Young Lonigan - James T. Farrell [378]
“Yes, it is quiet,” he said with undue seriousness, realizing that she was different, a humbled Catherine, and he dreaded having to look into her eyes across a table, and yet he felt a pride of victory.
“Sure this will be all right?” he asked in front of the Charlus Restaurant.
She nodded affirmatively. They entered as a string trio played The Evening Star, and a tall, dark girl in a tailored black dress led them past tables where people talked in restrained voices to a small corner table. She almost made their seating a ceremony, smiled, pointed at the menus laid before them. Studs diligently searched his pockets for cigarettes.
“I always forget which pocket I put them in,” he said self-consciously.
She smiled at him meekly. A fleshy, attractive blonde waitress, neat in a white apron, laid water glasses before them.
“What’ll you have, Catherine?” he asked, diligently reading the menu card.
“I wonder,” she thoughtfully replied, her face also lost behind the menu card.
“I think I’ll take roast beef,” he said.
“Me, too.”
They laid their menu cards aside simultaneously, and Studs watched the waitress hobbling away from their table.
“Nice place,” he said, embarrassed by their lack of talk.
“Yes, and that’s a beautiful piece they’re playing.”
“It is nice to have the music, too.”
“Darling, darling. . . . What’s the matter?” she said in a fright, seeing him become suddenly pale and throw his hand over his heart.
“I had a sudden pain. But it’s nothing. It’s passing now,” he said while she leaned anxiously across the table.
“Bill, dear, I worry so about you with your heart. Are you sure you’re taking the best care of yourself? And, honey, you’re still smoking. I wish you wouldn’t.”
“I guess you’re right,” he said, squashing his butt.
The waitress set their order before them. He tried to shutter the sense of fear out of his mind, but it lingered after the lapsing of that sharp, sudden thrust of pain. His heart beat with labored and disturbing rapidity. He felt weak, and a sweat had broken upon his brow. He wiped his forehead perfunctorily with a fresh handkerchief.
“Bill, you must be careful. Promise me that you’ll be very careful. If you die now . . . Gee, I don’t know what I’d do. Honest, I don’t,” she said, and he could see how profoundly worried she was.
She loved him, she was crazy about him, he told himself. He was her man. He had a premonition of his own death, seeing himself stretched out in a casket, with her beside it, looking at his corpse, lonely, sobbing, red-eyed, hysterical with suffering from her loss of him. God, that couldn’t happen. It wouldn’t. He had to live for her, and for himself.
This was even greater proof than last night that she loved him. He was beginning to see some of the things that love was. This was one.
“Bill, darling, you know, don’t you, after last night, how much I love you?”
“Yes, Kid,” he said, emotion cracking through his husky voice.
The heart pain had almost completely ebbed out, but he was still faint. He felt the same as he would have if he had just come through some danger, and the sense of danger hung in his mind like some afterimage. He was more afraid than when he had been knifed with the brief and sudden pain.
“Yes, dear, you know, after you left last night, I felt funny and I cried,” she said.
“You shouldn’t do that,” he said in a restrained tone, like a father talking to a child.
“I couldn’t help it. I cried because I was afraid. And just now, I was afraid, too, that you wouldn’t care for me any more. You’d think I was easy and without self-respect, and wasn’t, well . . . good.”
His expression became a combination of curiosity, lack of understanding, sympathy, tenderness. He realized, in a fresh perception, how much she cared for him, and could only express himself to her by quickly squeezing her hand. Her knees touched his under the table, remained firm against them. He wanted her again like last night, and he knew that he cared for her, a great deal. He wanted her. Last night had been only the first, and ahead of