The Studs Lonigan Trilogy - James T. Farrell [260]
CHAPTER TWO
I
Chewing on a toothpick, Studs vacantly stared through the bay window, seeing the fat and loose-faced proprietor waddle from behind the horseshoe-shaped marble counter, and cross, against a background of hustling waitresses and people eating at white-clothed tables, to the counter case in front of the window. He noticed the sag in the man’s broad trouser seat, and then he watched the dark, sexy-looking waitress scurry with a large tray of food. Three fellows, toward the front and close to the wall, were leaning across their food in talk and suddenly stretched back and laughed. Studs glanced in their direction. Three regular lads having supper, and then out to make a night of it! Where to? Show? Dance? Party? Canhouse? Speakeasy? There was a quality of warmth and friendliness, not for him, in the sight of these people eating fifty- and seventy-five-cent suppers, and he wished he were back inside, eating the meal he had just stowed away. He read the slanting line of enamelled lettering across the window, merely to waste time...
MARCEL’S RESTAURANT
Still a half hour before he’d meet Catherine. Chilled, he turned up his coat collar and about-faced. He saw that Dearborn Street, lined with tall and old flat-sided office buildings, with lighted windows seeming like pieces of yellow paper pasted against a dark setting, had only partially dried from the mizzling rain, and the raw snap in the air seemed to stab through to his bones. A few people walked down the deserted street, an automobile sputtered, turned a corner, and an elevated train rumbled by at Van Buren Street. Perhaps it was a south-bound train. It would stop at Fifty-eighth Street, and shines would bolt down the station steps to the street that he had once known so well. One night, a year ago, when he had nothing to do, he had gone walking in the old neighborhood, feeling very much like a stranger who had no right to be there. Shrimp’s funeral brought things like this to his mind, and kept them there. If he ever walked along Fifty-eighth Street again, Shrimp and Paulie and Hink and Arnold would all seem to walk with him like ghosts.
He halted on the opposite side of Van Buren Street to look at the ordered rows of black and tan oxfords in the window of Hassel’s shoe store. Used to have more clothes than he had now, he thought, his eyes straying from shoe to shoe until he fastened upon a pair of black brogans with narrow, perforated toes. But he oughtn’t to spend five-fifty on shoes when he still had two pairs that would do him for a while.
At Jackson Boulevard he stood on the curb irresolutely, while several automobiles shot past him. A tall fellow stared at him. Telling himself that the lad was constructed like a power machine, Studs attempted to appear unobtrusively firm in returning the glance. The fellow’s stare was unrelenting. Studs crossed the street, and walked by the Great Northern Hotel, stopping to study a news photograph of Lindbergh and his wife in flying outfit with a plane behind them. He thought that Lindbergh was a fearless-looking brute, all right, and .tried to imagine what it would be like to be the hero of the nation and to have been the first man to fly alone across the Atlantic, winning twenty-five thousand dollars, a society wife, and undying fame. Lucky boy! Realizing what Lindbergh was, he began to feel measly and insignificant, and turned away from the picture.
Maybe if he had gotten into the war he might have been an aviator, and when the prize was offered he might have competed with Lindbergh, beat him across the Atlantic, and become more famous than the hero of the nation. He began to feel joyful, seeing himself, Studs Lonigan, as Lindbergh, instead of the Studs Lonigan that he was at the moment. Then the world would have known what he was, what kind of stuff he was made of! Damn tootin’, it would.
Two tall youths approached him. From force of habit, he clenched his fists, and his body tensed for action. He saw that they were wearing smart and expensive clothes, with gray stetsons, and their faces