The Studs Lonigan Trilogy - James T. Farrell [262]
He increased his gait to a brisk walk, because Catherine was almost never late, and since he was going to pop the question tonight he oughtn’t to annoy her by making her wait for him. The idea of proposing worried him; his body became tense and his breath seemed almost to jerk out of him. It was a serious business, and maybe he ought to .think it over more. He reduced his pace unconsciously. He felt somewhat the same as he might have if he were going to a dentist’s to have a tooth pulled, wanting to postpone what had to be done to some other time. Suppose he should make a fool of himself? After all, he was really a stranger to her. He was really a stranger to everyone else in the world also, and they really did not know what went on inside of him, and how he felt about many, many things. He wasn’t sure that he would want to live so intimately with anyone as he would have to do with Catherine if he married her. Maybe he should not have made the date with her tonight, coming all the way downtown instead of getting off at the Englewood station, and letting Stan bring home his small grip. But if he hadn’t done this, he would have nothing to do but go home and sit around watching how bored his old man and old woman seemed to be. or else going out alone. And these days he hated to be alone, and when he was alone, he worried and puzzled over too many things, and stewed over his health. And did he, now, really want to marry Catherine?
There was Lucy. And there was that girl he had knelt next to at a Christmas morning mass at St. Patrick’s. He had wanted to get next to her, and he had used to hope that he would. As he remembered her, and as he remembered Lucy, they had class, the same kind of class that girls like his own sisters or Weary’s sister, Fran Reilley, had. There was an air about them, about the way they talked, walked, the things they said and did, their clothes, everything about them that Catherine did not seem to have. Catherine would make him a damn good wife, he knew, but still, well, there was something common about her, something that would have kept her from being in the same group with girls like his sisters, from being bid to their sororities, something that was there even if he couldn’t put his finger on it. She was decent, he was sure she would say yes when he popped the question, and she was the kind who would make a goddamn swell wife in some ways. Yet when he was with her, and met his sisters, he was ashamed of her. Thinking of Lucy, or that other girl, he kind of felt sorry for Catherine.
He turned the corner on to Randolph, the Loop noises bursting upon him with a sudden increase of volume, the elevated trains from Lake Street, the clanging of a street-car gong on Dearborn, the humming movement of the automobiles, the parade of people along the sidewalk, snatches of their talk, their feet scraping over the sidewalk. He felt as if he had left a place that was cold to come into one that was warm. He heard the jazz band of a nearby, second-floor Chinese dine-and-dance restaurant break into snappy music, and he glanced at the many and brilliant electric fronts of the shows along both sides of the street. Keyed up, he was glad to see people, he wanted to talk, to do something, to see Catherine, too. He felt that his body was now like some kind of a nervous instrument with strings like violin strings that had been plucked and tingled.
“Plenty of seats inside. No waiting. Follies of 1931 with all-star movie cast. No waiting, folks.”
Studs stopped to look at the six-foot, red-headed doorman of the Greater Artists Theater, who wore a long, purple, gold-braided coat and bluish-gray trousers with a wide purple stripe running down