The Studs Lonigan Trilogy - James T. Farrell [338]
II
Feeling almost chained under the bed covers, Studs tossed, wishing that he could sleep. He lifted his left foot outside the covers, the breeze from the opened window cool upon it. Lying almost semi-crosswise, he perceived Martin in the darkness on the small cot across the bedroom, and he emptily listened to his brother’s even breathing. He saw the blue patch of sky against the dark background of the apartment hotel across the street, with streaks of moonlight splashed on lightless windows. People asleep in all those rooms.
Christ, why couldn’t he sleep?
Twisting, he pulled his foot back under the covers. He determined that he would lie still, force himself to be quiet until he sank into sleep. He lay still for a few seconds, sensitive to his own breathing and the beating of his heart. He turned on his left side and closed his eyes, holding the lids shut for several seconds. Opening them, he looked at the sky and the apartment hotel.
Was Catherine awake at this minute? He imagined her quietly sobbing, her body quivering, her pillow soaking with tears, and he was proud to think of her in such a state over him, turning her bed into a river because she was afraid that she’d lost him. Wasn’t he, though, a goddamn low sonofabitch to be taking joy out of such thoughts? If they pleased him this way, he must be pretty much of an out-and-out heel, and really, he didn’t feel that way. He felt low and rotten.
He knew that he’d be better off if he forgot about it for the night. Already since coming to bed he had thought back over the quarrel detail by detail, and what was the use of continuing when it got him nowhere?
Wanting to distract himself by thinking of something else, he drew up in his mind images from his memory of the night when he had last talked with Lucy over the telephone, and she had been no soap on a date. He had walked over to the park with the boys. Barney Keefe and Shrimp had razzed each other, and he had boxed with Morgan and had been shown up. He saw himself back on that night, getting a date with Lucy, lacing Morgan, and then boxing with Hink Weber, dancing around like a streak. He commenced to feel as if he were back on that night, lying in bed now after he had made a sucker out of Hink. And on Saturday night he’d take Lucy out, and coming home with her in a cab, feeling her nearness, smell her perfume...
Was Catherine asleep now, and if she wasn’t what was she thinking about?
A cloud, like a large, white island, was floating just over the apartment hotel, white, puffy its edges like strand or even like the hockings of a man with the con.
The thought of consumption made him afraid, lest he have it. He rolled over to look at the shadowy wall, trying to shutter out of his mind the image of that cloud, which seemed to grow into an enormous lump of consumptive spittle. Martin breathing so easily in sleep. Christ, to sleep!
Perhaps it meant the finish of everything between himself and Catherine. How would he explain it to the family? And how would he feel about it, going back to the way things had been before he’d started going regularly with her? Wishing on so many nights that he would have his own girl to take out. And with the old gang broken up, and his health not permitting him to tear around, how would it be, fidgeting at night, too broke to spend a lot of money, nothing to do?
He realized that he was, no matter what he thought or tried to make himself think, pretty much nuts about Catherine. And now, whoops, goodbye and the end of it.
Was she awake, crying, sorry? He could see her going to a show with some other guy, in the hallway afterward, the fellow taking her in his arms, kissing her, she lifting her face to be kissed, her body close and another fellow touching her. He remembered how he would hold and kiss her, feel her hard and hot against him, and now another guy.
Well, if she was that