The Studs Lonigan Trilogy - James T. Farrell [373]
“Goodness!” Catherine exclaimed in shock while Squirmy drew a laugh by bending over, projecting out his broad buttocks and wriggling them.
“Now, folks, the contestants are going to strut their stuff, for you, and I’m going to bring as many of them as we’ll have time to hear up to the mike for you. But, first, as a prelude, let me repeat for those radio fans who may have missed the opening of this broadcast. We are here now in the three hundred and sixty-seventh hour of the World’s Championship Super Dance Marathon in the ballroom of the Silver Eagle, and we still have eighteen couples and two solos battling for the title and the one-thousand-dollar prize which will be awarded to the winning couple. Some of them had a bad night of it last night, and others have had trouble today, but now all of the contestants are cutting up here as spry as if they had just started. They will have interesting things to tell you, and the first contestant that I will call on is Louise Strang, of team number twenty-one, that game little blond girl from Carmody, Indiana. Louise is the smallest one on the floor here, but folks, is she game! Is she game! Night after night she’s proven how game she is. And let me say this to you folks who haven’t come out here on the south side of Chicago at the Silver Eagle Ballroom to see the World’s Championship Super Dance Marathon Dance, let me tell you, it’s worth the price of admission alone just to see little Louise Strang. Here she is now right beside me, as fresh and as pretty as a daisy, one of the favorites out here, and her partner Joe Joslyn agrees with me when I say that she’s as game a girl as ever stepped out onto any dance marathon floor. Louise Strang.”
“She looks horrible,” Catherine said as a blond girl in a lacy black dress shyly stepped forward. She was brown and puffed, with her eyes sunken and circled with fatigue, and her face was hideously caked with powder. Loud cheering and a rat-tat-tat of hand-clapping greeted her.
“Hello, folks,” she began, sleepy-voiced, “I’m awfully glad to be able to say hello to you tonight, and I wanna say hello to all my friends and admirers of Radioland. Now I’m going to sing my favorite song for you.”
She smiled self-consciously into the microphone and cleared her throat. Her tired mouth opened into an 0 shape, and tunelessly and without energy she dragged out monotonous sing-songed syllables.
In Old Wyoming ...
“She may be a marvel or something but she can’t sing,” Studs whispered to Catherine.
“She sings worse than you do,” Catherine whispered back, squeezing his hand, smiling intimately.
“That’s no compliment.”
In Old Wyoming ...
When Louise concluded, a shower of change spilled onto the floor and assisted by other contestants, she quickly picked up the money. A half dollar bounced, rolled into a corner. Squirmy made a nose dive for it and skidded on his stomach amid laughter. He cake-walked away from Louise Strang, who pursued him, ogling and giggling, with an outstretched hand. The spectators laughed.
“Now I’ll call on another favorite, the inimitable Squirmy Stevens of team number four who scarcely needs an introduction. Squirmy.”
Applause again broke, and Squirmy, handing Louise Strang the silver piece he had retrieved, cake-walked to the microphone.
“Hello, everybody, I want to say that I thank you one and all for your interest in me and in our World’s Championship Super Dance Marathon out here at the Silver Eagle Ballroom and I’d like to say that I’d like to invite you, one and all, to come out here any time and see us do our stuff. And, folks, I wanna say this. A dance marathon is a fight, and the winner in a high-class field like