The Studs Lonigan Trilogy - James T. Farrell [343]
Walking back toward Jeffrey, he stepped into a corner drug store and got a slug. He perspired in the booth. No, he wouldn’t call her. He inserted his slug.
“Return please, operator.”
He laid the slug on the counter, picked up his nickel, stopped by the magazine rack near the door and thumbed through a copy of an art magazine, looking at the pictures of naked and veiled women. Hot babies, but why the hell didn’t it show them in different positions to give the whole works. He set the magazine back and selected a copy of True Confessions, opening it at a photograph of a dishevelled girl. Her dress was torn down one shoulder as she gripped a door knob, her face trapped in fear, with a man looking beastly, lurching toward her, his shirt torn, his face scratched and bleeding. Studs quickly skipped through the story, written in the first person, coming upon the scene represented in the paragraph where the girl was attacked. He hoped the fellow would succeed, and it would be described. But she escaped, and his eagerness sapped away.
Now, I learned my lesson.
The clerk stared at him with cold suspicion. He replaced the magazine and left the drug store. Girls weren’t always so lucky as the gal who’d written the story. Not that dame named Irene whom Weary Reilley had raped. And with a lot of girls, when a guy got that far they wanted it, too, and a rape became a nice jazz. He nodded at McGoorty, who doped by a squat mail-box, looking dumb. He crossed over Jeffrey and stood at the newsstand in front of the bank, idly and half-interestedly looking at the headlines.
WOMAN SLAIN IN CICERO FLAT
Jealous Husband Shoots Unfaithful Wife
SCHOOL TEACHERS DEMAND PAY
Mass Meeting Tonight
NOT TIME FOR DRASTIC EXPERIMENT: DAVIS
Cabinet Member Addresses Chamber of Commerce
He yawned, and started home for lunch. Another day, and it was only half over. Christ, what should he do? And had she telephoned? Would she?
II
Studs entered the cigar store thinking that maybe she would call him up after work. Well, if she didn’t, phrigg you, Catherine!
A runty Jewish clerk with a peaked sensitive face sat leaning forward against the counter, as if in mysterious confab with a group of fellows who looked like poolroom hangers-on. Studs caught the clerk’s eye.
“O. K.,” he called lackadaisically.
A door opposite the entrance door opened, and Studs stepped into a familiar passageway.
“Let’s have it,” said a fellow of the slugger type in a soda-jerker’s white coat, his unintelligent face built upon a solid muscular neck; and a door behind him closed, bolting.
Although he knew there was no cause for fear, still he felt queer facing this bouncer.
“I’m going to frisk you, lad,” the bouncer said, tapping Studs from head to foot, under the armpits, the pockets, the chest, viewing Studs’ hat and examining the inside, working with a speed and efficiency which caused Studs to remember how clumsy McGoorty had been doing the same thing in the morning.
“O. K.”
“Let’s have it,” a voice from behind the inside door called, as if in the performance of some strange and mysterious rite.
Studs entered a large half-crowded room curtained with cigarette smoke, and the door was bolted behind him. A low counter ran along the opposite end of the room, behind which Phil, with a clean blue shirt, sat working, three fellows alongside of him bent forward over papers. Small groups were gathered around charts and scratch sheets along the wall, another group stood conversing