The Studs Lonigan Trilogy - James T. Farrell [361]
He looked at her, helpless and petulant. Laughing again, she threw her arms around him and kissed him.
“You’re my dear, sweet, adorable boob.”
“I guess I am,” he sighed disconsolately.
She laughed.
“Nice compliments I’m getting.”
“Beautiful compliments they are.”
She let hot water into the dishpan and dropped in a handful of soap chips. Studs lit a cigarette, dropped the lace cap on the sideboard, and draped a dish towel over his arm, while she commenced to wash the dishes.
“Wait until it’s rinsed,” she said dictatorially when he started drying a soapy dish.
“All right.”
“You men, you’re such babies and incompetents in the kitchen. You talk so big and pretend so much for yourselves, and when it comes to doing simple, practical little things, you’re all left-handed.”
“Yeah,” he countered with playful irony.
Drying the dishes, he admitted to himself that he liked this, and he liked her, and she sure was a rest and a consolation to him, and he was damn glad that they’d patched up their quarrel. But he couldn’t say too much of such thoughts out loud because he’d look goofy and seem like a mollycoddle.
He wondered about the fellows like Red Kelly. Did he do things like this around his home and like it? Slowly and carefully, he dried the dishes and silverware. She put the dishes away, and he watched in a mellow, happy state while she perfunctorily swept the kitchen. It was going to be nice, too, when they got married, and she was going to make a real wife, and with her to help him he couldn’t help but get along. And the difference between her and such a lying, low-down broad as that Jackson bitch!
“You get one hundred percent for this,” she said when he meekly handed her the apron he had worn.
“Sure, I go to the head of the class.”
“You’re so funny,” she said, kissing him, and they walked arm-in-arm from the kitchen.
IV
“Let’s take in a show.”
“Oh, let’s not. We’re going to be alone. Let’s just sit and pretend that it’s our own home,” she said with an inviting smile.
He wasn’t certain what it meant, and if it meant more than he usually hoped for from her. He looked at her nonplussed.
She seemed to grow a little vague and almost misty before his eyes, and he liked her, and the way she looked at him left him happy but uncertain, just as Lucy had done sometimes.
“It’s nice here, isn’t it, when it’s just getting dark and it is so quiet,” she said when they were seated on the parlor couch.
“Yes,” he said dreamily, hearing an automobile pass outside, thinking how the quarrel had given him again a real appreciation of her.
“Bill,” she exclaimed moodily.
“What?” he replied absently.
“Let’s not ever fight again.”
She placed her head against his shoulder, and toyed with his hand. She seemed soft, white, nice, and he was made tender by her nearness, and by the way she glanced up at him, coyly, wide-eyed. He kissed her. Her lips were feverish, and they excited him so that he roughly clutched her, clenched her firmly, and their bodies strained in an awkward embrace. Unable to check himself, he pushed her down on the couch and pressed against her. Their excitement lapsed and they lay peacefully, side by side. Suddenly she kissed him sensuously, and his hands eagerly strayed over her dress.
“Please.”
He disregarded her words and she stifled her protest, opened her mouth when he bore against her, holding his kiss, while he ran his hand along her hot thighs, beneath her dress. She became like an instrument in his hands, quivering to his touch, panting from his heedlessly indelicate pressures and nervous hands.
“You’re getting your dress all mussed,” he said in uneven breaths.
“That’s because of you, but I love you,” she said, clenching her arms around him and straining herself until she lay on her back with him above her. Her body was strong, hard. He touched her, kissed her. He thought, as if through the voice of conscience, that she would hate him, turn from him in disgust for this. But he had gone too far to stop. And then she scratched his neck, pulling his face down to kiss him.