts, and he wanted a woman, and her presence next to him made it worse, and if only the raid had been pulled off two minutes later... Oh, my God ...

He listened to Father Doneggan’s description of the manger, where the Christ Child had been born, that conception which was the most important single event in all the crowded history of mankind.

His mind floated and he thought of her next to him in a way that decent girls shouldn’t be thought of, and he wished that there was one more person in the pew so that he and she would be squeezed together, and Jesus Christ, he felt like a plain low-down ordinary sonofabitch.

“And there was the Christ Child in that humble manger, a child of poverty. Christ, our Lord, could have come unto man, a king in proud kingly robes, a monarch greater than all other earthly monarchs. But no, he came as the foster-child of a poor and humble carpenter. He came unto man in humility. And, my friends, that humility of Christ, our Lord and Savior, is one of the many lessons that we should learn on this great and joyous feast day that is celebrated throughout Christendom.”

She was sitting straight up. Was she listening? Did her mind wander? Did she think of him, want to meet him, know him? Had she ever heard of him? Perhaps she had been-maybe to a dance and had met Dan Donoghue there, and had heard Dan say something about Studs Lonigan, and she had asked who Studs Lonigan was. And after Dan had told her, maybe she had said, or at least thought, that she would like to meet Studs Lonigan. And now she was kneeling next to him, and afterwards, going out of church, maybe they would talk, and then he would walk home with her, and arrange to take her to a show this evening. He quickly covered a yawn with his right hand. He put his hand down because he didn’t want her to notice the nicotine on his fingers. He glanced about him with an air of put-on seriousness, and saw Tommy Doyle’s mother in a pew across the aisle to his left. He looked to the rear, and saw the people standing, and by Father