Studs Lonigan (127 page)

“Well, Joe, I got a job.”

Studs turned to his left, and saw two young lads in blue suits a few chairs down from him.

“Anything good?”

“You can't tell. It's commission selling.”

“That ain't a job, that's a question of reducing weight.”

He had to get a job, because if he didn't he would be living on Catherine's dough, and on what she could earn until she would have to quit because of the kid she was having. Jesus, it was just dumb, tying themselves down with a kid in the first inning, refusing to take anything or have something done about it. His eye, wandering over the restaurant, caught a coal black and perspiring Negro, in an almost filthy white apron, who slung a mop rhythmically back and forth along the dirty tile floor.

“It's this way, Joe. Now, what gave us good times? The automobile industry. Why? Because it was something new to develop. Now, what do we need now to bring back better times? Something else that's new, to develop. Well, that's the idea, see. This outfit I'm with has got something new. An electric shaver. All right. If it can sell an electric shave to every man in the country who is working, well, think of what that means.”

“Don't let anybody from the barber's union hear you say that.”

“I'm serious.”

If he could think of something new, or get in on something new that was really a good thing and not just a racket like that paper-cup dodge. If he could go back to painting.

From somewhere outside he heard fire-engine sirens, and he sat on the edge of his chair and saw that all over the restaurant people got excited. A man arose, hurried out of the restaurant. He felt like dashing out to see the fire. But he couldn't. Not in the rain. And anyway this afternoon he had ahead of him the serious business of getting a job. The Negro passed him, humming quietly as he mopped. Looked like a happy shine. Wished he was as naturally happy as all the shines were. Suppose he had been born a jigg. Christ! That, at least, was one thing to be thankful for.

“Joe, it's a chance. But it's worth taking. There's a whole new virgin field here, just as Mr. Cathaway, he's the man I just got the job from, just as he said.”

“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 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 blonde 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 to see her would give him a feeling of those other days, when he had never dreamed that he would be in the kind of a hole he was now in. Or to see good old Helen Shires, a girl he could talk to, tell her of his feelings and troubles, and she would understand. Another cute dame, her dainty steps, the shocked look on her face as she avoided a puddle. He laughed. An old Jew with black whiskers getting wet, maybe a rabbi smelling of gefillte fish. Boy, what wind tormentors that old Abie had! They fell halfway down his chest. He watched the automobiles curving onto and off Randolph Street. Two students entering the Cresar Library Building across the street caught his eye. Lucky boys getting an education. And the cartoon coming up the library steps with books under his arm. A nose that hooked and stuck out all over his face, blue corduroy pants, leather jacket, no hat. Must be one of those Bohemians or a pansy. Lots of goofs in the world.

“Got a cigarette, Mister?”

Studs turned to face a jerking little gray-haired man with ill-fitting old clothes that hung over his body like a wet sack.

“Thanks,” the man muttered, taking a cigarette from Studs' extended pack.

Studs nodded as if he had done the man a great favor.

“Got a match?”

Studs handed him a book of matches, looking on as the fellow unconfidently and excitedly wasted four matches before getting a light.

“Terrible weather,” the man said.

Studs grunted agreement. The bum stood beside Studs as if expecting something. Studs watched a green-bellied surface car swerve onto Randolph Street and clang to Wabash Avenue surrounded by automobiles.

“Say, Mister, you couldn't spare a dime for a bite to eat? I've been carrying the banner all night, and I'm goddamn hungry.” Studs did not hear, and his thoughts dragged up Lucy again. The bum walked off, muttering curses. Studs stood watching people pass in the rain, thinking of Lucy, and wondering, now what would he do?

Studs stepped out of another building. Four straight turndowns, one right after the other. It was about a quarter to three, and disappointment was deep and like a worm inside of him. Walking again in the rain, he was afraid, afraid that he was no good, useless, that he would never be able to get anywhere. If the old man lost everything, he would just be a pauper without a pot to take a leak in. He walked rapidly, half running until he was forced to slow down. He knew he shouldn't exert himself in this manner, tiring his heart, getting more and more soaked, his clothes hanging wet on him, his trouser legs and cuffs heavy and soggy, his shoes sopping out wetness with every step, his hat dripping. Again he hurled himself forth, with head lowered, street sounds beating in his ears while he kept telling himself, goddamn it, he had to have a stretch of luck. There was nothing he could do but paint, and that was out, and at anything else he'd be lucky to make a measly fifteen bucks a week.

He entered a building on North Wabash Avenue, read the bulletin board. Emmett Jewelry Company. He took the elevator, hoping again. A girl by a telephone board in an outer office looked at him impersonally.

“I want to see the man in charge.”

“For what purpose?”

“I'd like to interview him about a position.”

“I'm sorry, but we have no openings.”

“Well, couldn't I just see him?”

“He isn't in.”

“Is his assistant or secretary in?”

“She's busy.”

He turned away, slammed the door behind him. Another defeat. He told himself that he didn't give a good goddamn. Let himself get sick. Let anything happen. He'd already had so much tough luck that what the hell difference did it make. He stepped carelessly into the rain, faintly aware of streets and people.

He had a picture in his mind of Studs Lonigan courageously telling life and the world to shove itself up its old tomato, and let it stick there. He saw himself walking in the rain, wet and tired, with things crashing down on his head, being screwed at every turn, forced to do something. He saw himself walking south along State Street in the sloshing rain, past department stores, past attractive windows full of suits and ties and shirts and dresses and furniture and baseball bats and football suits and feminine lingerie and refrigerators. Walking past tall buildings full of people at work who didn't have the troubles Studs Lonigan had. He looked at people on the street, their faces indistinct, and an unquenchable hate rose up in him, and he wanted to punch and maim and claw them. He caught a close-up view of a fat male face, a sleeping contentment in the features. There went another sonofabitch, another sonofabitch who had a job and did not have to marry a girl he'd knocked up when he was sick and didn't have any dough, a sonofabitch who wasn't afraid of dying of heart failure. And there was a high-hat black-haired broad who probably thought that hers was gold, a broad who ought to be raped until she was exhausted and couldn't take another goddamn thing.

The sneer from the old days, the old Studs Lonigan sneer of confidence and a superior feeling came on his face, and he threw back his aching shoulders. He wanted to be noticed by these passing strangers, wanted them to see his surly expression telling them, he hoped, that here was a guy who did not give a good whooping goddamn and just walked along, taking his time and did not run to get out of the rain and hide from it in doorways, worried and afraid. A guy who had a perfect right to worry about plenty of things, plenty, and still did not worry. He stopped in a building entrance-way and drew out his package of cigarettes. Shouldn't smoke. Phrigg you Doctor O'Donnell! Phrigg you Catherine! Phrigg everybody! He made the act of lighting a cigarette into a gesture of defiance. He stood watching a street car crawl northward, its roof blackened by rain. Automobiles swished past it. Its gong clanged. A second surface car crawled behind it.

“Look at the rain, just like a silver stream from the heavens, Martha,” a sallow fellow with a ruined panama hat said to a girl.

Studs glanced at them, sneered. But she was nice.

“It just looks wet to me,” she said.

“But you don't see it with the poet's lyric eye.”

Poet. He better watch himself before somebody slapped his wrist and kidnapped him.

“Now, as a poet, what does it mean, this silver rain, these puny crawling little packages of wet mortality?”

“Oh, Alvin, please.”

Studs sneered at the nut, walked out of the entrance-way laughing to himself. Anyway, he wasn't like that pansy. He tried to forget the discomforts of wet feet, soaked clothing, the feeling of dirtiness he had. That pansy poet. Silver rain. B.S. A cold rain-drop spattered on his cheek. Some day, some day, goddamn it, if he wouldn't make the f———n world take back everything it was doing to him. Some day he would make the world, and plenty of damn bastards in it, too, eat what he was eating, and in bigger doses. Some day, he, Studs Lonigan, was going to bust loose like hell on wheels, and when he did, look out, you goddamn world!

He lit a fresh cigarette from his soggy butt. He sneezed. He had to laugh, and couldn't get over what that Lily of a poet had been springing on the dame. Tell it to Martin tonight. He sneezed again, and the sneeze made him fear he was getting sick. He felt himself growing weak, and under the armpits he was sticky and clammy. He was afraid. He sensed himself beginning to feel dizzy. He was afraid of poverty, and the fight he would have to make. He was afraid that he would get sick, die, from being exposed in this rain. He wished, with a weak will, that many things that had been done could be undone. If he had never met Catherine. If they'd never had that scrap and made up just the way they had. If he had never gone to that New Year's Eve party in 1929. If he hadn't drunk as much as he had in the old days. If he had only let himself get an education. If he hadn't lost his dough in Imbray stock. He stepped into the crowded entrance-way of a music store near Van Buren Street and stood listening to radio music. He noticed the faces on the men about him, blank and dull and dreamy, hopeless-looking. They seemed half asleep on their feet. Mopes. Studs muttered to himself. Look out, boys, or you'll wake up.