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center of his puss, and put on a weak-kneed expression. He took the cigarette out of his mouth, daintily, barely holding it between his thumb and first finger, and he pretended that he was a grown-up mama’s boy, smoking for the first time. He said to himself:
    Jesus Christ!
    He didn’t know that he bowed his head when he muttered the Lord’s name, just as Sister Cyrilla had always taught them to do. He took a vicious poke at the air, as if he were letting one fly at a mama’s boy.
    He stuck the fag back in his mouth and looked like Studs Lonigan was supposed to look. He lowered the lid on the toilet seat, and sat down to think. He puffed at his cigarette, and flicked the ashes in the sink.
    He heard Frances talking:
    â€œGet out of my way, Fritzie . . . Get out of my way . . . Please . . . And mother . . . Mother! MOTHER! . . . Will you come here, please . . . I told you the hem was not right on this dress . . . Now, mother, come here and look at the way my skirt hangs . . . If I ever appear on the stage with my skirt like this, I’ll be disgraced ... disgraced ... Mother!”
    He heard his old lady hurrying to Frances’s room, saying:
    â€œYes, Frances darling; only you know I asked you not to call Loretta Fritzie . . . I’m coming, but I tell you, your dress is perfectly even all around. I told you so this afternoon when you tried it on with Mrs. Sankey here.”
    He could hear their voices as they jabbered away about her dress, but he didn’t know what they were saying, and anyway, he didn’t give two hoots in hell. Girls had loose screws in their beans. Well, girls like his sister anyway. Girls like Lucy, or Helen Shires, who was just like a guy, were exceptions. But there he was getting soft again. He said to himself:
    I’m so tough that you know what happens? Well, bo, when I spit . . . rivers overflow . . . I’m so hard I chew nails . . . See, bo!
    He took a last drag at his cigarette, tossed the butt down the toilet, and let the water run in the sink to wash the ashes down. He went to the door, and had his hand on the knob to open it when he noticed that the bathroom was filled with smoke. He opened the small window, and commenced waving his arms around, to drive the smoke out. But why in hell shouldn’t they know? What did his graduating and his long jeans mean, then? He was older now, and he could do what he wanted. Now he was growing up. He didn’t have to take orders any more, as he used to. He wasn’t going to hide it any more, and he was going to tell the old man that he wasn’t going to high school.
    The bathroom was slow in clearing. He beat the air with his hands.
    Frances rapped sharply on the door and asked him to get a move on.
    He waved his arms around.
    Frances was back in a moment.
    â€œWilliam, will you please . . . will you please . . . will you please hurry!”
    She rapped impatiently.
    â€œAll right. I’ll be right out.”
    â€œWell, why don’t you then? I have to hurry, I tell you. And I’m in the play tonight, and you’re not. When you had your play last May, I didn’t delay you like this, and I helped you learn your lines and everything, and now when I have to be there . . . William, will you please hurry . . . PLEASE! . . . oh, mother . . . Mother! Won’t you come here and tell Studs to hurry up out of the bathroom?”
    She furiously pounded on the door.
    Studs was winded. He stopped trying to beat the smoke out. The smoke was still thick.
    â€œAll right, don’t get . . . a . . . don’t get so excited!”
    He whewed, and wiped his forehead, as if there had been perspiration on it. That was a narrow escape. He’d almost told his sister not to get one on, and then there’d have been sixteen kinds of hell to pay around the house.
    Whew!
    You’da thought he wanted to stay in there, the way she was acting. Well, he was going to walk out and let ’em see the smoke,