The Studs Lonigan Trilogy - James T. Farrell [405]
That Parker was one cold and clammy bastard. A fake high-brow, lording it over every poor guy who came along looking for a job. What education? What the hell was college anyway? But still, he did wish he hadn’t been such a mutton-head as to pass up the chance to get an education when he had had it. Just now, when he needed help most, an education would put him a long way ahead of many others.
Studs noticed a fellow who had been after him in the lineup waiting upstairs. He wanted the fellow to speak; but he passed out. He guessed the guy had gotten the same kind of crap that they’d given him.
A bum shambled by the building. A taxicab skidded on the wet street. Still, what next? He looked at the Help Wanted column of his newspaper, again figuring that he had time for one more attempt before lunch. Opportunity for a salesman. And the building was just over on Wabash Avenue. It didn’t look any too hot, but a chance was a chance, and he couldn’t afford to ignore anything if it looked at all likely. A greenslickered girl passed the doorway, and Studs thought how nice it would be to follow her, spend the day forgetting everything by fooling around with her. He wished to all holy hell that he didn’t have to go through with all this, and he stood watching the splattering rain. He felt sorry for himself.
And maybe the ad for a salesman wasn’t even worth trying. He stepped out onto the sidewalk and ran, hugging the building. He soaked his left foot and trouser cuff in a puddle, cursing as he hastened on. Turning a corner, breathless, he was forced to pause because of a stitch in his side and an aching heaviness in his back and arms. He jammed his hands into his raincoat pockets, gasped for breath, and began to worry over his wet feet. Rain beat off his hat and back, and a drop oozed inside his collar, slid coldly down his back.
On Wabash Avenue he found his number, a dirty, brown-stone building, and he entered the gloomy cavern of the tile-floored entrance-way. Reading the bulletin board, he was depressed by the general seediness of the building, and decided to follow up the ad only because it would keep him out of the rain. The iron-grilled elevator jerked and rattled upward, and Studs reflected that such a rickety elevator ought to fall, anyway, and smash itself at the base of the elevator shaft. Stepping out at the fifth floor, he shook his wet hat, and heard the elevator doors clanking shut and the creaking and straining of the car. He pulled a comb out of his pocket and quickly ran it through his dampened hair. Again he heard the slamming elevator doors as he searched for the right room number along a dim corridor with soiled, yellow calcimined walls.
He entered a small, dim office and found six others waiting on a bench to the left of the door. Same thing all over again with a line ahead of him, he thought spiritlessly. What time did one have to get out to be first in following a lead for a job? Was it necessary to bring a tent along and camp outside the building all night? There was certainly something wrong between seeing the lineups for jobs and listening to Carroll Dowson tell how times weren’t so bad, the way he’d done last Sunday.
Studs timidly approached the flapper with thickly rouged lips, who sat before a typewriter at a desk in a corner. Shame came upon him, and his cheeks were hot. Coming here and going to this dame and admitting to her that he wanted a job, putting himself at a disadvantage because it was acknowledging a kind of failure.
“I saw your ad in this morning’s paper,” he began with attempted casualness.
“What’s your name?” she interrupted.
“Lonigan,” he answered, feeling as if the hostile eyes of