Studs Lonigan (114 page)

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 them there were many more times. And he wanted her.

“Because, dear, if you did feel that way toward me, I don't know what I'd do,” she said.

He smiled reassuringly and tried to get at how he did exactly feel toward her, without showing that he was thinking seriously. He wondered, also, how many girls did let a guy go the limit before marriage, when they were really nuts about a guy? He began to doubt how much he thought of her, because after all she had let him. Did other decent girls, like his sisters, do that before marriage? Most who did, well, he didn't know? Was she an exception? He looked at her, felt her knees rubbing against his, and all he knew was that he wanted her. She'd gone the limit because she cared for him, couldn't resist him. But then Lucy hadn't. Still, maybe she had with other guys. Come to think of it, that night in the cab after the dance she had not acted just like an innocent broad. Broodingly, against his will, he looked at Catherine and wished she was Lucy. He smiled hurriedly and genially, so that she wouldn't worry or think he didn't like her. Because after hurting her that way last night, he couldn't let himself do anything to hurt her feelings.

“Bill, dear, now tell me frankly,” she said, and he could see struggle and a determination to be brave mirrored in her face. “Tell me, after last night do you still want to marry me?”

“Yes, Kid, you know I do.”

“When?”

“Whenever we can arrange it, just like you said. You said we shouldn't be in too much of a hurry.”

“But that's changed. You know, dear, doing what we did last night, and our not being married, it's a sin. We can't do that ever again until we're married . . . and Bill, dear, I love you terribly.”

The waitress cleared their dishes and Studs was glad for the interruption, because he was beginning to become afraid of himself, of the feeling of love and tenderness toward her that arose with her words, her nearness, the touch of her knees, the memory of last night like a spirit seeping through all these feelings to warm them and glue them together. He read the menu.

“Coffee and chocolate ice cream,” she said.

The waitress stood nervously over Studs.

“Same,” he said.

Catherine smiled at him, enigmatically, a smile that was very brief, like a flash, and that he could not exactly get. In it she had seemed humble, and she seemed very understanding, and he could not quite figure it out.

He had never felt the same way with a girl, not even with Lucy. Sure of himself, and of Catherine, a feeling that he was the boss and not she, a feeling that he could do what he liked with her without being the loser, and still, also, a feeling toward her of kindness, a wanting to pet her and kiss her and stroke her hands, her face and her breasts and her body, and to make up to her with kindness for the way he had hurt her last night.

He could not understand himself, and how things had come to this development between them. And he could not understand how a girl could care so much for him. He smiled at her, weakly and hastily, and he still felt their knees touching.

“We're going to be awfully happy together, aren't we, Bill?” she said, and he nodded curtly, hoping as much as believing.

“And you still care for me and want to marry me?”

He smiled yes. He saw ahead how many nights they would have together after they were married; nights and years and years, and he would have that same feeling of being alone with her, half awake and half asleep, in a daze that was like a beautiful song.

“Well, we'll be married soon.”

“Whatever you wish, Kid. There's no necessity of rushing it unless you want to, because we got to get more saved up and everything arranged right,” he said, thinking of the money he had lost.

And how was he going to explain that to her?

“Bill, I could wait, oh, forever, if I knew you cared for me. But Bill . . .”

“I do, Kid.”

“Tell me that again,” she said with a sort of hunger in her eyes.

“I do,” he said huskily, suddenly seeing himself like the actor in an important drama, as if maybe this was all a movie, showing before all the world.

And there was lots ahead of him now that wasn't just grief, and he would never get another girl who cared for him like Catherine. And still there was that holding back which made him feel like a traitor. And wasn't he just getting too goddamn mushy for words?

And she laughed free and gay.

“What's the joke?” he asked, surprised by her change of mood.

“I'm just happy and you're a darling,” she said, her eyes seeming to flash. “You look and act so much like a boy, so gruff.” She made a face. “So gruff when you don't mean it, and you have such nice beautiful blue eyes, just like a little boy's. I bet you must have been pretty when you were a boy.”

“I suppose I ought to get a kiddy car,” he said, but he liked it.

“Darling, I'd love to see you riding a kiddy car,” she laughed.

“You get me with that chatter, Kid,” he said, maintaining his air of gruffness.

“It's not chatter,” she said in mock indignation.

“Say, it's one o‘clock.”

“Gosh, I got to get back.”

They arose quickly and left the restaurant, and the string trio commenced
Love Me and the World is Mine
.

“LET's take a walk in the park,” he said, taking her arm possessively.

“I don't know,” Catherine said, and catching her expression from the corner of his eye, he sensed that she had guessed what was on his mind.

Ahead of them at the Stony Island corner were passing people, automobiles and street cars with a brightly illuminated Nation Oil Company filling station in the background. Passing an open window, they heard a baby-voiced female radio songbird.

Once he had walked toward Sheridan Road with Lucy, and she had sung and. . . . But this was different now and, oh, hell with dragging up memories!

“Nice night out,” he said.

“Uh huh,” Catherine muttered thoughtfully.

“Too nice a night to waste,” he said, lighting a cigarette and puffing on it vigorously. “That's why I thought we might take a walk over to the park. It might be nice there.”

“You like nature,” she said reprovingly.

“Well, it would be nice there because it is a nice night out.”

“And isn't that all so awfully just too nice for words that it's nice,” she mimicked.

“Well, don't you think. . . . Oh, can it,” he said in growing confusion.

“I think you're perfectly right,” she laughed.

“How do you feel?” he asked as they neared Stony Island.

“Oh, I feel all right.”

They turned and walked aimlessly north along Stony Island Avenue, past stores and buildings and filling stations, with the sound of automobile tires swishing persistently.

“Well?”

“You men,” she smiled.

“Why . . . what do you mean?”

“You want to go to Jackson Park and enjoy nature.”

“Well, isn't it natural?” he said aggressively, and she blushed.

He shot his cigarette butt into the street and looked at a couple drifting along in front of him.

“Now, aren't you sorry you were so vulgar?”

“I wasn't vulgar,” he said with embarrassment.

“Oh, no,” she said, linking his arm. “Sometimes you're so like a boy.”

“Well . . .” he stopped talking.

“Yes, well, it's a nice night, isn't it?”

“Well, it is.”

“Beautiful night.”

“And you're just trying to razz me.”

“Did you just make that discovery, you sweet old . . . pumpkin.”

“Anyway, Kid, what'll we do?”

“I know what we shan't do.”

“What?”

“Go to the park and catch cold on the damp grass finding out that nature is grand. . . . Go on, you're making me blush.”

“I never even mentioned that,” Studs self-righteously protested.

“I know. But I'm not going to take any chances with you. I love you too much to be trusting you on a dark night in the park.”

“You're putting thoughts into my head.”

“Well, take them out, Mr. Tarzan,” she said, shamming irritation.

“What did you put them in for?”

“You're so innocent.”

“Yes. . . . I mean no.”

“William Lonigan, aren't you ashamed of yourself?”

“There's no reason for a guy to be ashamed of liking a girl like you.”

“You're so sweet,” she said, squeezing his elbow.

“Well, I know how you can make yourself even more sweet.”

“But, darling, you know it's not right going on like this before we're married, and anyway I can't because . . . well, I'm sick.”

“Yes,” he said, striving to give the impression that he knew more than he actually did.

He looked at her, and tried to shutter the unwanted disgust out of his mind and to convince himself that after all it was only something that was natural. He wished he were alone.

“I know what I'd like to do.”

“What?” he asked, masking that persisting disgust.

“Go to a dance marathon.”

“Doesn't sound like my idea of a good time.”

“Have you ever seen one?”

“Nope.”

“Well, then, let's find out what they're like. A girl at our office goes to all of them, and she talks about nothing else, and it has made me want to find out what they're like.”

“Let's take in a show instead.”

“We can just try a dance marathon first to see what they're like, and if we don't like it, we can leave.”

“Well, why not try one some other night?”

“Hurry, here comes our car.”

Reluctantly he crossed to catch a surface car.

“Now what do we do?” Studs asked grumpily.

“Watch.”

“Well, that's not my idea of spending a roistering evening, sitting here and watching a bunch of damn fools sleeping on their feet.”

“Don't talk so loud,” Catherine whispered as a broad and burly woman with Slavic features turned an angry face on them from the bench below.

They sat on the left-hand side of a large dance hall converted into an amphitheater. Below them, through a thick haze of cigarette smoke, was a large polished rectangle of dance floor bounded by the box-seat section which was decorated with bunting. An aisle separated the box seats from the benches of temporary bleachers which rose on all sides to the rafters.

The troupe of fifteen couples and two extra males trudged with wearying slowness around the edge of the dance floor. On a dais opposite Studs and Catherine a tuxedo-clad jazz orchestra idled. Below them, in a slide, Studs read from black cards: 366 HRS. A banner floated from the rafters in the center of the hall.

 

WORLD'S CHAMPIONSHIP
SUPER DANCE
MARATHON

A bell rang, the orchestra broke into a snappy song; and the contestants danced for three minutes. Again they trod slowly around the edge of the floor, solemn, silent, tired. The tall fellow of team number eight placed his head on his partner's shoulder, a small blonde girl in ruffled, untidy pink beach pyjamas, whose face was so caked with powder that Studs could notice it even from his distance. The fellow's arms were ringed around her neck, and his face, stupid in sleep, was slung over her left shoulder. Walking backward, she dragged him around. Two other male contestants and one girl fell asleep and were also pulled and maneuvered around the floor. The music continued.

“Damn fools,” Studs muttered under his breath.