The Studs Lonigan Trilogy - James T. Farrell [270]
“Nice,” he said.
“And wait until we have The Century of Progress in 1933. Won’t that be grand! Mr. Breckenbridge says that by then Prosperity will be back and everyone will be making money again hand over fist.”
“I hope so,”; Studs said, wondering how his health would be in two years. Would he even be alive? Two years ago, Shrimp, Tommy Doyle, Slug, lots of people now dead, had been alive, and in better health than he was now.
“And won’t it be just grand, Bill, dear, for Mr. and Mrs. Lonigan to go to the Fair? We’ll see everything and go on all the rides, won’t we?” she said gaily, snuggling her arm through his.
“There’ll be lots to see, too,” he said.
“And we’ll dance. We’ll go some night for supper and dance. It’ll be fun.”
He felt her arm curled under his elbow, and began to get anxious. He wanted her in his arms, and he ought to kiss her, and she wanted to be kissed. Suppose he should be a chump over the way he went about it? And how far would she let him go? He remembered how he had made a chump of him-self in the cab, that night he had taken Lucy to his sister’s sorority dance. And his anxiety seemed to increase.
He looked ahead feeling soft, and the dazzling rays of the fountain seemed, somehow, to be part of his mood. And his feelings about Catherine and the spray were like so many diamonds lifting and falling, and to him, Catherine was like a diamond, and his feelings were like the fountain, so many diamonds rising and falling that way in the light, and the light was Catherine. And was he thinking like a chump, or wasn’t he?
The lake breezes had sharpened, carrying in their rush the smell of the waters. And behind them he heard the dry-sounding clatter of a train. He felt himself to be walking in a different world from what was back there, where the train had passed. Even the dirt, hard and cold beside the walk, it seemed more than dirt frosted from the long winter.
“Dear?” she said, her voice prolonging the sound so long that Studs felt as if it had slowly melted on her tongue like chocolate candy.
“Yes,” he answered expectantly, a vision of their future marriage, their first wedding night, a honeymoon to Niagara Falls, and many other nights of promise in his mind.
They turned to the right, crossed the outer driveway, hastened toward the lake. Studs reduced their pace to stare south-ward at the squat hugeness of the Chicago Memorial Stadium, standing, he guessed, maybe like some Roman ruins in the mistiness.
He took her arm and led her forward, thinking of how he felt like a new man, wishing that they were already married. He realized that he was chilled, and turned up his coat collar. Worry about his health fell over his thoughts, smothering them like a wet blanket. He felt, as if in a prophecy, that he would never live to have the things he had just been thinking about... Oh, Jesus Christ! he silently exclaimed with pity for Studs Lonigan.
“Dear, we hadn’t better go any farther. You might catch cold.”
“I’ll be all right,” he tersely replied, not wanting her to think him weak or afraid or anything.
“No, let’s turn back.”
“Come on!” he insisted, and she glanced up at him with an expression of meekness, her eyes seeming to shine.
She again took his arm, and he clamped his elbow tightly against her hand.
There seemed to him to be a lot of meanings in their walk, their touches, the silence between them. Again, as when he had been with Lucy a few times, there had seemed to be ahead of him things that he wanted very much. Always in his life, he had believed, felt, knew, that it was going to be Studs Lonigan’s destiny to get something he wanted and needed to give him a happiness he hadn’t known but only wished for. It had always seemed ahead of him, and now he was on the verge of catching up with it. It had been, he guessed, a feeling like always being so thirsty that he could never get enough to drink, or like eating a fruit that he could never suck all the