The Studs Lonigan Trilogy - James T. Farrell [198]
“Oh, once in a while.”
“I see Dan. He does a lot of stepping out when he’s in town,” she said.
“I see Bill once in a while,” said Studs.
“Bill, he was so funny.”
“He still is.”
“Say, Studs, have you a cigarette?”
He gave her one and smoked himself. It put him more at ease. He edged an imperceptible inch towards her. “This is going to be a big dance.”
“Fran talked about it enough.”
“She works so hard for her sorority. I suppose Loretta will be there. She’s gotten to be such a darling.”
“She’s a good kid,” said Studs.
The bumping of the car pitched her against him. She stayed there. That perfume smell, and the smell of her clothes made him want to kiss her even more than he had been wanting to. “With my sister and your sister grown up, I feel like the older generation,” Lucy said.
“Yeah,” he said.
He put his arm around her. He quickly and clumsily, on an impulse, kissed her.
“This is awfully public,” she calmly said, completely disturbing him.
He looked at her, her face now vague in the cab.
“You work fast,” she teased, pursing her lips as if she were waiting for another kiss. He kissed her again.
“You’re fast,” she said.
He tried to hug her more tightly against his shoulder. She stiffened.
He seriously puffed at his cigarette. Remembering the afternoon in the park, in the tree, swinging her legs, himself looking through the leaves at the park lagoon, neither of them speaking, swinging their legs, her singing The Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. It couldn’t have been so many years ago. It wasn’t all gone. He wished she’d sing that song now.
“They’re having a hot Benson band tonight,” she said, breaking his mood.
He was in for it, a chump. How in hell would he act? Jesus Christ. Already, he felt as if he were an entirely different Studs Lonigan from what he’d ever been, and they wouldn’t even know him around the poolroom. They rolled nearer and nearer to the Loop, and he felt like he was being taken to his doom.
II
Entering the hotel, Studs tried to appear calm and natural, as if he belonged in places like this, and was the kind of a guy who could bust right into any kind of a joint, no matter how swell it was, and act like he belonged there and knew what to do. They passed across a pillared lobby that possessed an indefinable atmosphere of lacy ornateness. Studs felt that every-body was looking at him, ready to laugh if he pulled a boner. He knew that he was blushing. He walked by an old man lounging in a chair, half asleep, his somnolent face making him look like he was dead on his feet. He threw back his shoulders. He thought of himself as youth, and hoped the old man saw him and thought so too. He spotted several loudly dressed Jews, and they seemed to be looking at Lucy. She was worth looking at, and they should be envying him, but let them crack wise or dirty!
They turned to their left, and up a marble stairway with gilt banisters to the Blue Room.
“All the dances that count are being held here this year,” she exclaimed.
“Yeah!”
He could just tell that she was able to see right through him, see that he was out of place and without confidence. Maybe she was just silently laughing at him, and later she would laugh and talk about him behind his back. If she did, let her, he thought, in a cursing mood. If she was that way, she could go plumb to—. He wished it was over or that he hadn’t been chump enough to let himself in for such a thing. He knew he would make a fathead out of himself. And he was too old for this cake-eater stuff. He determined that if trying could do, he would carry himself through it with... dignity.
A lanky effeminate fellow, with blond marcelled hair, stood collecting tickets. Studs handed him the ticket, his face set in a challenging sneer. Let that sap bat out of turn. The fellow pointed to the right, and stated in an affectedly refined voice that the checkroom was in that direction. He started taking his coat off as he walked towards it. Placing it over his arm, he realized that he hadn’t paused first to take Lucy’s shawl. She handed it to him, and said that she would