Young Lonigan - James T. Farrell [387]
“Yes, he is.”
“Well, tell him to shake his tomato out of bed and get out and fight the British.”
The audience laughed.
“I saw this pulled in a vaudeville show once,” Studs said to Catherine, while Squirmy repeated this scene. He lit a cigarette, and was beginning to feel stiff. “Shall we blow?”
“Yes, but wait until this is over.”
“No, my husband isn’t home,” Doris Davis answered in response to Squirmy’s question.
“Well, hurry up and open the door. I want to get in.”
“Funny, even if I did hear it sprung before,” Studs said, laughing.
“I don’t think it’s so funny,” Catherine said.
The crowd laughed and applauded, and a shower of coins poured down onto the dance floor.
V
“This looks funny. He’s asleep on his feet,” Studs laughed.
“Play ball,” Harold Morgan bawled from the center of the floor while the other contestants trudged slowly around and around.
Harold wound up to pitch, swaying as his arm circled over his head, half turned his left foot, rising, and performed the motions for an overhand pitch. Losing his balance, he fell on his face, and Studs roared.
“Don’t laugh, he might be hurt.”
“He ought to be.”
“You’re cruel.”
“No. It’s just funny.”
Harold arose with a dazed expression on his face and a streak of dirt splotching his right cheek. He shook his head, opened his eyes like a man awakening, grinned sheepishly, joined the line which wound around and around and around the floor with a deadening slowness and a steady dragging of feet.
“Gee, it’s late,” Catherine said.
“Twelve-twenty,” Studs said, yawning.
“The time certainly does pass here, doesn’t it?”
He shook his head and looked sidewise at her. She leaned forward, watching, her dimpled chin resting in her left hand. She looked cute, pretty, and he wished he could keep her in that pose, just that way. And she looked no different, either, from what she had before she’d been made. He guessed he liked her.
“They made me feel kind of sorry for them, some of them look so tired. And that poor partner of Squirmy Stevens, poor girl, having to hold him up when he’s in such a dead sleep.”
“Well, that’s their racket and they get dough for it. Look at all the dough that was thrown into them. And then after that little play, they came through the stands here selling their pictures. It’s tough, but they’re getting something.”
“You’re heartless. I bet you would feel a lot different if you were going through what they are down there.”
“I know that.”
“But I wouldn’t let you, Bill, not if it was for a ten-thousand-dollar prize. The things they go through! Look at that poor Greek boy falling all over that girl.”
“It’s a dumb stunt in one way, because they got to go through so much, but they must be making a lot of dough. Still, your health is worth more to you than all the dough in the world.”
“You bet it is.”
“And say, they get a crowd. People are still coming in.”
“Shall we leave, Bill?”
“All right.”
“The air gets so bad and there’s so much cigarette smoke. I bet this dance does no good for their lungs.”
“Me, too.”
The contestants silently circled the floor, marched around and around almost in slow-motion.
“Shall we just wait until the next rest period and see if anything else happens?”
“All right,” Studs said.
“Katy Jones is a brave girl. And that partner of hers, Honks Oliver, he’s the deadest old thing. He’s always asleep, falling all over her. And Katy, she’s such a brave girl.”
“Yes, look at her. She’s having a time with him, isn’t she?” Studs watched Katy Jones shift the strain her partner placed on her, his arms flung around her, his head lodged against her stomach, her large breasts wobbling. She shook his head and talked at him.
“If I was Katy, I’d just give him a good kick in his ask-me no-questions,” the woman below them said.
“Say, the Romans were more humane. They fed their people to the lions and didn’t leave them suffer,” a fellow above them said.
“Yes, it makes me ill to look at them,” a girl answered the fellow.
“They look worse than a chain gang walking around the floor,” the fellow