Young Lonigan - James T. Farrell [59]
The breeze playing upon them through the tree-leaves was fine. Studs just sat there and let it play upon him, let it sift through his hair. He said that it was nice and cool; he said that it was cooler in the trees than it was on the ground. Lucy said yes it was, and she didn’t seem interested, and it made him still wonder what was the matter. The wind seemed to Studs like the fingers of a girl, of Lucy, and when it moved through the leaves it was like a girl, like Lucy, running her hand over very expensive silk, like the silk movie actresses wore in the pictures. The wind was Lucy’s hand caressing his hair. It was a funny thought to have, and Studs felt goofy and fruity about having it, and felt that he hadn’t better let anyone know he had thoughts like that; he wouldn’t tell her. But he did; he told her the wind was like the hand of a pretty girl, and when it touched the leaves, it was like that pretty girl stroking very fine silk. She laughed, and said that it was a very funny and a very silly thought for a person like Studs Lonigan to have. It made him ashamed of himself, and very silent, and he wished that he was somewhere else and Lucy was not with him, probably laughing at him like she was in her mind.
They sat. There seemed to be a silence on the park. Nothing but the wind. Studs could hear his heart beating like it was a noisy clock. He felt as if he was not in Washington Park, but that he and Lucy were in some place else, a some place else that was just not Washington Park, but was better and prettier, and no one else knew of it. He glanced about him. He looked at the grass which slid down to the bank, and at the shrubbery along parts of the lagoon edge. He gazed out at the silver-blue lagoon that was so alive, like it was dancing with the sun. He watched the rowboats, the passing people. He took squints at everything from different angles, and watched how their appearances would change, and they would look entirely different. He listened to the sounds of the park, and it seemed as if they were all, somehow, part of himself, and he was part of them, and them and himself were free from the drag of his body that had aches and dirty thoughts, and got sick, and could only be in one place at a time. He listened. He heard the wind. Far away, kids were playing, and it was nice to hear the echoes of their shouts, like music was sometimes nice to hear; and birds whistled, and caroled, and chirped, and hummed. It was all new-strange, and he liked it. He told Lucy it was swell, sitting in the park, way up in a tree. Lucy said yes, it was perfectly grand. Studs said: YEAH!
“It’s so lovely here,” she said, leaning toward him, puckering her lips. Studs looked at her. Without knowing what he was doing, he kissed her. It was all-swell to kiss Lucy, and it was different from a game where she had to kiss him, and everybody was kissing everybody else. And she kissed with her red lips in a queer sweet way; and he kept telling himself that it was fine to kiss her. In the movies, and in the magazines, which he sometimes read, the fellow always kissed the girl at the end of the story or the picture, and the kiss always seemed to mean so much, and to be so much nicer, and to have so much more to it than ordinary kisses. Kissing Lucy was getting a kiss like that. And it made him feel ... all-swell.
And everything just kept on being perfectly jake, not spoiling it there with him and Lucy. They sat.