The Studs Lonigan Trilogy - James T. Farrell [363]
“Bill, Bill. It’s nine-thirty. Hurry up or the folks will find us like this.”
She pressed the wall electric button, and they saw each other naked in the light. Mutually embarrassed, they dressed. Studs thought of love songs he was always hearing on the radio. Secrets divine I am sharing with you. Like Love, you gayly come and go. And this was the way it had turned out. He turned away from her in her slip, so that she would not see him buttoning his trousers.
Ugh. Jesus Christ.
V
“Goodbye, darling,” she said, kissing him possessively.
He left, still in a state of uncertainty. She would get up in the morning knowing that she was no longer a virgin. And all because of him. No girl had ever cared that much for him before. She had proven she cared for him. Or had it been that she’d gotten too excited? Girls were only human beings, and Catherine was twenty-five, and by this time she should have been curious to know what it felt like.
It was clear out and he sensed a hanging darkness in the atmosphere. He saw himself as a man with experience, and he felt that the things he had just gone through these last few days had been dramatic, things that might have happened in a movie. Experiences that would make plenty of fellows envy him.
But his pride suddenly went out of him like a punctured balloon. He remembered the way Catherine had squirmed, strained in pain, moaned. He had ruined her, taken from her something very precious that was lost forever. Gee, he felt kind of rotten about it and then he didn’t feel so rotten, because he was glad. A virgin. And now Catherine, who had never been made, was his woman.
But Jesus, what if she got sore and hated him? He shrugged his shoulders, thinking that he should worry. The cards were now stacked on his side. If she got tough now, or they had another fight and it got serious, he could always say, well, baby, I know everything you got. Getting sore wouldn’t get her any place.
But that was not how he felt, either, and he didn’t mean such thoughts. He could not get out of his mind the memory of her, naked and hurt, warm and moist, her little gestures, burying her head against his shoulders. He wanted her again, goddamn it. Once she got used to it, and it didn’t hurt her any more, it would be swell. This time hadn’t been so much as it should be, but it was going to be more. And it was different from going and getting a whore. Falling asleep, forgetting everything, awakening, dozing, hearing her breathing, her heart beating, feeling her beside him.
He crossed Stony Island Avenue, walked on past a gas station, a vacant lot, buildings. He wanted to tell someone about it, wanted people to know that Studs Lonigan had just copped a cherry, and that she was his girl, and his woman only. Somehow or other, things that you had to keep to yourself weren’t enough, and you wanted others to know. But Catherine wouldn’t want that. Still it was fun, thinking of telling guys about it.
He wished that he could have slept all night with her and had it again. But he would when they got married. He was going to get his just as regular as he damn well pleased. Still, when he got married, he would be getting damaged goods. But no, it had been only himself. He was sure of that.
But he had been a goddamn brute hurting her, and it was almost like pain to think back about it, her wincing, moaning, begging him to please stop. And she had been snow white, too, and warm in the darkness when she had moaned like that.
A stranger passed. Studs wished that the fellow could look into his head, see his thoughts. He wondered, though, wasn’t he just thinking like a clown.
He saw Pat Carrigan and some other lads at the counter of that same restaurant where Catherine and he had fought. He entered, self-consciously returning the proprietor’s smile.
“I say there, Studs.”
“How’s tricks, Pat?”
“Can’t complain.”
“The kid brother was around earlier tonight, but he dragged off to a show,” Pat said.
“Coffee and apple pie... I was down to see my girl tonight,