The Studs Lonigan Trilogy - James T. Farrell [339]
But after they had gotten as far as they did, such a thing happening! He could see himself socking some guy who was trying to make her. And after he would have battered hell out of the guy, she would come to him humbly and say that it had all been a mistake, and then they would go on again just as they had before the quarrel this evening.
He remembered that night two weeks ago when they’d talked in her hallway and she’d suddenly flung her arms around him, kissed him hotly, opened her mouth, french-kissed him. And he’d lost control of himself, grabbed her, sat her down on the steps, bent over her, lay on top of her, run his hand along her warm thighs until she quivered. Never before had he been able to excite a woman that much. She’d wanted to, right then and there, and at the last minute she’d pushed him away, said no, stood up all ruffled, with her hair mussed, and rushed upstairs. She’d stood at the glass of the inside door, breathing heavily, that look still on her face, blown him a last kiss, gone up. The next time he’d seen her, she’d said they had to be careful with each other, because they would have to wait until they were married. And Jesus, after coming that close, not to get it, never to see or speak to her again! To have her in his arms this minute. He tried to remember and make himself feel just the way he had felt, holding and kissing her and stroking her thighs. Just thinking of it made him ga-ga. He could see, too, why guys liked to be married.
Brother, I want a woman, he told himself, thinking how he hadn’t had a woman in one hell of a long time.
And he’d put his hands under Lucy’s dress, too, once, and that had been all, and now the same with Catherine. That night by the lake when they’d become engaged, that seemed to be so far away. He closed his eyes, rolled onto his back, thought that she was only a broad, and the world was full of broads. In the old days, when Red Kelly got drunk, he’d call his girl up and tell her, up your back, Charlie.
Up your back, Catherine.
One thing after another was hitting him like bolts of lightning out of the sky. He pitied himself, with his health shot, a bum heart, most of his dough lost, the old man watching everything he had go straight up the creek, and now losing his girl. There was no fairness in him getting all these tough breaks when fellows like Red Kelly were starting to swim in gravy. He put his right leg over the covers and asked himself, why in the name of Jesus Christ he had to take so many jolts on the chin from every side? Hadn’t that pneumonia been enough? He felt that all his bad luck dated from that New Year’s Eve party because then the cards had been shuffled the wrong way on him, and now it wasn’t easy to unshuffle the pack. He was just a goddamn mess, and he wanted to go to sleep, and felt rotten and all-in, and too nervous to sleep.
How often in a fellow’s life just one thing goes wrong, and then that guy is through and doesn’t come back! One wild, accidental punch below the belt or on the chin. Some little thing, getting too drunk and going to a party and then if he’d met some girl that night, taken her to her room, slept with her, his life would have been different, and he’d have woke up with her instead of in a hospital. Just such things that gave a guy a deuce instead of an ace. And he’d been chump enough to let those little things happen, so here he was. Or was it that he was just the kind of a guy who couldn’t take it? He fought the question out of his mind, told himself that the harder the breaks, the more he had to fight, and the sweeter it would be coming through.
He tossed until he lay on his back with his feet spread widely apart. Martin snored, and it made him ask why Martin was younger and healthier than himself, sleeping now when he couldn’t sleep?
All along, always during the old days, he had felt that somehow, some day, he was going to pull a royal flush out of the deck of life. He tried to feel that way now, to convince himself that he was just stewing up unnecessary grief for