The Studs Lonigan Trilogy - James T. Farrell [412]
“Sure, you wear out your shoes, feed yourself, and take the change. If you sell anything, he collects, and then you do.”
“You’re just cynical, Joe.”
“Sure I am. I’ve worked at enough jobs and seen enough rackets to be cynical.”
“Well, I’m not.”
Studs was too nervous to keep sitting. He got up and paid his check. He walked along Wabash Avenue, rain pelting him, worried over getting wet and catching cold, not knowing what to do, a feeling of confusion spreading like a fog over his thoughts. He scarcely knew where he was. He heard an automobile horn and stepped back two feet on the sidewalk, standing in momentary paralysis. He had to laugh at himself. In the middle of the block, jumping back, afraid of being run over because he heard an automobile horn in the street! He had to, damn it, just pull himself together.
Oh, my Jesus Christ, if only something would happen! Again that confusion, like a fog, numbed his senses, and he became unaware even of the rain battering against his raincoat. Suppose he should just clear out on a freight, and go to-hell-and-gone, letting everything just go to pot. What then? Consumption, like Davey Cohen had gotten on the bum. Or maybe lose a leg or get killed under a train, or freeze to death riding the rods in winter, or just poop out with heart failure. He imagined himself a politician, with a fat cigar in his mouth, a bigger shot in the racket than Red Kelly, a boss sitting over a table with Barney McCormack, deciding on what to do with jobs and rake-offs.
“Buddy, can you spare a man the price of a cup of coffee?”
Studs turned to see an unshaven man in a soaked, torn coat. He walked on, turning east on Randolph Street. Women’s dresses in a window. The same window that Catherine had looked at the night they became engaged. Maybe he should take in a show this afternoon and get started bright and early in the morning. He passed the public library, seeing hoboes cluttered around the entrance way, looking out at the rainy street. He turned north on Michigan Avenue. Well, he at least wasn’t a bum. He asked himself where he was going. Well, maybe he might just stumble into a job somewheres along here. He entered a building near the bridge and read the bulletin board, his eyes stopping at the name, Royal Insurance Company.
On a hunch that it might be his ticket, he rode on the elevator to the tenth floor. He stood outside the entrance door to the insurance company offices, trying to pump courage into himself. What the hell, wouldn’t be anything doing there. He walked back to the elevator, and riding down he told himself that he didn’t want to go around begging his friends to buy insurance off him. And anyway, it might be a little too early to go looking for a job in the afternoon. Best maybe to wait until about two-thirty.
Walking back toward Randolph Street, Michigan Boulevard lost itself in the mist, and the Art Institute down at Monroe Street was like some very distant building. People were hurrying by, and the crawling, honking traffic beat a confusion into him. He collided with a stout woman, hurried on without an apology. Maybe he ought to go home. He was too wet and mussed to look for a job. At Randolph, he dashed across the street and up the steps of the public library building, winded by the short run. He looked at the small crowd of people who stood sheltered from the rain. The boes made him laugh. So many of them looked like mopes. He watched a stream of people pour up from the Illinois Central subway exit. Train had just pulled in. Lots of women. Some neat girls, too. If it was only a hot sunny day, they wouldn’t be wearing raincoats and slickers, and he could get a better look at their figures. He watched one girl in a yellow slicker, with blond hair curling out from a black hat, as she minced to a taxicab. Neat little parcel of femininity, young and budding just like Lucy had once been. Lucy again. If he could only see her, talk to her, even if she was fat and used up and another man’s woman. Lucy, like she used to be. Even