CATCHER IN THE RYE

Chapter 1

I'm not going to tell you where I was born, and about my lousy childhood, and about my parents, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap. Firstly, that stuff bores me, and secondly, my parents would be shocked if I told anything very personal about them. They're quite touchy about that, especially my father. They're nice and all - I'm not saying that - but they're also touchy as hell. Besides, I'm not going to tell you my whole goddam autobiography or anything. I'll just tell you this idiotic story that happened to me around last Christmas just before I got rather seriously ill and had to come here and have a rest and some treatment. I told D. B. about this story, and he's my brother and all. He's in Hollywood. That isn't too far from this place, and he visits me practically every weekend. He's going to drive me home when I go home next month maybe. He just got a Jaguar. One of those little English things that can do around two hundred miles an hour. It cost him damn near four thousand bucks. He's got a lot of dough, now. He wasn't so rich before. He was just a real writer, when he was home. He wrote this terrific book of short stories, The Secret Goldfish. The best story in it was "The Secret Goldfish." It was about this little kid that didn't let anybody look at his goldfish because he'd bought it with his own money. It killed me. Now he's out in Hollywood, D.B., being a prostitute. If there's one thing I hate, it's the movies. Don't even mention them to me.
I want to start my story from the day when I left Pencey Prep. Pencey Prep is this school that's in Agerstown, Pennsylvania. You probably heard of it. You've probably seen the ads, anyway. They advertise in about a thousand magazines, always showing some hot-shot guy on a horse jumping over a fence. As if at Pencey you only play polo all the time. I never even once saw a horse anywhere near the place. And underneath the guy on the horse there is a picture, it always says: "Since 1888 we have been forming boys into splendid, clear-thinking young men." It's a lie. They don't do any damn more forming at Pencey than they do at any other school. And I didn't know anybody there that was splendid and clear-thinking and all. Maybe two guys. And they probably came to Pencey already formed.
It was the Saturday of the football game with Saxon Hall. The game with Saxon Hall was the last game of the year, and if old Pencey didn't win you were to commit suicide or something. Around three o'clock that afternoon I was standing on top of Thomsen Hill, right next to this crazy cannon that was in the Revolutionary War and all. You could see the whole field from there, and you could see the two teams bashing each other all over the field. Practically the whole school except me was there, they were all yelling, on the Pencey side, on the Saxon Hall side they were not so loud, because the visiting team hardly ever brought many people with them.
There were never many girls at all at the football games. Only seniors were allowed to bring girls with them. It was a terrible school. I like to be somewhere at least where you can see a few girls around once in a while, even if they're only scratching their arms or even just giggling or something.
Old Selma Thurmer - she was the headmaster's daughter - came to the games quite often. She was not very beautiful. She had a big nose and her nails were all bitten down, and she wore those damn falsies. You felt sort of sorry for her, but she was a pretty nice girl. I liked her. Most of all I liked that she didn't give you a lot of horse manure about what a great guy her father was. She probably knew what a phony slob he was.
I didn't go to the football game because I'd just got back from New York with the fencing team. I was the goddam captain of the fencing team. We'd gone into New York that morning for this fencing meeting with McBurney School. Only, we didn't have the meeting. I left all the foils and equipment on the goddam subway. It wasn't all my fault. I looked at the map all the time in order to know where to get off. The whole team ostracized me the whole way back on the train.
The other reason why I wasn't at the game was because I was on my way to say good-by to old Spencer, my history teacher. He had the grippe, and I thought that I probably wouldn't see him again till Christmas vacation started. He wrote me this note that he wanted to see me before I went home. He knew I wasn't coming back to Pencey.
I forgot to tell you about that. They kicked me out. I was not to come back after Christmas vacation because I was bad at four subjects and was not diligent and all. So I got the ax. They give guys the ax quite often at Pencey. It has a very good academic rating, Pencey.
Anyway? It was December and all, and it was cold, especially on top of that stupid hill. I only had on my reversible and no gloves or anything. The week before that, somebody'd stolen my camel's-hair coat right out of my room, with my fur-lined gloves right in the pocket and all. Pencey was full of crooks. Many guys came from these very rich families, but it was full of crooks. At more expensive schools there are more crooks - I'm not kidding. So, I was very cold and I stood on that stupid hill and looked down at the game. Only, I wasn't watching the game too much. I was trying to feel some kind of a good-by. When I leave a place I like to know that I'm leaving it. If you don't know it, you feel even worse.
I was lucky. Suddenly I remembered something that helped me know that I was leaving. I suddenly remembered this time, around October, that Robert Tichener and Paul Campbell were kicking a football around, in front of the academic building. They were nice guys, especially Tichener. It was just before dinner and it was getting pretty dark, and we could hardly see the ball any more, but we didn't want to stop. But this teacher that taught biology, Mr Zambesi, called us from the window in the academic building and told us to go back to the dorm and get ready for dinner. If I get a chance to remember that kind of thing, I can get a good-by. So, I turned around and started running down the other side of the hill, toward old Spencer's house. He didn't live on the campus. He lived on Anthony Wayne Avenue.
I ran all the way to the main gate, and then I waited a second till I could breathe normally. I smoked very much. Now I don't. They made me stop it. Another thing, I grew six and a half inches last year. That's also how I practically got t.b. and came out here for all these goddamn checkups and stuff. I'm pretty healthy, though.
When I could breathe normally I ran to old Spencer's house. I was really frozen. My ears were hurting and I could hardly move my fingers at all when I pushed the door bell. Old Mrs Spencer opened the door at last. They didn't have a maid or anything, and they always opened the door themselves. They didn't have too much dough.
"Holden!" Mrs Spencer said. "How lovely to see you! Come in, dear! Are you frozen to death?" I think she was glad to see me. She liked me. At least, I think she did.
"How are you, Mrs Spencer?" I said. "How's Mr Spencer?"
"Let me take your coat, dear," she said. She didn't hear that I asked her how Mr Spencer was. She was sort of deaf. She hung up my coat in the hall closet. "How've you been, Mrs Spencer?" I said again, only louder, so she could hear me.
"I've been just fine, Holden." She closed the closet door. "How have you been?" From her intonation I understood at once that old Spencer'd told her that I'd been kicked out.
"Fine," I said. "How's Mr Spencer? Is he over his grippe yet?"
"Over it! Holden, he's behaving like a perfect - I don't know what... He's in his room, dear. Go right in."

Chapter 2

They each had their own room and all. They were both seventy years old, or even more than that. But they got a bang out of things. His door was open, but I sort of knocked on it anyway, just to be polite and all. He was sitting in a big leather chair. "Who's that?" he yelled. "Caulfield? Come in, boy."
When I went in, I was sort of sorry that I'd come. He was reading the Atlantic Monthly, and there were pills and medicine everywhere. It was pretty depressing. And even more depressing, old Spencer was in this very sad, ratty old bathrobe in which he was probably born or something. I don't much like to see old guys in their pajamas and bathrobes anyway. Their old chests are always showing. And their legs. Old guys' legs, at beaches and places, always look so white.
"Hello, sir," I said. "I got your note. Thanks a lot."
"Why aren't you down at the game? I thought this was the day of the big game."
"It is. I was. Only, I just got back from New York with the fencing team," I said.
"So you're leaving us, eh?" he said.
"Yes, sir. I guess I am."
He started to nod. You never knew if he was nodding a lot because he was thinking and all, or just because he was a nice old guy that didn't remember or understand anything.
"What did Dr. Thurmer say to you, boy? I understand you had quite a little chat."
"Yes, we did. I was in his office for around two hours, I think."
"What'd he say to you?"
"Oh... well, that Life is a game and all. And how you should play it according to the rules. He was pretty nice about it. I mean he didn't hit the ceiling or anything. He just repeated that Life is a game and all. You know."
"Life is a game, boy. Life is a game that one plays according to the rules."
"Yes, sir. I know it is. I know it."
Game, my ass. Some game. If you get on the side where all the hot-shots are, then it's a game, all right. But if you get on the other side, where there aren't any hot-shots, then what's a game about it? Nothing. No game. "Has Dr. Thurmer written to your parents yet?" old Spencer asked me.
"He said he was going to write them on Monday."
"Have you yourself communicated with them?"
"No, sir, I haven't communicated with them, because I'll probably see them on Wednesday night when I get home."
"And how do you think they'll take the news?"
"Well... they'll be pretty irritated about it," I said. "This is about the fourth school I've gone to." I shook my head. I shake my head quite a lot. "Boy!" I said. I also say "Boy!" quite a lot. Partly because I have a lousy vocabulary and partly because I act quite young for my age sometimes. I was sixteen then, and I'm seventeen now, and sometimes I act like I'm about thirteen. It's really ironical, because I'm six foot two and a half and I have gray hair. I really do. The one side of my head - the right side - is full of millions of gray hairs. I've had them ever since I was a kid. And yet I still act sometimes as if I was only about twelve. Everybody says that, especially my father. I don't give a damn, except that I get bored sometimes when people tell me to act my age. Sometimes I act a lot older than I am - I really do - but people never notice it. People never notice anything.
Old Spencer started nodding again. Then he said, "I had the privilege of meeting your mother and dad when they had their little chat with Dr. Thurmer some weeks ago. They're grand people."
"Yes, they are. They're very nice."
Grand. There's a word I really hate. It's a phony. I could puke every time I hear it.
Then suddenly old Spencer straightened up in his chair. I could feel that a terrific lecture would begin. I didn't mind the idea so much, but it wasn't very pleasant to listen to a lecture and to smell all that medicine, and look at old Spencer in his pajamas and bathrobe all at the same time. Really it wasn't.
The lecture started, all right. "What's the matter with you, boy?" old Spencer said. He said it pretty tough, too, for him. "How many subjects did you have this term?"
"Five, sir."
"Five. And how many are you failing in?"
"Four."
"I flunked you in history because you knew absolutely nothing."
"I know that, sir. Boy, I know it."
"Absolutely nothing," he said again. I hate when people say something twice, after you admit it the first time. Then he said it three times. "But absolutely nothing. I doubt very much if you opened your textbook even once the whole term. Did you? Tell the truth, boy."
"Well, I sort of glanced through it a couple of times," I told him. I didn't want to hurt his feelings. He was mad about history.
"You glanced through it, eh?" he said - very sarcastic. "Your, ah, exam paper is over there on top of my chiffonier. Bring it here, please."
I went over and brought it over to him - I didn't have any alternative or anything. You can't imagine how sorry I was that I'd come to say good-by to him.
"We studied the Egyptians from November 4th to December 2nd," he said. "You chose to write about them. Would you like to hear what you had to say?"
"No, sir, not very much," I said.
He read it anyway, though. You can't stop a teacher when they want to do something. They just do it.
The Egyptians were an ancient race of Caucasians living in one of the northern sections of Africa. It is the largest continent in the Eastern Hemisphere.
I had to sit there and listen to that crap. It certainly was a dirty trick.
The Egyptians are very interesting to us today for various reasons. Modern science would still like to know what the secret ingredients were that the Egyptians used when they wrapped up dead people so that their faces would not rot for many centuries. This interesting riddle is still quite a challenge to modern science in the twentieth century.
I was beginning to sort of hate him. "Your essay, shall we say, ends there," he said in this very sarcastic voice. "However, you made a little note for me at the bottom of the page," he said.
"I know I did," I said. I said it very fast because I wanted to stop him before he started reading that out loud. But I couldn't stop him.
Dear Mr Spencer (he read out loud). That is all I know about the Egyptians. I can't be very interested in them although your lectures are very interesting. It is all right with me if you flunk me as I am flunking everything else except English anyway. Respectfully yours, Holden Caulfield.
I don't think I'll ever forgive him for reading me that crap out loud. I'd only written that damn note so that he wouldn't feel too bad about flunking me.
"Do you blame me for flunking you, boy?" he said.
"No, sir! I certainly don't," I said.
"What would you have done in my place?" he said. "Tell the truth, boy."
I saw that he really felt pretty lousy about flunking me. So I shot the bull for a while. I told him I was a real moron, and all that stuff. I told him how I would've done exactly the same thing if I'd been in his place, and how most people didn't appreciate how tough it is to be a teacher. That kind of stuff.
The funny thing is, though, I was sort of thinking of something else while I shot the bull. I live in New York, and I was thinking about the lagoon in Central Park. I was thinking if it would be frozen over when I got home. I was thinking where the ducks went when the lagoon got all icy and frozen over. I thought that maybe some guy came in a truck and took them away to a zoo or something. Or maybe they just flew away.
Suddenly, he interrupted me while I was shooting the bull. He was always interrupting you.
"How do you feel about all this, boy? I'd be very interested to know."
"You mean about my flunking out of Pencey and all?" I said.
"If I'm not mistaken, you also had some difficulty at the Whooton School and at Elkton Hills." He didn't say it just sarcastically, but sort of nastily, too.
"I didn't have too much difficulty at Elkton Hills," I told him. "I didn't exactly flunk out or anything. I just left, sort of."
"Why, may I ask?"
"Why? Oh, well it's a long story, sir. I mean it's pretty complicated." I didn't want to talk about it with him. He wouldn't have understood it anyway. One of the biggest reasons why I left Elkton Hills was because I was surrounded by phonies. That's all. For instance, they had this headmaster, Mr Haas, that was the phoniest bastard I ever met in my life. Ten times worse than old Thurmer. On Sundays, for instance, old Haas went around shaking hands with everybody's parents when they drove up to school. He'd be charming as hell and all. Except if some boy had little old funny-looking parents. I mean if a boy's mother was sort of fat or corny-looking or something, and if somebody's father was one of those guys that wear those suits with very big shoulders and corny black-and-white shoes, then old Haas would just shake hands with them and give them a phony smile and then he'd go talk, for maybe a half an hour, with somebody else's parents. I hate that stuff. It drives me crazy. It makes me so depressed. I hated that goddam Elkton Hills.
Old Spencer asked me something then, but I didn't hear him. I was thinking about old Haas. "What, sir?" I said.
"Are you not worried at all about your future, boy?"
"Oh, I am worried about my future, all right. Sure." I thought about it for a minute. "But not too much."
"You will," old Spencer said. "You will, boy. You will when it's too late. I'd like to put some sense in that head of yours, boy. I'm trying to help you. I'm trying to help you, if I can."
He really was, too. You could see that. "I know you are, sir," I said. "Thanks a lot. No kidding. I appreciate it. I really do. Look, sir. Don't worry about me," I said. "I mean it. I'll be alright. I'm just going through a phase right now. Everybody goes through phases and all, don't they?"
"I don't know, boy. I don't know."
I hate it when somebody answers that way. "Sure. Sure, they do," I said. "I mean it, sir. Please don't worry about me." I sort of put my hand on his shoulder. "Okay?" I said.
"Wouldn't you like a cup of hot chocolate before you go? Mrs Spencer would be -"
"I would, I really would, but the thing is, I have to get going. I have to go right to the gym. Thanks, though. Thanks a lot, sir."
Then we shook hands. And all that crap. It made me feel sad as hell, though.
"I'll write to you, sir. Take care of your grippe, now."
"Good-by, boy."
After I shut the door and started back to the living room, he yelled something at me, but I couldn't hear him. I'm pretty sure he yelled "Good luck!" to me, I hope to hell not. I'd never yell "Good luck!" at anybody. It sounds terrible, when you think about it.
I'm the most terrific liar you ever saw in your life. It's awful. When I told old Spencer that I had to go to the gym and get my equipment and stuff, that was a lie. I don't even keep my goddam equipment in the gym.
It was pretty nice to get back to my room, after I left old Spencer, because everybody was down at the game, and it was warm in the room, for a change. It felt sort of cosy. I took off my coat and my tie and unbuttoned my shirt collar; and then I put on this hat that I'd bought in New York that morning. It was this red hunting hat, with one of those very, very long peaks. I saw it in the window of this sports store when we got out of the subway, just after I noticed that I'd lost all the goddam foils. It only cost me a buck. Then I got this book I was reading and sat down in my chair. There were two chairs in every room. I had one and my roommate, Ward Stradlater, had one. They were pretty comfortable chairs.
I was reading this book from the library. They gave me the wrong book, and I didn't notice it till I got back to my room. They gave me Out of Africa, by Isak Dinesen. It was a very good book. I'm quite illiterate, but I read a lot. My favorite author is my brother D.B., and my next favorite is Ring Lardner. My brother gave me a book by Ring Lardner for my birthday, just before I went to Pencey. It had these very funny, crazy plays in it, and then it had this one story about a traffic cop that falls in love with this very cute girl that's always speeding. Only, he's married, the cop, so he can't marry her or anything. Then this girl gets killed, because she's always speeding. That story just about killed me. I read a lot of classical books and I like them, and I read a lot of war books and mysteries and all, but they don't impress me too much. The book really impresses me when, after reading it, I wish that the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of mine and I could call him up on the phone whenever I wanted. That doesn't happen much, though.
Anyway, I put on my new hat and sat down and started reading that book Out of Africa. I'd read it already, but I wanted to read certain parts over again. I had only read about three pages, when I heard that somebody was coming through the shower curtains. It was Robert Ackley, this guy that lived in the room right next to me. There was a shower between every two rooms in our wing, and about eighty- five times a day old Ackley barged in on me. He was a very peculiar guy. He was a senior, and he'd been at Pencey the whole four years and all, but nobody ever called him anything except "Ackley". Not even Herb Gale, his own roommate, ever called him "Bob" or even "Ack". If he ever gets married, his own wife'll probably call him "Ackley". He was one of these very, very tall, round-shouldered guys - he was about six feet - with lousy teeth. I never even once saw him brush his teeth. They always looked mossy and awful. Besides that, he had a lot of pimples. Not just on his forehead or his chin, like most guys, but all over his whole face. And not only that, he had a terrible personality. He was also sort of a nasty guy. I didn't like him much, to tell you the truth.
He came into the room. "Hi," he said.
"Hi," I said, but I didn't look up from my book.
He started walking around the room, very slow and all, the way he always did, picking up your personal stuff off your desk and chiffonier. He always picked up your personal stuff and looked at it. Boy, could he get on your nerves sometimes. "How was the fencing?" he said. He didn't give a damn about the fencing. He just didn't like that I was reading and enjoying myself. "We win, or what?" he said.
"Nobody won," I said. Without looking up, though.
"Nobody won," he said. "Why?"
"I left the goddam foils and stuff on the subway." I still didn't look up at him.
"On the subway, for Chrissake! You lost them, you mean? Think they'll make you pay for them?"
"I don't know, and I don't give a damn. How about sitting down or something, Ackley kid? You're right in my goddam light." He didn't like it when you called him "Ackley kid". He was always telling me I was a goddamn kid, because I was sixteen and he was eighteen. It drove him mad when I called him "Ackley kid".
He started to walk around the room again. He picked up all my personal stuff, and Stradlater's, my roommate. Finally, I put my book down on the floor. You couldn't read anything when Ackley was around. It was impossible.
"Your parents know you got kicked out yet?"
"Nope."
"Where the hell is Stradlater, anyway?"
"Down at the game. He's got a date." I yawned. I felt tired from the trip to New York and all. And the room was too damn hot. It made you sleepy. At Pencey, you either froze to death or died of the heat.
"The great Stradlater," Ackley said.
All of a sudden the door opened, and old Stradlater barged in, in a big hurry. He was always in a big hurry. He came over to me and gave me these two playful as hell slaps on both cheeks - which is something that can be very annoying. "Listen," he said. "You going out anywhere special tonight?"
"I don't know. I might."
"Listen. If you're not going out anyplace special, how about lending me your hound's-tooth jacket? I spilled some crap all over my gray flannel."
"If you take it, you'll stretch it with your goddamn shoulders and all," I said. We were practically the same height, but he weighed about twice as much as I did. He had these very broad shoulders.
"I won't stretch it." He went over to the closet in a big hurry. "How are you, boy, Ackley?" he said to Ackley. He was at least a pretty friendly guy, Stradlater. It was partly a phony kind of friendly, but at least he always said hello to Ackley and all.
Old Stradlater started taking off his coat and tie and all. "I think maybe I'll take a fast shave," he said. He had a pretty heavy beard. He really did.
"Where's your date?" I asked him.
"She's waiting in the Annex." He went out of the room with his toilet kit and towel under his arm. No shirt on or anything. He always walked around in his bare torso because he thought he had a damn good build. He did, too. I have to admit it.

Chapter 3

They each had their own room and all. They were both seventy years old, or even more than that. But they got a bang out of things. His door was open, but I sort of knocked on it anyway, just to be polite and all. He was sitting in a big leather chair. "Who's that?" he yelled. "Caulfield? Come in, boy."
When I went in, I was sort of sorry that I'd come. He was reading the Atlantic Monthly, and there were pills and medicine everywhere. It was pretty depressing. And even more depressing, old Spencer was in this very sad, ratty old bathrobe in which he was probably born or something. I don't much like to see old guys in their pajamas and bathrobes anyway. Their old chests are always showing. And their legs. Old guys' legs, at beaches and places, always look so white.
"Hello, sir," I said. "I got your note. Thanks a lot."
"Why aren't you down at the game? I thought this was the day of the big game."
"It is. I was. Only, I just got back from New York with the fencing team," I said.
"So you're leaving us, eh?" he said.
"Yes, sir. I guess I am."
He started to nod. You never knew if he was nodding a lot because he was thinking and all, or just because he was a nice old guy that didn't remember or understand anything.
"What did Dr. Thurmer say to you, boy? I understand you had quite a little chat."
"Yes, we did. I was in his office for around two hours, I think."
"What'd he say to you?"
"Oh... well, that Life is a game and all. And how you should play it according to the rules. He was pretty nice about it. I mean he didn't hit the ceiling or anything. He just repeated that Life is a game and all. You know."
"Life is a game, boy. Life is a game that one plays according to the rules."
"Yes, sir. I know it is. I know it."
Game, my ass. Some game. If you get on the side where all the hot-shots are, then it's a game, all right. But if you get on the other side, where there aren't any hot-shots, then what's a game about it? Nothing. No game. "Has Dr. Thurmer written to your parents yet?" old Spencer asked me.
"He said he was going to write them on Monday."
"Have you yourself communicated with them?"
"No, sir, I haven't communicated with them, because I'll probably see them on Wednesday night when I get home."
"And how do you think they'll take the news?"
"Well... they'll be pretty irritated about it," I said. "This is about the fourth school I've gone to." I shook my head. I shake my head quite a lot. "Boy!" I said. I also say "Boy!" quite a lot. Partly because I have a lousy vocabulary and partly because I act quite young for my age sometimes. I was sixteen then, and I'm seventeen now, and sometimes I act like I'm about thirteen. It's really ironical, because I'm six foot two and a half and I have gray hair. I really do. The one side of my head - the right side - is full of millions of gray hairs. I've had them ever since I was a kid. And yet I still act sometimes as if I was only about twelve. Everybody says that, especially my father. I don't give a damn, except that I get bored sometimes when people tell me to act my age. Sometimes I act a lot older than I am - I really do - but people never notice it. People never notice anything.
Old Spencer started nodding again. Then he said, "I had the privilege of meeting your mother and dad when they had their little chat with Dr. Thurmer some weeks ago. They're grand people."
"Yes, they are. They're very nice."
Grand. There's a word I really hate. It's a phony. I could puke every time I hear it.
Then suddenly old Spencer straightened up in his chair. I could feel that a terrific lecture would begin. I didn't mind the idea so much, but it wasn't very pleasant to listen to a lecture and to smell all that medicine, and look at old Spencer in his pajamas and bathrobe all at the same time. Really it wasn't.
The lecture started, all right. "What's the matter with you, boy?" old Spencer said. He said it pretty tough, too, for him. "How many subjects did you have this term?"
"Five, sir."
"Five. And how many are you failing in?"
"Four."
"I flunked you in history because you knew absolutely nothing."
"I know that, sir. Boy, I know it."
"Absolutely nothing," he said again. I hate when people say something twice, after you admit it the first time. Then he said it three times. "But absolutely nothing. I doubt very much if you opened your textbook even once the whole term. Did you? Tell the truth, boy."
"Well, I sort of glanced through it a couple of times," I told him. I didn't want to hurt his feelings. He was mad about history.
"You glanced through it, eh?" he said - very sarcastic. "Your, ah, exam paper is over there on top of my chiffonier. Bring it here, please."
I went over and brought it over to him - I didn't have any alternative or anything. You can't imagine how sorry I was that I'd come to say good-by to him.
"We studied the Egyptians from November 4th to December 2nd," he said. "You chose to write about them. Would you like to hear what you had to say?"
"No, sir, not very much," I said.
He read it anyway, though. You can't stop a teacher when they want to do something. They just do it.
The Egyptians were an ancient race of Caucasians living in one of the northern sections of Africa. It is the largest continent in the Eastern Hemisphere.
I had to sit there and listen to that crap. It certainly was a dirty trick.
The Egyptians are very interesting to us today for various reasons. Modern science would still like to know what the secret ingredients were that the Egyptians used when they wrapped up dead people so that their faces would not rot for many centuries. This interesting riddle is still quite a challenge to modern science in the twentieth century.
I was beginning to sort of hate him. "Your essay, shall we say, ends there," he said in this very sarcastic voice. "However, you made a little note for me at the bottom of the page," he said.
"I know I did," I said. I said it very fast because I wanted to stop him before he started reading that out loud. But I couldn't stop him.
Dear Mr Spencer (he read out loud). That is all I know about the Egyptians. I can't be very interested in them although your lectures are very interesting. It is all right with me if you flunk me as I am flunking everything else except English anyway. Respectfully yours, Holden Caulfield.
I don't think I'll ever forgive him for reading me that crap out loud. I'd only written that damn note so that he wouldn't feel too bad about flunking me.
"Do you blame me for flunking you, boy?" he said.
"No, sir! I certainly don't," I said.
"What would you have done in my place?" he said. "Tell the truth, boy."
I saw that he really felt pretty lousy about flunking me. So I shot the bull for a while. I told him I was a real moron, and all that stuff. I told him how I would've done exactly the same thing if I'd been in his place, and how most people didn't appreciate how tough it is to be a teacher. That kind of stuff.
The funny thing is, though, I was sort of thinking of something else while I shot the bull. I live in New York, and I was thinking about the lagoon in Central Park. I was thinking if it would be frozen over when I got home. I was thinking where the ducks went when the lagoon got all icy and frozen over. I thought that maybe some guy came in a truck and took them away to a zoo or something. Or maybe they just flew away.
Suddenly, he interrupted me while I was shooting the bull. He was always interrupting you.
"How do you feel about all this, boy? I'd be very interested to know."
"You mean about my flunking out of Pencey and all?" I said.
"If I'm not mistaken, you also had some difficulty at the Whooton School and at Elkton Hills." He didn't say it just sarcastically, but sort of nastily, too.
"I didn't have too much difficulty at Elkton Hills," I told him. "I didn't exactly flunk out or anything. I just left, sort of."
"Why, may I ask?"
"Why? Oh, well it's a long story, sir. I mean it's pretty complicated." I didn't want to talk about it with him. He wouldn't have understood it anyway. One of the biggest reasons why I left Elkton Hills was because I was surrounded by phonies. That's all. For instance, they had this headmaster, Mr Haas, that was the phoniest bastard I ever met in my life. Ten times worse than old Thurmer. On Sundays, for instance, old Haas went around shaking hands with everybody's parents when they drove up to school. He'd be charming as hell and all. Except if some boy had little old funny-looking parents. I mean if a boy's mother was sort of fat or corny-looking or something, and if somebody's father was one of those guys that wear those suits with very big shoulders and corny black-and-white shoes, then old Haas would just shake hands with them and give them a phony smile and then he'd go talk, for maybe a half an hour, with somebody else's parents. I hate that stuff. It drives me crazy. It makes me so depressed. I hated that goddam Elkton Hills.
Old Spencer asked me something then, but I didn't hear him. I was thinking about old Haas. "What, sir?" I said.
"Are you not worried at all about your future, boy?"
"Oh, I am worried about my future, all right. Sure." I thought about it for a minute. "But not too much."
"You will," old Spencer said. "You will, boy. You will when it's too late. I'd like to put some sense in that head of yours, boy. I'm trying to help you. I'm trying to help you, if I can."
He really was, too. You could see that. "I know you are, sir," I said. "Thanks a lot. No kidding. I appreciate it. I really do. Look, sir. Don't worry about me," I said. "I mean it. I'll be alright. I'm just going through a phase right now. Everybody goes through phases and all, don't they?"
"I don't know, boy. I don't know."
I hate it when somebody answers that way. "Sure. Sure, they do," I said. "I mean it, sir. Please don't worry about me." I sort of put my hand on his shoulder. "Okay?" I said.
"Wouldn't you like a cup of hot chocolate before you go? Mrs Spencer would be -"
"I would, I really would, but the thing is, I have to get going. I have to go right to the gym. Thanks, though. Thanks a lot, sir."
Then we shook hands. And all that crap. It made me feel sad as hell, though.
"I'll write to you, sir. Take care of your grippe, now."
"Good-by, boy."
After I shut the door and started back to the living room, he yelled something at me, but I couldn't hear him. I'm pretty sure he yelled "Good luck!" to me, I hope to hell not. I'd never yell "Good luck!" at anybody. It sounds terrible, when you think about it.
I'm the most terrific liar you ever saw in your life. It's awful. When I told old Spencer that I had to go to the gym and get my equipment and stuff, that was a lie. I don't even keep my goddam equipment in the gym.
It was pretty nice to get back to my room, after I left old Spencer, because everybody was down at the game, and it was warm in the room, for a change. It felt sort of cosy. I took off my coat and my tie and unbuttoned my shirt collar; and then I put on this hat that I'd bought in New York that morning. It was this red hunting hat, with one of those very, very long peaks. I saw it in the window of this sports store when we got out of the subway, just after I noticed that I'd lost all the goddam foils. It only cost me a buck. Then I got this book I was reading and sat down in my chair. There were two chairs in every room. I had one and my roommate, Ward Stradlater, had one. They were pretty comfortable chairs.
I was reading this book from the library. They gave me the wrong book, and I didn't notice it till I got back to my room. They gave me Out of Africa, by Isak Dinesen. It was a very good book. I'm quite illiterate, but I read a lot. My favorite author is my brother D.B., and my next favorite is Ring Lardner. My brother gave me a book by Ring Lardner for my birthday, just before I went to Pencey. It had these very funny, crazy plays in it, and then it had this one story about a traffic cop that falls in love with this very cute girl that's always speeding. Only, he's married, the cop, so he can't marry her or anything. Then this girl gets killed, because she's always speeding. That story just about killed me. I read a lot of classical books and I like them, and I read a lot of war books and mysteries and all, but they don't impress me too much. The book really impresses me when, after reading it, I wish that the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of mine and I could call him up on the phone whenever I wanted. That doesn't happen much, though.
Anyway, I put on my new hat and sat down and started reading that book Out of Africa. I'd read it already, but I wanted to read certain parts over again. I had only read about three pages, when I heard that somebody was coming through the shower curtains. It was Robert Ackley, this guy that lived in the room right next to me. There was a shower between every two rooms in our wing, and about eighty- five times a day old Ackley barged in on me. He was a very peculiar guy. He was a senior, and he'd been at Pencey the whole four years and all, but nobody ever called him anything except "Ackley". Not even Herb Gale, his own roommate, ever called him "Bob" or even "Ack". If he ever gets married, his own wife'll probably call him "Ackley". He was one of these very, very tall, round-shouldered guys - he was about six feet - with lousy teeth. I never even once saw him brush his teeth. They always looked mossy and awful. Besides that, he had a lot of pimples. Not just on his forehead or his chin, like most guys, but all over his whole face. And not only that, he had a terrible personality. He was also sort of a nasty guy. I didn't like him much, to tell you the truth.
He came into the room. "Hi," he said.
"Hi," I said, but I didn't look up from my book.
He started walking around the room, very slow and all, the way he always did, picking up your personal stuff off your desk and chiffonier. He always picked up your personal stuff and looked at it. Boy, could he get on your nerves sometimes. "How was the fencing?" he said. He didn't give a damn about the fencing. He just didn't like that I was reading and enjoying myself. "We win, or what?" he said.
"Nobody won," I said. Without looking up, though.
"Nobody won," he said. "Why?"
"I left the goddam foils and stuff on the subway." I still didn't look up at him.
"On the subway, for Chrissake! You lost them, you mean? Think they'll make you pay for them?"
"I don't know, and I don't give a damn. How about sitting down or something, Ackley kid? You're right in my goddam light." He didn't like it when you called him "Ackley kid". He was always telling me I was a goddamn kid, because I was sixteen and he was eighteen. It drove him mad when I called him "Ackley kid".
He started to walk around the room again. He picked up all my personal stuff, and Stradlater's, my roommate. Finally, I put my book down on the floor. You couldn't read anything when Ackley was around. It was impossible.
"Your parents know you got kicked out yet?"
"Nope."
"Where the hell is Stradlater, anyway?"
"Down at the game. He's got a date." I yawned. I felt tired from the trip to New York and all. And the room was too damn hot. It made you sleepy. At Pencey, you either froze to death or died of the heat.
"The great Stradlater," Ackley said.
All of a sudden the door opened, and old Stradlater barged in, in a big hurry. He was always in a big hurry. He came over to me and gave me these two playful as hell slaps on both cheeks - which is something that can be very annoying. "Listen," he said. "You going out anywhere special tonight?"
"I don't know. I might."
"Listen. If you're not going out anyplace special, how about lending me your hound's-tooth jacket? I spilled some crap all over my gray flannel."
"If you take it, you'll stretch it with your goddamn shoulders and all," I said. We were practically the same height, but he weighed about twice as much as I did. He had these very broad shoulders.
"I won't stretch it." He went over to the closet in a big hurry. "How are you, boy, Ackley?" he said to Ackley. He was at least a pretty friendly guy, Stradlater. It was partly a phony kind of friendly, but at least he always said hello to Ackley and all.
Old Stradlater started taking off his coat and tie and all. "I think maybe I'll take a fast shave," he said. He had a pretty heavy beard. He really did.
"Where's your date?" I asked him.
"She's waiting in the Annex." He went out of the room with his toilet kit and towel under his arm. No shirt on or anything. He always walked around in his bare torso because he thought he had a damn good build. He did, too. I have to admit it.

Chapter 4

I didn't have anything special to do, so I went down to the can and chewed the rag with him while he was shaving. It was hot as hell and the windows were all steamy. There were about ten washbowls, all right against the wall. Stradlater had the middle one. I sat down on the one right next to him and started turning the cold water on and off - this nervous habit I have. Stradlater was whistling "Song of India" while he shaved.
You remember I said before that Ackley was a slob in his personal habits? Well, so was Stradlater, but in a different way. Stradlater was more of a secret slob. He always looked all right, Stradlater, but for instance, his razor was always rusty as hell and full of lather and hairs and crap. He never cleaned it or anything. He always looked good when he finished fixing himself up, but he was a secret slob anyway, if you knew him the way I did. The reason why he fixed himself up to look good was because he was madly in love with himself. He thought he was the handsomest guy in the Western Hemisphere. He was pretty handsome, too - I'll admit it. But he was mostly the kind of a handsome guy that if your parents saw his picture in your Year Book, they'd right away say, "Who's this boy?" I mean he was mostly a Year Book kind of handsome guy.
Anyway, I was sitting on the washbowl next to where Stradlater was shaving, sort of turning the water on and off. I still had my red hunting hat on, with the peak around to the back and all. I really got a bang out of that hat.
"Hey," Stradlater said. "Wanna do me a big favor?"
"What?" I said. Not too enthusiastic. He was always asking you to do him a big favor. You take a very handsome guy, or a guy that thinks he's a real hot-shot, and they're always asking you to do them a big favor. Just because they're crazy about themselves, they think you're crazy about them, too, and that you're just dying to do them a favor. It's sort of funny, in a way.
"You goin' out tonight?" he said.
"I might. I might not. I don't know. Why?"
"I must read about a hundred pages for history for Monday," he said. "How about writing a composition for me, for English? I'll be up the creek if I don't write the goddamn thing by Monday, the reason I ask. How about it?"
It was very ironical. It really was.
"I'm the one that's flunking out of the goddam place, and you're asking me to write you a goddamn composition," I said.
"Yeah, I know. The thing is, though, I'll be up the creek if I don't write it. Be a buddy. Okay?"
I didn't answer him right away. After a pause I said, "What on?"
"Anything. Anything descriptive. A room. Or a house. Or something where you once lived or something - you know. Just don't do it too good," he said. "That sonuvabitch Hartzell thinks that you're a hot-shot in English, and he knows that you're my roommate. So, I mean, don't put all the commas and stuff in the right place."
I got bored sitting on that washbowl after a while, so I started doing this tap dance, just for the hell of it. I was just amusing myself. I can't really tap-dance or anything, but it was a stone floor in the can, and it was good for tap-dancing. I started imitating one of those guys in the movies. In one of those musicals. I hate the movies like poison, but I get a bang imitating them. Old Stradlater watched me in the mirror while he was shaving. All I need is an audience. I'm an exhibitionist.
"Where did you get that hat?" Stradlater said. He meant my hunting hat. He'd never seen it before.
I took off my hat and looked at it for about the ninetieth time. "I got it in New York this morning. For a buck. You like it?"
Stradlater nodded. "Sharp," he said. He was only flattering me, though, because right away he said, "Listen. Are you going to write that composition for me? I have to know."
"If I get the time, I will. If I don't, I won't," I said. I went over and sat down at the washbowl next to him again. "Who's your date?" I asked him. "Fitzgerald?"
"Hell, no! I told you. I'm through with that pig."
"Yeah? Give her to me, boy. No kidding. She's my type."
"Take her... She's too old for you."
"Who is your date if it isn't Fitzgerald?" I asked him. "That Phyllis Smith babe?"
"No. I got Bud Thaw's girl's roommate now... Hey. I almost forgot. She knows you."
"Who does?" I said.
"My date."
"Yeah?" I said. "What's her name?" I was pretty interested.
I'm thinking... Uh. Jean Gallagher."
Boy, I nearly dropped dead when he said that.
"Jane Gallagher," I said. I even got up from the washbowl when he said that. I damn near dropped dead. "You're damn right I know her. She practically lived right next door to me, the summer before last. She had this big damn Doberman pinscher. That's how I met her. Where is she?" I asked him. Boy, was I excited, though. I really was.
"I ought to go down and say hello to her or something. Where is she? In the Annex?"
"Yeah."
"When did she mention me? Does she go to B.M. now? She said she might go there. She said she might go to Shipley, too. I thought she went to Shipley. When did she mention me?" I was pretty excited. I really was.
"I don't know, for Chrissake. Lift up, will you? You're on my towel," Stradlater said. I was sitting on his stupid towel.
"Jane Gallagher," I repeated. "Jesus Christ."
"She's a dancer," I said. "Ballet and all. She practiced about two hours every day, right in the middle of the hottest weather and all. She was worried that it might make her legs lousy - all thick and all. I played checkers with her all the time."
"You played what with her all the time?"
"Checkers."
"Checkers, for Chrissake!"
Stradlater wasn't hardly listening. He was combing his gorgeous locks.
"I ought to go down and at least say hello to her," I said.
"Why don't you?"
"I will, in a minute."
He started to comb his hair all over again. It took him about on hour to comb his hair.
"Her mother and father were divorced. Her mother was married again to some booze hound," I said. "Skinny guy with hairy legs. I remember him. He wore shorts all the time, lane said he was a playwright or some goddamn thing, but he only drank all the time and listened to every single goddam mystery program on the radio. And ran around the goddamn house, naked. And Jane was around, and all."
"Yeah?" Stradlater said. That really interested him. About the booze hound running around the house naked, when Jane was around. Stradlater was a very sexy bastard.
"She had a lousy childhood. I'm not kidding."
That didn't interest Stradlater, though. Only very sexy stuff interested him.
"Jane Gallagher. Jesus... I couldn't get her off my mind. I ought to go down and say hello to her."
"Why the hell don't you, instead of just saying it? " Stradlater said.
"I'm not in the mood right now," I said. I wasn't, either. You have to be in the mood for those things. "I thought she went to Shipley. Did she enjoy the game?" I said.
"Yeah, I think so. I don't know."
"Did she tell you about playing checkers with me all the time, or anything?"
"I don't know. For Chrissake, I only just met her," Stradlater said. He was finished combing his goddamn gorgeous hair. He was putting away all his toilet things.
"Listen. Give her my regards, will you?"
"Okay," Stradlater said, but I knew he probably wouldn't. Such guys as Stradlater, they never give your regards to people.
"Hey," I said. "Don't tell her that I got kicked out, will you?"
"Okay."
That was one good thing about Stradlater. You didn't have to explain every goddamn little thing with him, as you had to do with Ackley. Mostly, I think, because he wasn't too interested. But Ackley was a very nosy bastard.
He put on my hound's-tooth jacket, and I asked him not to stretch it too much. He promised.
I was getting sort of nervous, all of a sudden. I'm quite a nervous guy. "Listen, where're you going on your date with her?" I asked him.
"I don't know. New York, if we have time. She only signed out for nine-thirty, for Chrissake."
I didn't like the intonation in which he said it, so I said, "The reason she did that, she probably just didn't know what a handsome, charming bastard you are. If she'd known, she probably would've signed out for nine-thirty in the morning.''
"Goddamn right," Stradlater said. He thought high of himself. "No kidding, now. Do that composition for me," he said. "Don't work too hard or anything, but just make it descriptive as hell. Okay?" And he left the room.
After he left, I sat in my chair for about a half hour, doing nothing. I thought about Jane, and about Stradlater's date with her and all. It made me so nervous I nearly went crazy. I already told you what a sexy bastard Stradlater was.
All of a sudden, Ackley barged back in again, through the damn shower curtains, as usual. This time I was really glad to see him. He took my mind off the other stuff.

Chapter 5

We always had steak for dinner on Saturday nights at Pencey. I'll bet a thousand bucks that the reason for that was because a lot of guys' parents came up to school on Sunday, and old Thurmer probably thought that everybody's mother would ask their darling boy what he had for dinner last night, and he'd say, "Steak." What a racket. Those steaks were these little hard, dry things that you could hardly even cut. You always got these very lumpy mashed potatoes on steak night, and for dessert you got Brown Betty, which nobody ate, except maybe the little kids in the lower school and guys like Ackley that ate everything.
It was nice, though, when we got out of the dining room. There were about three inches of snow on the ground, and it was still snowing. It looked pretty as hell, and we all started throwing snowballs. It was very childish, but everybody was really enjoying themselves.
I didn't have a date or anything, so I and this friend of mine, Mal Brossard, decided to take a bus into Agerstown and have a hamburger and maybe see a lousy movie. I asked Mal if it was all right if Ackley came along with us. I asked that because Ackley never did anything on Saturday night, except stay in his room and squeeze his pimples or something. Mal didn't like Ackley much, he wasn't too crazy about the idea. Anyway, the three of us took the bus to Agerstown that night.
Brossard and Ackley both had seen the movie that was playing, so we just had a couple of hamburgers and played the pinball machine for a little while, then took the bus back to Pencey. I wasn't sorry that I didn't see the movie, anyway. It was a comedy, with Cary Grant in it, and all that crap. Besides, I'd been to the movies with Brossard and Ackley before. They both laughed like hyenas at stuff that wasn't even funny. I didn't even enjoy sitting next to them in the movies.
About a quarter to nine we got back to the dorm. Old Brossard went to play bridge. Old Ackley parked himself in my room. He lay down on my bed, with his face right on my pillow and all. He started talking in this very monotonous voice, and squeezing all his pimples. I made about a thousand hints, but I couldn't get rid of him. He continued talking in this very monotonous voice about some babe with whom he supposedly had sex in summer. He'd already told me about it about a hundred times. And every time it was different. One minute it was in his cousin's Buick, the next minute it was under some boardwalk. It was all a lot of crap, naturally. He was a virgin if ever I saw one. Anyway, finally I had to ask him to leave because I wanted to concentrate and write a composition for Stradlater. He finally left, but not at once, as usual. After he left, I put on my pajamas and bathrobe and my hunting hat, and started writing the composition.
I'm not too crazy about describing rooms and houses. So I wrote about my brother Allie's baseball glove. It was really a very descriptive subject because my brother Allie had written poems all over the fingers and the pocket and everywhere. In green ink. He wanted to have something to read when he was in the field and nobody was up at bat. He's dead now. He got leukemia and died when we were in Maine, on July 18, 1946.
He was two years younger than I was, but he was terrifically intelligent. His teachers were always writing letters to my mother, telling her that it was a pleasure to have a boy like Allie in their class. He was also the nicest, in lots of ways. He never got mad at anybody and he was a merry boy, he laughed NO well. I slept in the garage on the night when he died, and I broke all the goddam windows with my fist, just for the hell of it. I was only thirteen, and they were going to take me to a psychiatrist and all, because I broke all the windows in the garage. I don't blame them. It was a very stupid thing to do, I'll admit, but I hardly didn't even know that I was doing it, and you didn't know Allie.
Anyway, I wrote Stradlater's composition about old Allie's baseball glove. It was in my suitcase, so I got it out and copied clown the poems that were written on it. I changed Allie's name so that nobody would know that it was my brother and not Stradlater's.

Chapter 6

When Stradlater got back from his date with Jane, he didn't say one goddam word about Jane. Not one. Neither did I. I just watched him. He thanked me for letting him wear my hound's-tooth. He hung it up on a hanger and put it in the closet.
Then, when he was taking off his tie, he asked me if I'd written his goddam composition for him. I told him it was over on his goddamn bed. He walked over and read it while he was unbuttoning his shirt. He stood there, reading it, and sort of stroking his bare chest and stomach, with this very stupid expression on his face. He was always stroking his stomach or his chest. He was mad about himself.
All of a sudden, he said, "For Chrissake, Holden. This is about a goddam baseball glove."
"So what?" I said very coldly.
"I told you to write about a goddamn room or a house or something."
"You said that it had to be descriptive. What the hell's the difference if it's about a baseball glove?"
"God damn it." He got really mad. "You never do things as they ought to be done. Not one damn thing."
"All right, give it back to me, then." I took the composition and I tore it up.
Then I lay down on my bed, and we both didn't say anything for a long time. I lit a cigarette. It wasn't allowed to smoke in the dorm, but you could do it late at night when everybody was asleep or out and nobody could smell the smoke. Besides, I wanted to annoy Stradlater. He never broke any rules. He never smoked in the dorm.
He still didn't say one word about Jane. So finally I said, "You're back pretty goddam late if she only signed out for nine-thirty. Did you go to New York?"
"You crazy? How the hell could we go to New York if she only signed out for nine-thirty?"
"If you didn't go to New York, where did you go with her?" I asked him, after a little while. Boy, was I getting nervous. I just had a feeling something had gone funny.
"Nowhere. We just sat in the goddam car."
"Whose car?"
"Ed Banky's."
Ed Banky was the basketball coach at Pencey. Old Stradlater was one of his pets, because he was the center on the team, and Ed Banky always let him borrow his car when he wanted it.
"What'd you do?" I said. "Give her the time in Ed Banky's goddam car?" My voice was shaking something awful.
"That's a professional secret, buddy."
This next part I don't remember so well. All I know is I got up from the bed, and then I tried to hit him, with all my might. Only, I missed. I sort of got him on the side of the head or something. It probably hurt him a little bit, but not as much as I wanted.
Anyway, the next thing I knew, I was on the goddam floor and he was sitting on my chest. His face was all red. That is, he had his goddamn knees on my chest, and he weighed about a ton. He held my wrists, too, so I couldn't hit him again.
"What the hell's the matter with you?" he said.
"Get your lousy knees off my chest," I told him.
But he continued to hold my wrists and I continued to call him a sonuvabitch and all, for around ten hours.
"Shut up, now, Holden," he said, "just shut up, now."
"You don't even know if her first name is Jane or Jean, you goddamn moron!"
"Now, shut up, Holden, God damn it - I'm warning you," he said. "If you don't shut up, I'm gonna slam you one."
"Get your dirty stinking moron knees off my chest."
He got up off me, and I got up, too. My chest hurt like hell from his dirty knees. "You're a dirty stupid sonuvabitch of a moron," I told him.
He got really mad. He shook his big stupid finger in my face. "Holden, God damn it, I'm warning you, now. For the last time. If you don't shut up, I'm gonna -"
"Why should I?" I said - I was practically yelling. "You morons never want to discuss anything."
He hated when you called him moron. He really let one go at me, and the next thing I knew I was on the goddamn floor again. I don't remember if he knocked me out or not, but my nose was bleeding all over the place. When I looked up, old Stradlater was standing practically right on top of me. "Why the hell don't you shut up when I tell you to?" he said. He sounded pretty nervous. He probably was scared he'd fractured my skull or something when I hit the floor. "You asked for it, God damn it," he said. Boy, did he look worried.
I just lay there on the floor for a while, and kept calling him a moron sonuvabitch. I was so mad, I was practically bawling.
"Listen. Go wash your face," Stradlater said.
I told him to go wash his own moron face. It was a pretty childish thing to say, but I was mad as hell. I told him to stop off on the way to the can and give Mrs Schmidt the time. Mrs Schmidt was the janitor's wife. She was around sixty-five.
When old Stradlater closed the door and went down the corridor to the can, I got up and took a look at my stupid face in the mirror. I had blood all over my mouth and chin and even on my pajamas and bathrobe. I looked sort of tough with all that blood and all. I'd only been in about two fights in my life, and I lost both of them. I'm not too tough. I'm a pacifist, if you want to know the truth.
I decided that old Ackley had heard all the noise and wasn't sleeping. So I went through the shower curtains into his room.

Chapter 7

"Ackley?" I said. "You awake?"
"Yeah."
Ackley sort of sat up in bed and leaned on his arm. He had a lot of white stuff on his face, for his pimples. "What the hell are you doing, anyway?" I said.
"I was trying to sleep before you guys started making all that noise. What the hell was the fight about, anyhow?"
I found the switch and turned the light on.
"Jesus!" Ackley said. "What the hell happened to you?" He meant all the blood and all.
"I had a little goddam fight with Stradlater. Listen, don't you want to play a little Canasta?" I said. He was a Canasta fiend.
"Canasta, for Chrissake. Do you know what time it is, by any chance?"
"It isn't late. It's only around eleven, eleven-thirty."
"Only around!" Ackley said. "Listen. I've got to get up and go to Mass in the morning, for Chrissake. What the hell was the fight about, anyhow?"
I said that it was a long and boring story. I didn't want to discuss my personal life with him. In the first place, he was even more stupid than Stradlater. Stradlater was a goddamn genius next to Ackley.
I looked out of the window. I felt so lonesome, all of a sudden. I almost wished I was dead.
I didn't want to go back to my room, so I decided to sleep in Ely's bed. Ely was Ackley's roommate and he went home damn near every weekend.
"What the hell was the fight about, anyhow?" Ackley said again.
"About you," I said.
"About me, for Chrissake?"
"Yeah. I was defending your goddam honor. Stradlater said you had a lousy personality."
"No kidding? Did he say that?"
I told him I was only kidding, and then I went over and lay down on Ely's bed. Boy, I felt so damn lonesome.
I lay there on Ely's bed, thinking about Jane and all. When I thought about her and Stradlater parked somewhere in that lat-assed Ed Banky's car, I wanted to jump out the window. The thing is, you didn't know Stradlater. I knew him. Most guys at Pencey just talked about having sex with girls all the time - like Ackley, for instance - but old Stradlater really did it. I personally knew two girls to whom he gave the time. That's the truth.
I knew that guy Stradlater's technique. That made it even worse. We once double-dated, in Ed Banky's car, and Stradlater was in the back, with his date, and I was in the front with mine. What a technique that guy had. He'd start snowing his date in this very quiet, sincere voice - to show that he wasn't only a very handsome guy but a nice, sincere guy, too. I damn near puked, listening to him. His date said again and again, "No, please. Please, don't. Please." But old Stradlater went on snowing her in this Abraham Lincoln, sincere voice, and finally there was this terrific silence in the back of the car. It was really embarrassing. I don't think that he gave that girl the time that night - but damn near. Damn near.
I got up off Ely's bed, and started towards the door. I didn't want to stay in that stupid atmosphere any more. I went out in the corridor.
Everybody was asleep or out or home for the weekend, and it was very, very quiet and depressing in the corridor. I thought I might go down and see what old Mal Brossard was doing. But all of a sudden, I changed my mind. All of a sudden, I decided to get the hell out of Pencey - right that same night and all. I decided not wait till Wednesday or anything. I just didn't want to stay around any more. It made me too sad and lonesome. So I decided to take a room in a hotel in New York - some very inexpensive hotel and all - and just take it easy till Wednesday. I thought that my parents wouldn't get the letter saying I'd been given the ax till maybe Tuesday or Wednesday. I didn't want to go home or anything till they got it and thoroughly digested it and all. I didn't want to be around when they first got it. My mother gets very hysterical. She's not too bad after she gets something thoroughly digested, though. Besides, I sort of needed a little vacation. My nerves were shot. They really were.
So I went back to the room and turned on the light, and started to pack. Old Stradlater didn't even wake up. I lit a cigarette and got all dressed and then I packed these two suitcases I have. It only took me about two minutes. I'm a very rapid packer.
After I got all packed, I sort of counted my dough. I don't remember exactly how much I had, but I was pretty loaded. My grandmother'd just sent me a wad about a week before. I have this grandmother that's quite lavish with her dough. She doesn't have all her marbles any more - she's old as hell - and she sends me money for my birthday about four times a year. Anyway, though I was pretty loaded, I thought I could always use a few extra bucks. You never know. So I went to Frederick Woodruffs room and woke him up. He'd borrowed my typewriter. I asked him how much he'd give me for it. He was a rich guy. He said he didn't much want to buy it. Finally he bought it, though. It cost about ninety bucks, and he bought it for twenty. He was sore because I'd woken him up.
When I had everything ready, I stood for a while next to the stairs and took a last look down the goddam corridor. I was sort of crying. I don't know why. I put my red hunting hat on, and then I yelled at the top of my goddam voice, "Sleep tight, you morons!" I'll bet I woke up every bastard on the whole floor. Then I got the hell out. Some stupid guy had thrown peanut shells all over the stairs, and I damn near broke my crazy neck.

Chapter 8

It was a late night, there were no taxies, so I walked the whole way to the station. It wasn't too far, but it was cold as hell, and the snow made it hard for walking, and my suitcases hit my legs all the time. But I sort of enjoyed the air and all.
Usually I like riding on trains, especially at night, when the lights are on and the windows so black, and one of those guys is coming up the aisle selling coffee and sandwiches and magazines. I usually buy a ham sandwich and about four magazines. If I'm on a train at night, I can usually even read one of those stupid stories in a magazine without puking. You know. One of those stories with a lot of phony, lean guys named David in it, and a lot of phony girls named Linda on Marcia that are always lighting all the goddam Davids' pipes for them. I can even read one of those lousy stories on a train! at night, usually. But this time, it was different. I just sort of sat and didn't do anything.
All of a sudden, this lady got on at Trenton and sat down next to me. Practically the whole car was empty, because it was pretty late and all, but she sat down next to me because she had this big bag with her and I was sitting in the front seat. She put the bag right out in the middle of the aisle, where the conductor and everybody could trip over it. She was around forty or forty-five, I guess, but she was very good looking. Women kill me. They really do. I don't mean that I'm oversexed or anything - though I am quite sexy. I just like them, I mean. They're always putting their goddam bags out in the middle of the aisle.
Anyway, we were sitting there, and all of a sudden she said to me, "Excuse me, but isn't that a Pencey Prep sticker?" She was looking up at my suitcases, up on the rack.
"Yes, it is," I said. She was right. I did have a goddam Pencey sticker on one of my suitcases.
"Oh, do you go to Pencey?" she said. She had a nice voice.
"Yes, I do," I said.
"Oh, how lovely! Perhaps you know my son, then, Ernest Morrow? He goes to Pencey."
"Yes, I do. He's in my class."
Her son was the biggest bastard that ever went to Pencey, in the whole stupid history of the school. He was always going down the corridor, after he'd had a shower, snapping his wet towel at people's asses.
"Oh, how nice!" the lady said. She was just nice and all.
"I must tell Ernest we met," she said. "May I ask your name, dear?"
"Rudolf Schmidt," I told her. I wasn't going to tell her my whole life history. Rudolf Schmidt was the name of the janitor of our dorm.
"Do you like Pencey?" she asked me.
"Pencey? It's not too bad. It's not paradise or anything, but it's as good as most schools."
"Ernest likes it very much."
"I know he does," I said. Then I started shooting the Old crap around a little bit. "He adapts himself very well to things. He really does. I mean he really knows how to adapt himself."
"Do you think so?" she asked me. She sounded interested as hell.
"Ernest? Sure," I said. Then she took off her gloves. Boy, was she lousy with rocks.
"I just broke a nail, getting out of a cab," she said. She looked up at me and sort of smiled. She had a terrifically nice smile. Most people have hardly any smile at all, or a lousy one. "Ernest's father and I sometimes worry about him," she said. "We sometimes feel that he cannot mix with other boys terribly well."
"How do you mean?"
"He's a very sensitive boy. Perhaps he takes things a little more seriously than he should at his age."
Sensitive. That killed me. That guy Morrow was about as sensitive as a goddam toilet seat.
I looked at her. She wasn't an idiot. She might have a pretty damn good idea what a bastard her son was. But you can't always tell - with somebody's mother, I mean. Mothers are all a little insane. But I liked old Morrow's mother. She was all right. "Would you like a cigarette?" I asked her.
She looked all around. "I'm afraid this isn't a smoker, Rudolf," she said.
"That's all right. We can smoke till they start screaming at us," I said. She took a cigarette off me, and I gave her a light.
She looked nice, smoking. She had a lot of charm. She had quite a lot of sex appeal, too, if you really want to know.
I told her that her son Ernie was one of the most popular boys at Pencey.
Old Mrs Morrow didn't say anything, but boy, if you could see her. You take somebody's mother, they all want to hear what a hot-shot their son is.
Then I really started chucking the old crap around. I told her that we wanted to elect her son Ernie president of the class, that he was the unanimous choice.
"I mean that he was the only boy that could really do the job. But this other boy - Harry Fencer - was elected. And all because Ernie didn't let us elect him. Because he's so damn shy and modest and all."
At that moment, the conductor came around for old Mrs Morrow's ticket, and it gave me a chance to quit shooting it.
Then she looked at me and asked me the question I was afraid she was going to ask. "Ernest wrote that he'd be home on Wednesday, that Christmas vacation would start on Wednesday," she said. "I hope you weren't called home suddenly because of illness in the family." She really looked worried about it. She wasn't just being nosy, you could tell.
"No, everybody's fine at home," I said. "It's me. I have to have this operation."
"Oh! I'm so sorry," she said. She really was, too. I was right away sorry that I'd said it, but it was too late.
"It isn't very serious. I have this tiny little tumor on the brain."
"Oh, no! " She put her hand up to her mouth and all.
"Oh, I'll be alright and everything! It's a very tiny tumor. They can take it out in about two minutes."
Then I started reading this timetable that I had in my pocket. Just to stop lying. Once I get started, I can go on for hours. No kidding. Hours.
After that, we didn't talk too much. She got off at Newark. She wished me a lot of luck with the operation and all. Then she invited me to visit Ernie during the summer, at Gloucester, Massachusetts . She said their house was right on the beach, and they had a tennis court and all, but I just thanked her and told her I was going to South America with my grandmother. And that was really a hot one. My grandmother hardly ever even leaves the house, except maybe to go to a goddam matinee or something. But I had no wish to visit that sonuvabitch Morrow, not for all the dough in the world.

Chapter 9

When I got off the train at Penn Station, I went into this phone booth first of all. I wanted to give somebody a buzz. In twenty minutes I came out without calling anybody. My brother D.B. was in Hollywood. And I couldn't call up my kid sister Phoebe or Jane Gallagher's mother (to ask when Jane's vacation started), or this girl, Sally Hayes, (whose Christmas vacation had started already) because of the late hour. So I went and got a cab.
I'm so damn absent-minded, I gave the driver my home address, just out of habit and all - I mean I forgot that I was going to stay in a hotel till vacation started. I remembered about it when we were halfway through the park. I asked the driver to turn back and go downtown again. The driver said that he couldn't turn at once because we were on a one-way road. I knew he was lying but I didn't want to start an argument. So he took me through the Park to Ninetieth street and then asked where I wanted to go from there. I told him to take me to the Edmont Hotel.
We got to the Edmont Hotel, and I checked in. I'd put on my red hunting cap when I was in the cab, just for the hell of it, but I took it off before I checked in. I didn't want to look like a screwball or something. That was really ironic. I didn't know then that the goddam hotel was full of screwballs.
They gave me this very depressing room, you could see nothing out of the window except the other side of the hotel. It was all the same to me whether I had a good view or not, I was too much depressed. I looked out the window for a while, and I could see what was going on on the other side of the hotel. They didn't even pull their shades down. I saw how one guy, a gray-haired, very distinguished-looking guy with only his shorts on, put his suitcase on the bed, took out all these women's clothes, and put them on. Real women's clothes - silk stockings, high-heeled shoes, bra, and one of those corsets and all. Then he put on this very tight black evening dress. I swear to God. Then he started walking up and down the room, and smoking a cigarette and looking at himself in the mirror. He was all alone. In the next window, I saw how a man and a woman took turns squirting water or highballs out of their mouths at each other. They were in hysterical laughter the whole time. I'm not kidding, the hotel was full of lousy screwballs.
But the truth is, it was interesting to watch them. For instance, that girl that was squirting water, she was pretty good-looking. I mean that's my big trouble. In my mind, I'm probably the biggest sex maniac you ever saw. Sometimes I can think of very crumby stuff as a lot of fun if you are both sort of drunk and all, but it stinks, if you analyze it. I think If you don't really like a girl, you shouldn't horse around with her at all, and if you do like her, then you like her face, and if you like her face, you ought not to do crumby stuff to like squirting water all over it. It's really too bad that so much crumby stuff is a lot of fun sometimes. Sex is something I really don't understand very well. You never know where the hell you are. I make up these sex rules for myself, and then I break them right away. Last year I made a rule that I was going to stop horsing around with girls that I don't like it all. And I broke it at once. I spent the whole night necking with a terrible phony whose name was Anne Louise Sherman. Sex is something I just don't understand.
After I stood by the window for a while, I sat down in a chair and smoked a couple of cigarettes. I was feeling pretty horny. Then, all of a sudden, I got this idea. I took out my wallet and started looking for the address of this girl that wasn't exactly a whore or anything but that didn't mind doing it from time to time. She used to be a burlesque stripper or Something. One guy had given her address to me at some Stupid party. Anyway, I went over to the phone and gave her a buzz. Her name was Faith Cavendish, and she lived at the Stanford Arms Hotel on Sixty-fifth and Broadway. A dump, no doubt.
I tried very hard to invite myself to her place, but she said that it was too late and she had to get her beauty sleep because she was a working girl. Then I tried to invite her just for a cocktail, but she offered to meet for cocktails the next day. I said that I couldn't meet her the next day. She said she was awfully sorry and wished me to have a good time in New York.

Chapter 10

I didn't want to go to bed because I wasn't tired. So I went to the bathroom and washed and changed my shirt. I decided to go downstairs to the Lavender Room. They had this night club, the Lavender Room, in the hotel.
While I was changing my shirt, I thought how much I wanted to give my kid sister Phoebe a buzz. I wanted to talk to somebody with sense and all. I certainly would like to shoot the crap with old Phoebe for a while.
You should see her. You never saw a little kid so pretty and smart in your whole life. She's really smart. She's had all A's ever since she started school. As a matter of fact, I'm the only dumb one in the family. My brother D.B.'s a writer and all, and my brother Allie was a wizard. But you ought to see old Phoebe. She's only ten. I mean if you tell old Phoebe something, she knows exactly what the hell you're talking about. I mean you can even take her anywhere with you. If you take her to a lousy movie, for instance, she knows it's a lousy movie. If you take her to a pretty good movie, she knows it's a pretty good movie. Her favorite is The 39 Steps, though, with Robert Donat. She knows the whole goddam movie by heart, because I've taken her to see it about ten times. She can say all the words that the actors say even before they say them. She knows all the talk by heart. She's all right. You'd like her. And she writes books all the time. Only, she doesn't finish them. They're all about some kid named Hazel Weatherfield. Old Hazel Weatherfield is a girl detective. Phoebe writes that Hazel is an orphan, but her father is in the story all the time. Her father's always a "tall attractive gentleman about 20 years of age." That kills me. Old Phoebe. She was smart even when she was a very tiny little kid. When she was a very tiny little kid, I and Allie often took her to the park with us, especially on Sundays. She wore white gloves and walked right between us, like a lady and all. And when Allie and I were having some conversation about things in general, old Phoebe was listening. Sometimes we forgot that she was around, because she was such a little kid, pit she interrupted us all the time because she wanted to know "Who? Who said that? Bobby or the lady?" And we told her who said it, and she went on listening and all. She killed Allie, too. I mean he liked her, too. She's ten now, and not such a tiny little kid any more, but she still kills everybody - everybody with any sense, anyway.
Well, I wanted very much to talk to her on the phone. But I WAS too afraid that my parents would answer, and then they would find out that I was in New York and kicked out of Pencey and all. So I just put on my shirt and went down in the elevator to the Lavender Room.
The band was playing in the Lavender Room. It wasn't very crowded, but they gave me a lousy table anyway - way in the buck. They would have given me a better table if I had waved a buck under the head-waiter's nose. In New York, boy, money really talks - I'm not kidding.
There were very few people around my age in the place. In fact, nobody was around my age. But at the table right next to me, there were these three girls around thirty or so. All three of them were pretty ugly, and their hats showed you that they didn't really live in New York, but one of them, the blonde one, wasn't too bad. She was sort of cute, the blonde one, and I started giving her the old eye a little bit, but just then the waiter came up for my order. I ordered a Scotch and soda. "I'm sorry, sir," he said, "but are you twenty one years old?"
I gave him this very cold stare, "Do I look like I'm under twenty-one?"
"I'm sorry, sir, but we have our -"
"Okay, okay," I said. "Bring me a Coke."
I started giving the three witches at the next table the old eye again. The three of them started giggling like morons. They probably thought that I was too young to give anybody the once-over. That annoyed hell out of me - you could think that I wanted to marry them or something. I should have given them the freeze, but I really wanted to dance. I'm very fond of dancing, sometimes, and that was one of the times. So all of a sudden, I said, "Would any of you girls like to dance?" They started giggling again.
Finally, the blonde one got up to dance with me. The other two grools nearly had hysterics. The blonde was one of the best dancers I ever danced with. I'm not kidding, some of these very stupid girls can really be very good on a dance floor. You take a really smart girl, and half the time she's trying to lead you around the dance floor, or she's such a lousy dancer, the best thing to do is stay at the table and just get drunk with her.
I tried to start conversation with her, but she wasn't even listening to me. She was looking all around the place. So we just danced. She was a great dancer. I thought that she was enjoying it, too, till all of a sudden she came out with this very dumb remark. "I and my girl friends saw Peter Lorre last night," she said. "The movie actor. In person. He was buying a newspaper. He's cute."
"You're lucky," I told her. "You're really lucky. You know that?" She was really a moron. But what a dancer.
"Where are you girls from?" I asked her.
She didn't answer me. She was looking around hoping to see old Peter Lorre again, I think.
"Where're you girls from?" I asked her again.
"What?" she said.
"Where're you girls from? Don't answer if you don't want to. Don't strain yourself."
"Seattle, Washington," she said.
"You're a very good conversationalist," I told her. "You know that?"
"What?"
I let it drop. It was over her head, anyway. The band started to play a fast dance - jitterbug. She started jitterbugging with me - very nicely and easily. She was really good. She knocked me out. I mean it. I was half in love with her by the time we sat down. That's the thing about girls. Every time they do something pretty, even if they're not very beautiful, or even if they're sort of stupid, you fall half in love with them, and then yon never know where the hell you are. Girls. Jesus Christ. They can drive you crazy.
They didn't invite me to sit down at their table - mostly because they were too ignorant - but I sat down anyway. I tried to get them in a little intelligent conversation, but it was practically impossible. It was also impossible to tell which was the stupidest of the three of them. And they were looking all around the goddam room all the time hoping to see a flock of goddam movie stars any minute. They probably thought that movie stars always hung out in the Lavender Room when they came to New York, instead of the Stork Club or El Morocco and all.
I danced with them all - the whole three of them - one at a time. The ugly one, Laverne, wasn't too bad a dancer, but the other one, old Marty, was murder. Old Marty was like dragging the Statue of Liberty around the floor. The only way I could even half enjoy myself dragging her around was if I amused myself a little. So I told her that I just saw Gary Cooper, the movie star, on the other side of the floor.
"Where?" she asked me - excited as hell. "Where?"
"Aw, you just missed him. He just went out. Why didn't you look when I told you?"
She practically stopped dancing, and started looking over everybody's heads in the hope of seeing him. "Oh, shoot!" she said. I was sorry as hell that I had kidded her. Some people you shouldn't kid, even if they deserve it.
But when we got back to the table, old Marty told the other two that Gary Cooper had just gone out. They nearly committed suicide when they heard that. They got all excited and asked Marty if she'd seen him and all. Old Marty said she'd only caught a glimpse of him. That killed me.
The bar was closing up for the night, so I bought them all drinks before it closed. They were a very boring company, and all the time they were looking for movie stars. They hardly talked - even to each other. All of a sudden, when they finished their drink, all three of them stood up on me and said they had to get to bed. They didn't even offer to pay for the drinks they had before I joined them. Of course, I wasn't going to let them pay, but they could at least offer. I didn't care much, though. They were so ignorant. So we said good-by and all.
I left the Lavender Room pretty soon after that. If you can't buy some liquor and get drunk, you won't stay long in any night club in the world, only if you're with some girl that really knocks you out.

Chapter 11

All of a sudden, I started thinking about old Jane Gallagher again. I sat down in this stinking chair in the lobby and thought about her and Stradlater sitting in that goddam Ed Banky's car, and though I was pretty damn sure old Stradlater hadn't given her the time - I know old Jane well - I still couldn't stop thinking about her. I really knew her very well. I mean, besides checkers, she was quite fond of all athletic sports, and after I got to know her, the whole summer long we played tennis together almost every morning and golf almost every afternoon.
This is how I met her. This Doberman pinscher of hers often relieved himself on our lawn, and my mother got very annoyed about it. She called up Jane's mother and made a big think about it. My mother can make a very big stink about that kind of stuff. A couple of days later I saw Jane by the swimming pool, at the club, and I said hello to her. I knew that she lived in the house next to ours, but I'd never conversed with her before or anything. She gave me the big freeze when I said hello that day. I had a helluva time convincing her that I didn't give a good goddamn where her dog relieved himself. Anyway, after that, Jane and I got to be friends and all.
She was a funny girl, old Jane. I wouldn't exactly describe her as really beautiful. She knocked me out, though. She was always reading, and she read very good books. She read a lot of poetry and all.
My mother didn't like her too much. I mean my mother always thought that Jane and her mother were sort of snubbing her or something when they didn't say hello. My mother didn't think Jane was pretty, even. But I did.
I remember this one afternoon when old Jane and I got close to necking. It was only once. It was raining like hell and we were out on her porch. We were playing checkers. And all of a sudden this booze hound, her mother's husband, came out on the porch and asked Jane if there were any cigarettes in the house. Old Jane didn't answer him. So the guy asked her again, but she still didn't answer him. She didn't even look up from the game. Finally the guy went inside the house. When he did, I asked Jane what the hell was going on. She didn't even answer me, then. Then all of a sudden, this tear dropped down on the checkerboard. I don't know why, but it awfully worried me. So I went over and sat down next to her. Then she really started to cry, and the next thing I knew, I was kissing her all over - anywhere - her eyes, her nose, her forehead, her eyebrows and all, her ears - her whole face except her mouth and all. She sort of didn't let me get to her mouth. Anyway, it was the closest we ever got to necking. After a while, she got up and went in and put on this red and white sweater she had, that knocked me out, and we went to a goddam movie. I asked her, on the way, if Mr Cudahy - that was the booze hound's name - had ever tried to get wise with her. She said no, though. I never did find out what the hell was the matter. With some girls you practically never find out what's the matter.
Anyway, that's what I was thinking about while I sat in that stinking chair in the lobby. Old Jane. Every time I got to the part about her with Stradlater in that damn Ed Banky's car, it almost drove me crazy. I knew she wouldn't let him do it with her, but it drove me crazy anyway. I don't even like to talk about it, if you want to know the truth.
All of a sudden I wanted to get the hell out of the place. It was too depressing. And I wasn't tired or anything. So I went up to my room and put on my coat. I went down in the elevator again and got a cab and told the driver to take me down to Ernie's. Ernie's is this night club in Greenwich Village. Ernie's a big fat colored guy that plays the piano. And he can really play the piano.

Chapter 12

Though it was Saturday night, it was so quiet and lonesome in the city. I didn't see hardly anybody on the street. From time to time I just saw a man and a girl crossing a street, with their arms around each other and all, or a group of hoodlumy-looking guys and their dates, who were laughing like hyenas at something that wasn't funny at all, I'm sure. I felt so lonesome and depressed. I wanted to go home and shoot the bull for a while with old Phoebe. But finally, after some time, the cab driver and I sort of started a conversation. His name was Horwitz. I asked him about the ducks that swim around in the take in Central Park.
"Hey, Horwitz," I said. "Do you know where they go in the wintertime, by any chance?"
"Where who goes?"
"The ducks. Do you know, by any chance? Does somebody come around in a truck or something and take them away, or do they fly away by themselves - go south or something?"
Old Horwitz was a very impatient-type guy. He wasn't a bad guy, though. "How the hell should I know?" he said. "How the hell should I know a stupid thing like that?"
"Well, don't get sore about it," I said. He was sore about it or something.
"Who's sore? Nobody's sore."
I stopped having a conversation with him, if he was going to get so damn touchy about it. But he started it up again himself. He said, "The fish don't go any place. They stay right where they are, the fish. Right in the goddam lake."
"The fish - that's different. The fish is different. I'm talking about the ducks" I said.
"What's different about it? Nothin's different about it," Horwitz said. When he talked, he sounded sore about something. "It's worse for the fish, the winter and all, than it is for the ducks, for Chrissake. Use your head, for Chrissake."
I didn't say anything for about a minute. Then I said, "All right. What do they do, the fish and all, when that whole little lake's a solid block of ice, and people are skating on it and all?"
Old Horwitz yelled at me, "What the hellaya do you mean what do they do? They stay right where they are, for Chrissake."
"They can't just ignore the ice. They can't just ignore it."
"Who's ignoring it? Nobody's ignoring it!" Horwitz said. He got so damn excited and all, I was afraid he was going to drive the cab right into a lamppost or something. "They live right in the goddamn ice. It's their nature, for Chrissake. They get frozen right in one position for the whole winter."
"What do they eat, then? I mean if they're frozen solid, they can't swim around looking for food and all."
"Their bodies, for Chrissake, take in nutrition and all, right through the goddam seaweed and crap that's in the ice. They got their pores open the whole time. That's their nature, for Chrissake. See what I mean?"
"Oh," I said. I let it drop. I was afraid he was going to break the damn taxi up or something.
Though it was so late, old Ernie's was jam-packed. Mostly with prep school jerks and college jerks. Almost every damn school in the world gets out earlier for Christmas vacation than the schools I go to. It was pretty quiet, though, because Ernie was playing the piano. He had a big damn mirror in front of the piano, with this big spotlight on him, so that everybody could watch his face while he played. You couldn't see his fingers while he played - just his big old face. Big deal. I didn't very much like the manner of his playing that time, he was showing off too much. But the crowd, when he was finished, went mad. People always clap for the wrong things. Anyway, when he finished, and everybody was clapping their heads off, old Ernie turned around on his stool and gave this very phony, humble bow. As if he was a helluva humble guy, besides being a terrific piano player. It made me feel depressed and lousy again, and I damn near got my coat back and went back to the hotel, but it was too early and I didn't very much want to be all alone.
I ordered a Scotch and soda, which is my favorite drink, next to frozen Daiquiris. If you were only around six years old, you could get liquor at Ernie's, the place was so dark and all, and besides, nobody cared how old you were. You could even be a dope fiend and nobody would care.
I was surrounded by jerks. I'm not kidding. At the table on my left, there was this funny-looking guy and this funny-looking girl. They were around my age, or maybe just a little older. It was funny. I listened to their conversation for a while. He was telling her about some football game in every detail of it. It was so boring. And his date wasn't even interested in the goddam game, but she was even uglier than he was, so she had to listen. Really ugly girls have it tough. I feel so sorry for them sometimes. On my right, the conversation was even worse. On my right there was this very Yale-looking guy, beautifully dressed and all. My father says that I should go to Yale or to Princeton, but I hate those Ivy League colleges. Anyway, this Yale-looking guy had a terrific-looking girl with him. But the conversation they were having! He was giving her a feel under the table, and at the same time telling her all about some guy in his dorm that had eaten a whole bottle of aspirin and nearly committed suicide. His date was saying to him, "How horrible... Don't, darling. Please, don't. Not here." Imagine giving somebody a feel and telling them about a guy committing suicide at the same time! They killed me.
All of a sudden, this girl came up to me and said, "Holden Caulfield!" Her name was Lillian Simmons. She was my brother D.B.'s girl for a while. She had very big boobs. She had some Navy officer with her.
"Hi," I said.
"How wonderful to see you!" old Lillian Simmons said. Strictly a phony. "How's your big brother?" That's all she really wanted to know.
"He's fine. He's in Hollywood."
"In Hollywood! How wonderful! What's he doing? "
"I don't know. Writing," I said. I didn't want to talk about it. You could tell that she thought it was a big deal, his being in Hollywood. Almost everybody thinks so. Those people who've never read any of his stories. I hate it.
"How exciting," old Lillian said. "Holden, come join us," old Lillian said. "Bring your drink."
"I was just leaving," I told her. "I have to meet somebody." You could tell she was just trying to get in good with me because of my brother.
"Well, all right. Tell your big brother I hate him, when you see him."
Then she left.
I wanted to hear old Ernie's playing, but after I'd told her that I had to meet somebody, I didn't have any goddamn choice except to leave. It made me mad, though, when I was getting my coat. People are always ruining things for you.

Chapter 13

I walked all the way back to the hotel because I didn't want to take another stinking cab. There was almost no snow on the sidewalks. But it was very cold, and I took my red hunting hat out of my pocket and put it on. I wished I knew who had stolen my gloves at Pencey, because my hands were freezing. Even if I had known, I would not have done much about it. I'm one of these very yellow guys. I try not to show it, but I am. For example, if I had known who had stolen my gloves, I probably would have gone down to the crook's room and said, "Okay. How about giving those gloves back to me?" Then the crook that had stolen them probably would have said, "What gloves?" Then I probably would have gone in his closet and found the gloves somewhere. I would have taken them out and showed them to the guy and said, "These are your goddam gloves?" Then the crook probably would have said, "I never saw those gloves before in my life. If they're yours, take them. I don't want the goddam things." I would feel that I ought to hit the guy in the jaw or something - break his goddam jaw. Only, I wouldn't have the guts to do it. I might say something very snotty instead of hitting him in the jaw. Then he would probably say, "Listen, Caulfield. Are you calling me a crook?" Then, instead of saying, "Yes, you're a crook!" I probably would say, "All I know is my goddam gloves were in your goddam galoshes." Right away then, the guy would know for sure that I wasn't going to hit him, and he probably would say, "Are you calling me a thief?" Then I probably would say, "Nobody's calling anybody a thief. All I know is my gloves were in your goddam galoshes." Finally, I would leave his room without hitting him. It's no fun to be yellow. Maybe I'm not all yellow. I don't know. I think maybe I'm just partly yellow and partly the guy that doesn't feel sorry very much if he loses his gloves. Some guys spend days looking for something they lost. One of my troubles is, I never care too much when I lose something. Maybe that's why I'm partly yellow. It's no excuse, though. What you should be is not yellow at all. If you sort of feel that you ought to hit somebody in the jaw, you should do it. I'm just no good at it, though. I hate fist fights.
These thoughts about my gloves and my yellowness made me even more depressed. When I got to the hotel, the whole lobby was empty. It smelled like fifty million dead cigars. I wasn't sleepy or anything, but I was feeling sort of lousy. Depressed and all. I almost wished I was dead.
Then, all of a sudden, I got in this big mess.
When I got in the elevator, the elevator guy asked me if I was interested in having a good time. I didn't understand at first that he was offering to send a prostitute to my room.
"Okay," I said. It was against my principles and all, but I was feeling so depressed that I didn't even think. That's the whole trouble. When you're feeling very depressed, you can't even think.
When I told him my room number, I was already sort of sorry that I had agreed to the whole thing, but it was too late now.
"Okay. I'll send a girl up in about fifteen minutes." He opened the doors and I got out.
"Hey, is she good-looking?" I asked him. "I don't want any old bag."
"No old bag. Don't worry about it, chief."
"Who do I pay?"
"Her," he said. "Let's go, chief." He shut the doors, practically right in my face.
I went to my room and put on another clean shirt. Then I brushed my teeth. I knew I didn't have to get all dolled up for a prostitute or anything, but it sort of gave me something to do. I was a little nervous. I was starting to feel pretty sexy and all, but I was a little nervous anyway. If you want to know the truth, I'm a virgin. I really am. I've had a lot of opportunities to lose my virginity and all, but I've never got around to it yet. Something always happens. For example, if you're at a girl's house, her parents always come home at the wrong time - or you're afraid that they will come. Or if you're in the back seat of somebody's car, there's always somebody's date in the front seat - some girl, I mean - that always wants to know what's going on all over the whole goddam car and turns around all the time. Anyway, something always happens. The thing is, most of the time when you're coming pretty close to doing it with a girl - a girl that isn't a prostitute or anything, I mean - she is always telling you to stop. Most guys don't. The trouble with me is that I stop. You never know whether they really want to stop, or whether they're just scared as hell, or whether they're just telling you to stop so that if you do go through with it, the blame will be on you, not them. I don't know. They tell me to stop, so I stop.
Anyway, while I was putting on another clean shirt, I decided that this was my big chance, in a way. I thought if she was a prostitute and all, I could get in some practice on her, in case I ever get married or anything. I worry about that stuff sometimes. I read this book once, at the Whooton School, that had this very sophisticated, suave, sexy guy in it. Monsieur Blanchard was his name, I can still remember. It was a lousy book, but this Blanchard guy was pretty good. He had this big chateau and all on the Riviera, in Europe. He said, in this one part, that a woman's body is like a violin and all, and that it takes a terrific musician to play it right. I wouldn't mind being pretty good at that stuff.
Soon somebody knocked on the door, and I went to open it. When I opened the door, this prostitute was standing there. She was sort of a blonde, but you could tell she dyed her hair. She wasn't any old bag, though. "How do you do, come in, won't you?" I said. Suave as hell.
She came in and took her coat off right away and sort of threw it on the bed. She had on a green dress underneath. Then she sort of sat down on the chair, crossed her legs and started jiggling this one foot up and down. She was very nervous, for a prostitute. She really was. I think it was because she was young as hell. She was around my age. I sat down in the big chair, next to her, and offered her a cigarette. "I don't smoke," she said.
"Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Jim Steele," I said.
"You got a watch on you?" she said. She didn't care what the hell my name was, naturally. "Hey, how old are you, anyways?"
"Me? Twenty-two."
"Like fun you are."
It was a funny thing to say. It sounded like a real kid. You'd think a prostitute and all would say "Like hell you are" or "Cut the crap" instead of "Like fun you are."
"How old are you?" I asked her.
"Old enough to know better," she said. She was really witty. "You got a watch on you?" she asked me again, and then she stood up and pulled her dress over her head.
She did it so suddenly and all. I know you can feel pretty sexy when somebody gets up and pulls their dress over their head, but I didn't feel sexy at all. I felt much more depressed than sexy.
I was feeling very strange. She had only a pink slip on. It was really quite embarrassing.
I asked her name. "Sunny," she said. "Let's go, hey."
"Don't you want to chat for a while?" I asked her. It was very childish, but I was feeling so damn strange. "Are you in a very big hurry?"
She looked at me like I was a madman. "What the heck you want to talk about?" she said.
"I don't know. Nothing special. I just thought perhaps you might care to chat for a while."
She sat down in the chair next to the desk again. She didn't like it, though, you could tell. She started jiggling her foot again - boy, she was a nervous girl.
"Listen, if you're going to talk, do it. I got things to do."
I thought of asking her how she got to be a prostitute and all, but I was afraid to ask her.
"You don't come from New York, do you?" I said finally. That's all I could think of.
"Hollywood," she said. Then she asked me if I had a hanger for her dress.
"Sure," I said right away. I was only too glad to get up and do something. I took her dress over to the closet and hung it up for her. It was funny. It made me feel sort of sad when I hung it up. I thought about how she went in a store and bought it, and nobody in the store knew that she was a prostitute and all. The salesman probably just thought that she was a nice girl when she bought it. It made me feel sad as hell - I don't know why.
I sat down again and tried to continue the conversation. She was a lousy conversationalist. "Do you work every night?" I asked her - it sounded sort of awful, after I'd said it.
"Yeah." She was walking all around the room.
"What do you do during the day?"
"Sleep. Go to the movies." She looked at me. "Let's go, hey. I haven't got all -"
"Look," I said. "I don't feel very much like myself tonight. I'll pay you and all, but do you mind very much if we don't do it?" The trouble was - I just didn't want to do it. I felt more depressed than sexy, if you want to know the truth. She was depressing. Her green dress and all. And besides, I don't think I could ever do it with somebody that sits in a stupid movie all day long. I really don't think I could.
She came over to me and looked at me as if she didn't believe me. "What's the matter?" she said.
"Nothing's the matter." Boy, was I getting nervous. "The thing is, I had an operation very recently."
"Yeah? Where?"
"On my what do you call it - my clavichord."
"Yeah? Where the hell's that?"
"The clavichord?" I said. "Well, actually, it's in the spinal canal."
"Yeah?" she said. "That's tough." Then she sat down on my goddam lap. "You're cute."
She made me so nervous, I just went on with my lies. "I'm still recovering," I told her.
"You look like a guy in the movies. You know. The one that was Melvine Douglas's kid brother? That falls off this boat? You know who I mean."
"No, I don't. I go to the movies as seldom as I can," I said.
"Do you mind going away?" I said. "I'm not in the mood, I just told you. I just had an operation. I said that I would pay you for coming and all. I'm sorry. If you'll just get up a second, I'll get my wallet. I mean it."
She was sore as hell, but she got up off my goddam lap so that I could go over and get my wallet off the chiffonier. I took out a five-dollar bill and handed it to her. "Thanks a lot," I told her.
She sort of shrugged her shoulders, and said, very cold, "Do you mind getting me my dress? Or will it be too much trouble?"
I went and got her dress for her. She put it on and all, and then she picked up her coat off the bed. "So long, crumb-bum," she said.
"So long," I said. I didn't thank her or anything. I'm glad that I didn't.

Chapter 14

After old Sunny was gone, I sat in the chair for a while and smoked a couple of cigarettes. It was getting daylight outside. I felt so depressed, you can't imagine.
Finally, though, I got undressed and got in bed. I wanted to pray or something, when I was in bed, but I couldn't do it. In the first place, I'm sort of an atheist. I like Jesus and all, but I don't care too much for most of the other stuff in the Bible. Take the Disciples, for example. They were all right after Jesus was dead and all, but while He was alive, they were about as much use to Him as a hole in the head. They let Him down all the time. When I was at Whooton School, I argued a lot about the Bible, with this boy, Arthur Childs. He read the Bible all the time. He was a very nice kid, and I liked him, but I could never agree with him on a lot of stuff in the Bible, especially the Disciples. He said that if I didn't like the Disciples, then I didn't like Jesus and all. He said that because Jesus chose the Disciples, we must like them. I said I knew that He chose them, but that He chose them at random. I said that He didn't have time to go around analyzing everybody. I said that I wasn't blaming Jesus or anything. It wasn't His fault that He didn't have any time. I asked old Childs if he thought that Judas, who betrayed Jesus and all, went to Hell after he committed suicide. Childs said that it was certainly so. I disagreed with him. I was sure that Jesus never sent old Judas to Hell. I still am. I think any one of the Disciples would have sent him to Hell and all - and fast, too - but I'm sure that Jesus didn't do it.
Anyway, when I was in bed, I couldn't pray. Every time I started, I saw old Sunny and remembered that she called me a crumb-bum. Finally, I sat up in bed and smoked another cigarette.
All of a sudden, while I was lying there smoking, somebody knocked on the door. I don't know how I knew, but I knew who it was. I'm psychic.
"Who's there?" I said. I was pretty scared. I'm very yellow about those things.
I got out of bed and opened the door. Old Sunny and Maurice, the elevator guy, were standing there.
"What's the matter? What do you want?" I said. Boy, my voice was shaking like hell.
"Nothing much," old Maurice said. "Just five bucks."
I told him that I had already paid Sunny. But old Maurice said that I owed them five bucks more.
I refused to give them the money. Then Sunny said, "Hey, Maurice. Want me to get his wallet?"
"Leave my wallet alone!"
"I already got it," Sunny said. She waved five bucks at me. "See? All I'm taking is the five you owe me. I'm no crook."
All of a sudden I started to cry. I would give anything if I hadn't, but I did. "No, you're no crooks," I said. "You're just stealing five -"
"Shut up," old Maurice said, and gave me a shove.
"Leave him alone, hey," Sunny said.
"I'm coming," old Maurice said. But he didn't.
I told him he was a goddam dirty moron. "What's that? What am I?" he said.
I was still sort of crying. I was so damn mad and nervous and all. "You're a dirty moron," I said. "You're a stupid stealing moron, and in about two years you'll be one of those scraggy guys that come up to you on the street and ask for a dime for coffee."
Then he hit me. I felt this terrific punch in my stomach.
I dropped down on the floor. They both went out the door and shut it. Then I stayed on the floor a fairly long time, sort of the way I did with Stradlater. Only, this time I thought I was dying. I could hardly breathe. When I finally got up, I had to walk to the bathroom all doubled up and holding onto my stomach and all.
But I'm crazy. I swear to God I am. About halfway to the bathroom, I sort of started to pretend that I had a bullet in my guts. Old Maurice had shot me. Now I was on the way to the bathroom to have some bourbon or something to steady my nerves and help me really go into action. I imagined that I was a film hero, coming out of the goddam bathroom, dressed and all, with my automatic in my pocket, and staggering around a little bit. Then I would walk downstairs, instead of using the elevator. I would walk down a few floors - holding onto my guts, blood would be flowing all over the place - and then I would ring the elevator bell. As soon as old Maurice opened the doors, he would see me with the automatic in my hand and he would start screaming at me to leave him alone. But I would shoot him anyway. Six shots right through his fat hairy belly. Then I would throw my automatic down the elevator shaft - after I had wiped off all the fingerprints and all. Then I would crawl back to my room and call up Jane and she would come over and bandage up my guts. She would hold a cigarette so that I could smoke while I was bleeding and all.
The goddam movies. They can ruin you. I'm not kidding.
I stayed in the bathroom for about an hour, taking a bath and all. Then l got back in bed. I felt awful. I thought of committing suicide. I wanted to jump out the window. I probably would have done it, too, if I had been sure that somebody would cover me up as soon as I landed and nobody would look at me when I was all bloody. Finally, I fell asleep.

Chapter 15

It was only around ten o'clock when I woke up. I had a cigarette and felt pretty hungry at once. I only ate those two hamburgers in Agerstown. That was a long time ago. I wanted to call room service and ask them to send up some breakfast, but I was sort of afraid that they might send it up with old Maurice. If you think I was dying to see him again, you're crazy. So I just lay in bed for a while and smoked another cigarette. I wanted to know if old Jane was at home yet and all, but I wasn't in the mood to use a telephone.
Instead, I gave old Sally Hayes a buzz. I wasn't too crazy about her, but I'd known her for years. She knew quite a lot about the theater and plays and literature and all that stuff, and I thought for some time that she was quite intelligent. My big trouble is, I always sort of think that a girl I'm necking is a pretty intelligent person.
Anyway, I gave her a buzz. We talked a bit and I invited her to a matinee. She said that she would like to go. Then she told me about some guy who was calling her up night and day. Night and day - that killed me. Then she told me about some other guy, some West Point cadet, that was cutting his throat over her too. Big deal. I told her to meet me under the clock at the Biltmore at two o'clock, and not to be late, because the show probably started at two-thirty. She was always late. Then I hung up. She was so stupid, but she was very good-looking.
After I made the date with old Sally, I got out of bed and got dressed and packed my bag. Then I went down in the elevator and checked out.
I got a cab outside the hotel, but I didn't have any idea where I was going. It was only Sunday, and I couldn't go home till Wednesday - or Tuesday the soonest. So I told the driver to take me to Grand Central Station. It was right near the Biltmore, where I was meeting Sally later, and I decided to leave my bags at the checkroom, then get some breakfast. I was sort of hungry. While I was in the cab, I took out my wallet and sort of counted my money. There was not very much money in it. I had spent a very large sum in about two lousy weeks. I always spend a lot of money. What I don't spend, I lose. Half the time I sort of even forget to pick up my change, at restaurants and nightclubs and all. It drives my parents crazy. You can't blame them. My father's quite rich, though. He's a corporation lawyer. Those boys really haul it in.
After I left my bags at the checkroom at the station, I went into this little sandwich bar and had breakfast. I had quite a large breakfast, for me - orange juice, bacon and eggs, toast and coffee. Usually I just drink some orange juice. I'm a very light eater. I really am. That's why I'm so damn thin. When I'm out somewhere, I generally just eat a Swiss cheese sandwich and a malted milk. It isn't much, but you get quite a lot of vitamins in the malted milk. H. V. Caulfield. Holden Vitamin Caulfield.
While I was eating my eggs, these two nuns with suitcases and all came in and sat down next to me at the counter. I helped them with their suitcases. They had these very inexpensive-looking suitcases. It isn't important, I know, but I hate it when somebody has cheap suitcases. It sounds terrible to say it, but I can even get to hate somebody if they have cheap suitcases with them. Something happened once. For a while when I was at Elkton Hills, I roomed with this boy, Dick Slagle. He had these very inexpensive suitcases. He kept them under the bed, instead of on the rack, so that nobody could see them standing next to mine. It depressed holy hell out of me. Mine were real leather and all that crap, and they cost quite a pretty penny. But it was a funny thing. Here's what happened. I finally put my suitcases under my bed, instead of on the rack, so that old Slagle wouldn't get a goddam inferiority complex about it. But here's what he did. The day after I put mine under my bed, he took them out and put them back on the rack because people could think that my bags were his. He really wanted that. He was a very funny guy, that way. He was always saying snotty things about my suitcases, that they were too new and bourgeois. That was his favorite goddam word. He read it somewhere or heard it somewhere. Everything I had was bourgeois as hell. Even my fountain pen was bourgeois. He borrowed it off me all the time, but it was bourgeois anyway. We only roomed together about two months. Then we both asked for different rooms. And the funny thing was, I sort of missed him after that, because he had a helluva good sense of humor and we had a lot of fun sometimes.
Anyway, these two nuns were sitting next to me, and we sort of started a conversation. One of them had a straw basket.
Nuns and Salvation Army babes usually collect money with such baskets around Christmas time. I offered to give them ten bucks as my contribution. They were not sure that I could afford it, but finally, they took the money, and they thanked me so much that it was embarrassing. The nun with the basket had a pretty nice smile when she looked at you. She had a big nose, and she had on those glasses with sort of iron rims that aren't too attractive, but she had a helluva kind face.
They were eating for breakfast only toast and coffee. That depressed me. I hate it if I'm eating bacon and eggs or something and somebody else is only eating toast and coffee.
I asked them where they were going. They said they were schoolteachers and that they'd just come from Chicago and that they were going to start teaching at some convent in New York. One of them, with the iron glasses, taught English and her friend taught history and American government. Then I was curious to know what the nun who taught English, being a nun and all, thought when she read certain books for English. Books not necessarily with a lot of sexy stuff in them, but books with lovers and all in them. I didn't say anything, though, naturally. I only said that English was my best subject.
"Oh, really? Oh, I'm so glad!" the one with the glasses, that taught English, said. "What have you read this year? I'd be very interested to know." She was really nice.
"Well, most of the time we were on the Anglo-Saxons. Beowulf, and old Grendel, and Lord Randal My Son, and all those things. But we had to read other books, too. I read The Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy, and Romeo and Juliet and Julius - "
"Oh, Romeo and Juliet! Lovely! Didn't you just love it?" She certainly didn't sound much like a nun.
"Yes. I did. I liked it a lot. There were a few things I didn't like about it, but it was quite moving, on the whole."
"What didn't you like about it? Can you remember?"
"Well, I'm not too crazy about Romeo and Juliet," I said. "I mean I like them, but - I don't know. They are pretty annoying sometimes. I mean I felt much sorrier when old Mercutio was killed than when Romeo and Juliet died. The thing is, I never liked Romeo too much after Mercutio was killed by that Other man - Juliet's cousin, Tybalt," I said. "It was Romeo's fault. I liked old Mercutio best of all in the play. He was very smart and entertaining and all. The thing is, it drives me crazy If somebody is killed - especially somebody very smart and entertaining and all - and it's somebody else's fault. Romeo and Juliet, at least it was their own fault."
Then the other nun said that it was time to leave. I wanted to pay for their breakfast but they didn't let me do it.

Chapter 16

I was to meet old Sally at two o'clock. I finished my breakfast at around noon. So I took a long walk. I was thinking about those two nuns. I was thinking about that old straw basket with which they went around collecting money when they weren't teaching at school. I tried to imagine my mother or somebody, or my aunt, or Sally Hayes's crazy mother, standing outside some department store and collecting money for poor people in an old straw basket. It was hard to imagine. Not so much my mother, but those other two. My aunt does a lot of Red Cross work and all - but she's very well-dressed and all, and when she does that work she's always very well-dressed and has lipstick on and all that crap. I couldn't imagine her in black clothes and no lipstick while she was doing it. And old Sally Hayes's mother. Jesus Christ. She could go around with a basket collecting money only if everybody kissed her ass for her when they made a contribution. If they just put their money in her basket, then walked away without saying anything to her, ignoring her and all, she would stop in about an hour. She would get bored. She would return her basket and then go someplace swanky for lunch. That's why I liked those nuns. I was sure that they never went anywhere swanky for lunch. It made me so damn sad when I thought about it, that they never went anywhere swanky for lunch or anything. I knew it wasn't too important, but it made me sad anyway.
I walked toward Broadway. I wanted to find a record store that was open on Sunday because I wanted to get this record Tor Phoebe, called "Little Shirley Beans." It was very hard to get this record. It was about a little kid that didn't go out of the house because two of her front teeth were out and she was ashamed to go out. I knew old Phoebe would like it. It was a very old, terrific record that this colored girl singer, Estelle Fletcher, made about twenty years ago. It was one of the best records I ever heard. My plan was to buy it in some store that was open on Sunday and then go to the park. It was Sunday and Phoebe goes rollerskating in the park on Sundays quite often. I knew her favorite place in the park.
The weather was still not very good for walking. But there was one nice thing. In front of me a family were walking - a father, a mother, and a little kid about six years old. I could say that they just came out of some church. They looked sort of poor. He and his wife were just walking along, talking, not paying any attention to their kid. The kid was swell. He was walking in the street, instead of on the sidewalk, but right next to the curb, and the whole time he was singing. He was singing that song, "If a body catch a body coming through the rye." He had a pretty little voice, too. He was just singing for the hell of it. The cars zoomed by, brakes screeched all over the place, his parents paid no attention to him, and he was walking next to the curb and singing "If a body catch a body coming through the rye." It made me feel better. It made me feel not so depressed any more.
It was Sunday, and only about twelve o'clock, but Broadway was full of people. Everybody was on their way to the movies - the Paramount or the Astor or the Strand or the Capitol or one of those crazy places. Everybody was all dressed up, because it was Sunday, and that made it worse. But the worst thing was that they all wanted to go to the movies. I can understand If somebody goes to the movies because there's nothing else to do, but when somebody really wants to go, and even walks last so as to get there quicker, then it depresses hell out of me. Especially if I see millions of people standing in one of those long, terrible lines, waiting with this terrific patience when they can buy tickets. I wanted to get off that goddamn Broadway. I was lucky. I saw a record store and I went into it, and they had a copy of "Little Shirley Beans." It made me so happy all of a sudden. I wanted to get to the park at once and find old Phoebe, and give it to her.
When I came out of the record store, I decided to give old Jane a buzz and see if she was home for vacation yet. So I went in a phone booth and called her up. But her mother answered the phone, so I had to hang up. I didn't want to have a long conversation and all with her. I'm not crazy about talking to girls' mothers on the phone anyway.
I still had to get those damn theater tickets. So I went and bought two tickets for I Know My Love. I didn't much want to see it, but I knew that old Sally, the queen of the phonies, would be beyond herself with joy when I told her that I had tickets for that, because the famous actor and actress, the Lunts, were in it and all. She liked such shows, with famous actors. I don't. I don't like any shows very much, if you want to know the truth. They're not as bad as movies, but they're certainly nothing to rave about. In the first place, I hate actors. They never act like people. They just think that they do. And if any actor's really good, you can always see that he knows that he's good, and that spoils it. You take Sir Laurence Olivier, for example. I saw him in Hamlet, D.B. took Phoebe and me to see it last year. He'd already seen it, and he spoke about it at lunch so well that I was anxious as hell to see it, too. But I didn't enjoy it much. I just don't see what's so wonderful about Sir Laurence Olivier, that's all. He has a terrific voice, and he's a helluva handsome guy, and he's very nice when he's walking or dueling or something, but he wasn't at all Hamlet. He was too much like a goddamn general, instead of a sad, screwed-up type guy. The best part in the whole show was when old Ophelia's brother - the one that gets in the duel with Hamlet at the very end - was going away and his father was giving him a lot of advice. While the father was giving him a lot of advice, old Ophelia was sort of horsing around with her brother, taking his dagger out of the holster, and teasing him and all while he was trying to look interested in the bull his father was shooting. That was nice. But you don't see that kind of stuff much. And old Phoebe only liked it when Hamlet patted this dog on the head. She thought that was funny and nice, and it was. I think I must read that play by myself. The trouble with me is, I always have to read that stuff by myself. If an actor acts it out, I hardly listen, because I'm always afraid that he is going to do something phony every minute.
After I got the tickets to the Lunts' show, I took a cab up to the park. It was lousy in the park. The sun still wasn't out, and there was so much dog crap and cigar butts from old men, and the benches were all wet. It made you depressed. It didn't look at all like Christmas was coming soon. I went to the bandstand where Phoebe usually goes when she's in the park. When I was a kid, I also liked to skate there. But when I got there, I didn't see her around anywhere. I saw one kid about her age, though, sitting on a bench all by herself, tightening her skate. So I sat down next to her and asked her, "Do you know Phoebe Caulfield, by any chance?"
"You know Phoebe?"
"Yeah, I'm her brother. You know where she is?"
"She's probably in the museum. We went last Saturday," the kid said.
"Which museum?" I asked her.
She shrugged her shoulders, sort of. "I don't know," she said. "The museum."
"I know, but the one where the pictures are, or the one where the Indians are?"
"The one where the Indians."
"Thanks a lot," I said. I got up and started to go, but then I suddenly remembered it was Sunday. "This is Sunday," I told the kid.
She looked up at me. "Oh. Then she isn't."
She was having a helluva time tightening her skate. She didn't have any gloves on or anything and her hands were all red and cold. I helped her. She thanked me and all when I had tightened it for her. She was a very nice, polite little kid. God, I love it when a kid is nice and polite when you tighten their skate for them or something. Most kids are. They really are.
I walked all the way through the park over to the Museum of Natural History though it was Sunday and Phoebe wouldn't be there with her class. I knew that whole museum routine like a book. Phoebe went to the same school where I went when I was a kid, and we went to that museum all the time. We had this teacher, Miss Aigletinger. She took us there damn near every Saturday. Sometimes we looked at the animals and sometimes we looked at the stuff the Indians had made in ancient times. Pottery and straw baskets and all stuff like that. I get very happy when I think about it. Even now. After we looked at all the Indian stuff, usually we went to see some movie in this big auditorium. Columbus. They were always showing Columbus discovering America. How he had one helluva time with getting money for the ships from old Ferdinand and Isabella, then the sailors' mutiny and all. Nobody gave too much of a damn about old Columbus, but you always had a lot of candy and gum and stuff with you, and that auditorium had such a nice smell. It always smelled as if it was raining outside, even if it wasn't, and you were in the only nice, dry, cosy place in the world. I loved that damn museum.
Then a funny thing happened. When I got to the museum, all of a sudden I felt that I didn't want to go inside. So I got a cab and went to the Biltmore. I didn't very much want to go. But I had that damn date with Sally.

Chapter 17

I got there early, so I just sat down on one of those leather couches right near the clock in the lobby and watched the girls. A lot of schools were home for vacation already, and there were about a million girls sitting and standing around waiting for their dates. Girls with their legs crossed, girls with their legs not crossed, girls with terrific legs, girls with lousy legs, girls that looked swell. It was really nice sightseeing, if you know what I mean. In a way, it was sort of depressing, too, because you thought all the time what the hell would happen to all of them. When they got out of school and college, I mean. You thought that most of them would probably marry stupid guys. Guys that always talk about how many miles they get to a gallon in their goddam cars. Guys that get sore and childish as hell if you win at golf, or even just some stupid game like ping-pong. Guys that never read books. Guys that are very boring... But I have to be careful about that. I mean about calling certain guys bores. I don't understand boring guys. I really don't. When I was at Elkton Hills, I roomed for about two months with this boy, Harris Mackim. He was very intelligent and all, but he was one of the biggest bores I ever met. He never stopped talking, practically. He never stopped talking, and he never said anything you wanted to hear in the first place. But he could do one thing. The sonuvabitch could whistle better than anybody I ever heard. He could even whistle classical stuff, but most of the time he just whistled jazz. Naturally, I never told him that he was a terrific whistler. I mean you don't just go up to somebody and say, "You're a terrific whistler." But I roomed with him for about two whole months, even though he bored me till I was half crazy, just because he was such a terrific whistler, the best I ever heard. So I don't know about bores. Maybe you shouldn't feel too sorry if you see some swell girl getting married to them. They don't hurt anybody, most of them, and maybe they're secretly all terrific whistlers or something. Who the hell knows? Not me.
Finally, old Sally came. She looked terrific. She had on this black coat and sort of a black beret. She hardly ever wore a hat, but that beret looked nice. The funny thing is that when I saw her I felt like marrying her. I'm crazy. I didn't even like her much, and yet all of a sudden I felt like I was in love with her and wanted to marry her. I swear to God I'm crazy. I admit it.
"Holden!" she said. "It's wonderful to see you! It's been ages." She had one of these very loud, embarrassing voices when you met her somewhere, it always annoyed me.
"Swell to see you," I said. I meant it, too. "How are you, anyway?"
"Absolutely wonderful. Am I late?"
I told her no, but she was around ten minutes late, as a matter of fact. But I didn't give a damn. All that crap they have in cartoons in the Saturday Evening Post and all, showing guys on street corners looking sore as hell because their dates are late - that's bunk. If a girl looks swell when she meets you, who gives a damn if she's late? Nobody. "We better hurry," I said. "The show starts at two-forty."
"What are we going to see?" she said.
"I don't know. The Lunts. It's all I could get tickets for."
"The Lunts! Oh, wonderful!"
I told you she'd go mad when she heard that it was for the Lunts.
We horsed around a little bit in the cab on the way over to the theater. At first she didn't want to, because she had her lipstick on and all, but I was being seductive as hell and she didn't have any alternative. Then, just to show you how crazy I am, when we were coming out of this big clinch, I told her I loved her and all. It was a lie, of course, but the thing is, I meant it when I said it. I'm crazy. I swear to God I am.
"Oh, darling, I love you too," she said. Then, right in the same damn breath, she said, "Promise me you'll let your hair grow. Short cuts are getting out of fashion. And your hair's so lovely."
Lovely my ass.
The show wasn't very bad. It was on the crappy side, though. It was about five hundred thousand years in the life of this one old couple. It starts out when they're young and all, and the girl's parents are against her marriage with the boy, but she marries him anyway. Then they are getting older and older. The husband goes to war, and the wife has this brother that's a drunkard. I couldn't get very interested. They were all just a bunch of actors. The husband and wife were a pretty nice old couple - very witty and all - but I couldn't get too interested in them. They were drinking tea or some goddamn thing all through the play. Every time you saw them, some butler was shoving some tea in front of them, or the wife was pouring it for somebody. And everybody was coming in and going out all the time, and sitting down and standing up - it made you dizzy. Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne were the old couple, and they were very good, but I didn't like them much. They were different, though, I'll say that. They didn't act like people and they didn't act like actors. It's hard to explain. They acted more like they knew that they were celebrities and all. I mean they were good, but they were too good. If you do something too well, then, after a while, you start showing off. And then you're not as good any more. But anyway, only the Lunts looked like they had any real brains. I have to admit it.
At the end of the first act we went out with all the other jerks for a cigarette. What a deal that was. You never saw so many phonies in all your life. Everybody was smoking their ears off and talking about the play so that everybody could hear and know how sharp they were. Some stupid movie actor was standing near us, having a cigarette. I don't know his name, but he always plays the part of a guy in a war movie that gets yellow before it's time to go over the top. He was with some beautiful blonde, and the two of them were trying to look as if he didn't even know that people were looking at him. Modest as hell. I got a big bang out of it. Old Sally didn't talk much, except to rave about the Lunts. Then all of a sudden, she saw some jerk on the other side of the lobby. Some guy very well dressed. Strictly Ivy League. Big deal. He was standing next to the wall, smoking himself to death and looking bored as hell. Old Sally said several times, "I know that boy from somewhere." I got bored as hell, and I said to her, "Why don't you go on over and give him a big kiss, if you know him? He'll enjoy it." She got sore when I said that. Finally, the jerk noticed her and came over and said hello. Old Sally introduced us. It was funny when old Sally asked him how he liked the play. He was the kind of a phony that have to give themselves room when they answer somebody's question. He stepped back, and stepped right on the lady's foot behind him. He probably broke every toe in her body. He said the play itself was no masterpiece, but that the Lunts, of course, were absolute angels. Angels. For Chrissake. Angels. That killed me. Then he and old Sally started talking about a lot of people they both knew. It was the phoniest conversation you ever heard in your life. When the next act was over, they continued their goddam boring conversation. I even thought for a minute that he was going to get in the goddam cab with us when the show was over, because he walked about two blocks with us, but he had to meet a bunch of phonies for cocktails, he said. I could see them all sitting around in some bar, criticizing shows and books and women in those tired, snobby voices. They kill me, those guys.
I sort of hated old Sally by the time we got in the cab, after listening to that phony guy for about ten hours. I was going to take her home and all - I really was - but she said, "I have a wonderful idea!" She was always having a wonderful idea. "Listen," she said. "What time do you have to be home for dinner? I mean are you in a terrible hurry or anything? Do you have to be home any special time?"
"Me? No. No special time," I said. Truer word was never spoken, boy. "Why?"
"Let's go ice-skating at Radio City!"
That's the kind of ideas she always had.
"Ice-skating at Radio City? You mean right now?"
"Just for an hour or so. Don't you want to? If you don't want to -"
"I didn't say I didn't want to," I said. "Sure. If you want to."
"You can rent those darling little skating skirts," old Sally said. "Jeannette Cultz did it last week."
That's why she had that wonderful idea. She wanted to see herself in one of those little skirts that just come down over their butt and all.
So we went. Sally really looked damn good in this little blue skirt. I have to admit it. And don't think she didn't know it. She was walking ahead of me all the time, so that I could see how cute her little ass looked. It did look pretty cute, too. I have to admit it.
The funny thing was that we were very poor skaters. Soon my ankles hurt like hell, and I knew that Sally's ankles were killing her.
"Do you want to get a table inside and have a drink or something?" I said to her finally.
"That's the most marvelous idea you've had all day," she said. She was killing herself. I really felt sorry for her.
We took off our goddam skates and went inside this bar where you can get drinks and watch the skaters in just your stocking feet. As soon as we sat down, old Sally took off her gloves, and I gave her a cigarette. She wasn't looking too happy.
"Hey, Sally," I said.
"What?" she said. She was looking at some girl on the other side of the room.
"Did you ever feel that everything was going to go lousy if you didn't do something?" I said. "I mean do you like school, and all that stuff?"
"It's a terrific bore."
"I mean do you hate it? I know it's a terrific bore, but do you hate it, is what I mean."
"Well, I don't exactly hate it. You always have to -"
"Well, I hate it. Boy, do I hate it," I said. "But it isn't just that. It's everything. I hate living in New York and all. Taxicabs, and Madison Avenue buses, where the drivers are always yelling at you to get out at the rear door, and being introduced to phony guys that call the Lunts angels, and going up and down in elevators when you just want to go outside, and people always -"
"Don't shout, please," old Sally said. Which was very funny, because I wasn't shouting.
"Take cars," I said. I said it in this very quiet voice. "Take most people, they're crazy about cars. They worry if they get a little scratch on them, and they're always talking about how many miles they get to a gallon, and if they get a brand-new car already, they start thinking about getting another car that is even newer. I don't even like old cars. I mean they don't even interest me. I'd rather have a goddam horse. A horse is at least human, for God's sake. A horse you can at least -"
"I don't know what you're even talking about," old Sally said. "You jump from one -"
"You know something?" I said. "I'm probably in New York right now just because you're here. If you weren't around, I'd probably be somewhere far away. In the woods or some goddamn place."
"You're sweet," she said. But I saw that she didn't like the subject.
"You ought to go to a boys' school sometime. Try it sometime," I said. "It's full of phonies, and you only study so that you can learn enough to be smart enough to be able to buy a goddamn Cadillac someday. If you try to have a little intelligent -"
"Now, listen," old Sally said. "Lots of boys get more out of school than that."
"I agree! I agree they do, some of them! But that's all I get out of it. See? That's my point. That's exactly my goddam point," I said. "I don't get hardly anything out of anything. I'm in bad shape. I'm in lousy shape."
"You certainly are."
Then, all of a sudden, I got this idea.
"Look," I said. "Here's my idea. How would you like to get the hell out of here? I know one guy in Greenwich Village, we can borrow his car for a couple of weeks. We went to the same school and he still owes me ten bucks. Tomorrow morning we could drive up to Massachusetts and Vermont, and all around there, see. It's beautiful as hell up there, it really is." I was getting excited as hell. I took old Sally's goddam hand. What a goddamn fool I was. "No kidding," I said. "I have about a hundred and eighty bucks in the bank. I can take it out when it opens in the morning, and then I could go down and get this guy's car. No kidding. We'll stay in these cabin camps and stuff like that till the money runs out. Then, when the money runs out, I could get a job somewhere and we could live somewhere with a brook and all and, later on, we could get married or something. Honest to God, we could have a terrific time! What will you say? Come on! Will you do it with me? Please!"
"You can't just do something like that," old Sally said. She sounded sore as hell.
"Why not? Why the hell not?"
"Because you can't, that's all. In the first place, we're both practically children. And did you ever stop to think what you'd do if you didn't get a job when your money ran out? We'd starve to death. The whole thing's so fantastic, it isn't even -"
"It isn't fantastic. I'll get a job. Don't worry about that. You don't have to worry about that. What's the matter? Don't you want to go with me? Say so, if you don't."
"It isn't that. It isn't that at all," old Sally said. I was beginning to hate her, in a way. "We'll have a lot of time to do those things - all those things. I mean after you go to college and all, and if we should get married and all. There'll be a lot of marvelous places -"
"No, there won' be a lot of places at all. It'll be entirely different," I said. I was getting depressed as hell again.
"What?" she said. "I can't hear you. One minute you shout, and the next you -"
"I said no, there won't be marvelous places where we could go after I went to college and all. Open your ears. It'll be entirely different. We'll have to go downstairs in elevators with suitcases and stuff. We'll have to phone up everybody and tell them good-by and send them postcards from hotels and all. And I'll be working in some office, making a lot of money, and riding to work in cabs and Madison Avenue buses, and reading newspapers, and playing bridge all the time, and going to the movies and seeing a lot of newsreels. Newsreels. Christ almighty. There's always a dumb horse race, and some dame breaking a bottle over a ship, and some chimpanzee riding a goddam bicycle with pants on. It won't be the same at all. You don't see what I mean at all."
"Maybe I don't! Maybe you don't, either," old Sally said. We both hated each other's guts by that time. I was sorry as hell that I had started it.
"Come on, let's get out of here," I said. "You give me a royal pain in the ass, if you want to know the truth." She got quite mad at me when I said that. I know it was very bad that I had said it, but she was depressing the hell out of me. Usually I never say crude things like that to girls.
I apologized like a madman, but she refused to accept my apology. She was even crying.
"No kidding. I'm sorry. Come on, I'll take you home. No kidding." I said again and again.
"I can go home by myself, thank you. If you think I'd let you take me home, you're mad. No boy ever said that to me in my whole life."
The whole thing was sort of funny, in a way, if you thought about it, and all of a sudden I laughed. And I have one of these very loud, stupid laughs. I mean if I ever sat behind myself in a movie or something, I would probably lean over and tell myself to please shut up. It made old Sally madder than ever.
I apologized again, but she told me to go away and leave her alone. So finally I did it. I went inside and got my shoes and stuff, and left without her. It was not good, but I was pretty goddam fed up by that time.
If you want to know the truth, I don't even know why I started all that stuff with her. I mean about going away somewhere, to Massachusetts and Vermont and all. I probably wouldn't have taken her even if she'd wanted to go with me. She wouldn't have been anybody to go with. The terrible part, though, is that I meant it when I asked her. That's the terrible part. I swear to God I'm a madman.

Chapter 18

After I left the skating rink, I gave old Jane a buzz again, but her phone didn't answer, so I had to hang up. Then I looked through my address book. The trouble was, though, my address book only has about three people in it. Jane, and this man, Mr Antolini, that was my teacher at Elkton Hills, and my father's office number. I forget to put people's names in my address book. So finally, I gave old Carl Luce a buzz. He graduated from the Whooton School after I left. He was about three years older than I was, and I didn't like him too much, but he was one of these very intellectual guys - he had the highest I.Q. of any boy at Whooton - and I thought he might want to have dinner with me somewhere and have an intellectual conversation. So I gave him a buzz. He said he couldn't have dinner with me, but that he'd meet me for a drink at ten o'clock at the Wicker Bar, on 54th. I think he was pretty surprised to hear from me. I once called him a fat-assed phony.
I went to the movies. It was not a very good idea because I hate movies, but I had to kill time till ten o'clock.
Before the film started, there was this Christmas thing they have at Radio City every year. All these angels start coming out of the boxes and everywhere, guys carrying crucifixes and stuff all over the place, and the whole bunch of them - thousands of them - singing "Come All Ye Faithful!" like mad. Big deal. They think that it's religious as hell, I know, and very pretty and all, but I can't see anything religious or pretty, for God's sake, about a bunch of actors carrying crucifixes all over the stage. When they were all finished, you could tell they could hardly wait to get a cigarette or something. I saw it with old Sally Hayes the year before, and she said that it was beautiful, the costumes and all. I said that old Jesus probably would've puked if He could see it - all those costumes and all. Sally said I was a sacrilegious atheist. I probably am.
After the Christmas thing was over, the goddam movie started. It was so rotten I couldn't take my eyes off it. It was about this English guy, Alec something, who was in the war. He loses his memory in the hospital and all. He comes out of the hospital and doesn't know who the hell he is. He's really a duke, but he doesn't know it. Then he meets this nice, homey, sincere girl. They start talking about Charles Dickens. He's their favorite author and all. He's carrying this copy of Oliver Twist and so is she. I could've puked. Anyway, they fell in love right away, because they're both so nuts about Charles Dickens and all, and he helps her run her publishing business. She's a publisher, the girl. Only, her business isn't so good, because her brother's a drunkard and he spends all their money. Her brother was a doctor in the war and now he can't operate any more because his nerves are shot, so he drinks all the time, but he's pretty witty and all. Anyway, old Alec writes a book, and this girl publishes it, and they both make a lot of money on it. They're going to get married when this other girl, old Marcia, Alec's fiance before he lost his memory, recognizes him when he's in this bookshop autographing books. She tells old Alec he's really a duke and all, but he doesn't believe her and doesn't want to go with her to visit his mother who is blind as a bat and all. But the other girl, the publisher, makes him go. She's very noble and all. So he goes. But he still doesn't get his memory back, even when his great Dane jumps all over him. Then, one day, some kids are playing cricket on the lawn and he gets smacked in the head with a cricket ball. Then right away he gets his goddam memory back and he goes in and kisses his mother on the forehead and all. Then he starts being a duke again, and he forgets all about the girl that has the publishing business. I won't tell you the rest of the story because I might puke if I did. Anyway, in the end, Alec and the publisher get married, and her drunkard brother gets his nerves back and operates on Alec's mother so she can see again, and then the drunken brother and old Marcia fall in love. At the end of the movie they all are sitting at this long dinner table laughing their asses off because the great Dane comes in with a bunch of puppies. Everybody thought that it was a male, I think, or some goddamn thing. All I can say is, don't see it if you don't want to puke all over yourself.
But one thing got me. There was a lady sitting next to me. She cried all through the goddam movie as if she was kindhearted as hell, but she wasn't. She had this little kid with her who was bored as hell and had to go to the toilet, but she didn't take him. She told him to sit still and behave himself. She was about as kindhearted as a goddam wolf. You take somebody that cries their goddam eyes out over phony stuff in the movies, and nine times out of ten they're mean bastards at heart. I'm not kidding.
After the movie was over, I started walking down to the Wicker Bar, where I was to meet old Carl Luce, and while I walked, I sort of thought about war and all. The worst thing about the war is not that you may be shot or something, the worst thing is that you have to stay in the Army so goddamn long. That's the whole trouble. My brother D.B. was in the Army for four goddam years. He was in the war, too, but I really think he hated the Army worse than the war. He said the Army was practically as full of bastards as the Nazis were. I know that it would drive me crazy if I had to be in the Army and be with a bunch of guys like Ackley and Stradlater and old Maurice all the time, marching with them and all. Anyway, I'm sort of glad they have made the atomic bomb. If there's ever another war, I'm going to sit right the hell on top of it. I'll volunteer for it, I swear to God I will.

Chapter 19

It was not yet ten o'clock when I got to the Wicker Bar. I sat down at the bar - it was pretty crowded - and had a couple of Scotch and sodas before old Luce even came. I stood up when I ordered them so they could see how tall I was and all and not think I was a goddamn minor. Then I watched the phonies for a while. Some guy next to me was snowing hell out of the babe he was with. The other end of the bar was full of flits. They weren't too flitty-looking - I mean they didn't have their hair too long or anything - but you could tell they were flits anyway. Finally old Luce came.
Old Luce. What a guy. He was made my Student Adviser when I was at Whooton. But he only gave these sex talks and all, late at night when there was a bunch of guys in his room. He knew quite a bit about sex, especially flits and Lesbians. He said that half the married guys in the world were flits and didn't even know it. He scared the hell out of us when he said that anybody could become a flit anytime if they had all the traits and all. The funny thing about old Luce was that he was sort of flitty himself, in a way. For example, when he went to the can, he always left the goddamn door open and talked to you while you were brushing your teeth or something. That stuff is sort of flitty. But he was a pretty intelligent guy.
The first thing he said when he sat down was that he could only stay a couple of minutes. He said he had a date. Then he ordered a dry Martini.
"Hey, I got a flit for you," I told him. "At the end of the bar. Don't look now. I've been saving him for you."
"Very funny," he said. "Same old Caulfield. When are you going to grow up?"
"How's your sex life?" I asked him. He hated when you asked him stuff like that.
"Relax," he said. "Just sit back and relax, for Chrissake."
"I'm relaxed," I said. "Listen, hey, Luce. You're one of these intellectual guys. I need your advice. I'm in a terrific -"
He groaned. "Listen, Caulfield. If you want to sit here and have a quiet, peaceful drink and a quiet, peaceful conver - "
"All right, all right," I said. "Relax." I saw that he didn't want to discuss anything serious with me. That's the trouble with these intellectual guys. They can only discuss something serious when they want to do it. So I asked him about his sex life. He said that he now dated a sculptress.
"Yeah? No kidding? How old is she?"
"I've never asked her, for God's sake."
"Well, around how old?"
"I think she's in her late thirties," old Luce said.
"In her late thirties? Yeah? You like that?" I asked him. "You like them that old?"
"I like a mature person, if that's what you mean. Certainly."
"You do? Why? No kidding, they are better for sex and all?" I asked him because he knew a lot about sex.
"Listen. Let's get one thing straight. I refuse to answer any typical Caulfield questions tonight. When in hell are you going to grow up?"
We were silent for a while. Then old Luce ordered another Martini.
"Listen. How long have you been going around with her, this sculpture babe?" I asked him. I was really interested. "Did you know her when you were at Whooton?"
"No. She just arrived in this country a few months ago."
"She did? Where's she from?"
"From Shanghai."
"No kidding! She is Chinese, for Chrissake?"
"Obviously."
"No kidding! Do you like that? Her being Chinese?"
"Obviously."
"Why? I am interested to know, really."
"I find Eastern philosophy more interesting than Western. Since you ask."
"What do you mean "philosophy"? You mean sex and all? You mean it's better in China?"
"Not necessarily in China, for God's sake. The East I said. Must we go on with this stupid conversation?"
"Listen, I'm serious," I said. "No kidding. Why's it better in the East?"
"They see sex as both a physical and a spiritual experience. If you think I'm -"
"So do I! So do I see it as a physical and spiritual experience and all. I really do. But it depends on who the hell I'm doing it with. You can't do it with everybody - every girl you neck with and all. Can you?"
"Let's drop it," old Luce said. "Do you mind?"
"All right, but listen. Take you and this Chinese babe. What's so good about you two?"
"Drop it, I said."
I was getting a little too personal. I realize that. But that was one of the annoying things about Luce. These intellectual guys only have an intellectual conversation with you if they're running the whole thing. At school, old Luce hated it when after he was finished giving his sex talk to us in his room, we talked by ourselves for a while in somebody else's room. Old Luce hated that. He was afraid that somebody might say something smarter than he had. He really amused me.
"Maybe I'll go to China. My sex life is lousy," I said.
"Naturally. Your mind is immature."
"It really is. I know it," I said. "You know what the trouble with me is? I can never get really sexy - I mean really sexy - with a girl I don't like a lot. If I don't, I sort of lose my goddam desire for her and all. My sex life stinks."
"Naturally it does, for God's sake. I told you the last time I saw you what you need."
"You mean to go to a psychoanalyst and all?" I said. His father was a psychoanalyst and all.
"It's up to you, for God's sake. It's none of my goddamn business what you do with your life."
I didn't say anything for a while. I was thinking.
"If I go to your father and he psychoanalyzes me and all," I said. "What will he do to me?"
"He won't do a goddamn thing to you. He'll simply talk to you, and you'll talk to him, for God's sake. For one thing, he'll help you to recognize the patterns of your mind."
"That what?"
"The patterns of your mind. Listen. I'm not giving an elementary course in psychoanalysis. If you're interested, call him up and make an appointment."
He was looking at his wrist watch. "I have to go," he said, and stood up. "Nice seeing you."
"Have just one more drink," I told him. "Please. I'm lonesome as hell. No kidding."
But he said he was late now, and then he left.

Chapter 20

Boy, I sat at that goddam bar till around one o'clock or so, getting drunk as a bastard. I could hardly see straight. When I was really drunk, I again wanted to give old Jane a buzz and see if she was home yet. But when I got inside this phone booth, I wasn't much in the mood any more to give old Jane a buzz. I was too drunk, I guess. So I gave old Sally Hayes a buzz.
Sally's grandmother answered the phone. She said that it was too late, and Sally was asleep. I asked her to wake Sally up because I wanted to tell her something very important.
"Sally's asleep, young man. Call her tomorrow. Good night."
Then there was a different voice. "Holden, this is me." It was old Sally. "What's the big idea?"
"Sally? That you?"
"Yes - stop shouting. Are you drunk?"
"Yeah. Listen. Listen, hey. I'll come over Christmas Eve. Okay? Trim that goddam tree for you. Okay? Okay, hey, Sally?"
"Yes. You're drunk. Go to bed now. Where are you? Who's with you?"
"Nobody. Me, myself and I. You want me trim that tree for you? Huh?"
"Yes. Go to bed now. I have to go. Good night. Call me tomorrow."
She hung up on me.
"G'night. G'night, Sally baby. Sally sweetheart darling," I said. Can you imagine how drunk I was? I hung up too, then. I thought that she probably just came home from a date. I imagined that she was out with the Lunts and all somewhere, and that jerk from the theater. All of them were swimming around in a goddam pot of tea and saying clever stuff to each other and being charming and phony. I wished to God that I hadn't phoned her. When I'm drunk, I'm a madman.
I came out of the phone booth and went in the men's room, and filled one of the washbowls with cold water. Then I put my head in it, right up to the ears. I didn't dry my hair, I just walked over to this radiator by the window and sat down on it. It was nice and warm. It felt good because I was shivering like a bastard. It's a funny thing, I always shiver like hell when I'm drunk.
I sat on that radiator, and the water from my hair was dripping down my neck, getting all over my collar and tie and all, but I didn't give a damn.
Then, when I went out to the checkroom, I couldn't find my goddam check. The hat-check girl was very nice about it. She gave me my coat anyway.
When I went outside, it was getting very cold again. I didn't have much dough left and I had to start economizing on cabs and all. But I didn't want to get on a damn bus. So I started walking over to the park. I decided to go to that little lake and see what the hell the ducks were doing, see if they were around or not, I still didn't know if they were around or not.
It was so dark in the park. Though I know Central Park like the back of my hand, I had the most terrific trouble finding that lake that night. I walked and walked, and it was getting darker and darker. I didn't see anybody in the park that night. Then, finally, I found it. It was partly frozen. But I didn't see any ducks around. I walked all around the whole damn lake but I didn't see a single duck. I thought they might be asleep or something near the edge of the water, near the grass and all. But I couldn't find any.
Finally I sat down on this bench, where it wasn't so goddam dark. Boy, I was still shivering like a bastard, and the back of my hair was sort of full of little pieces of ice. That worried me. I thought probably I'd get pneumonia and die. I started to imagine what a big mob of relatives would come to my funeral - a great number of aunts and cousins. I felt sorry as hell for my mother and father. Especially my mother, because she still isn't over my brother Allie yet. In my imagination she had a great problem - she didn't know what to do with all my suits and athletic equipment and all. The only good thing was - I knew she wouldn't let old Phoebe come to my goddam funeral because she was only a little kid. Then I thought how they put me in a goddam cemetery and all, with my name on this tombstone and all. Surrounded by dead guys. I hope to hell when I do die somebody has sense enough to just dump me in the river or something. Anything except putting me in a goddam cemetery. People coming and putting a bunch of flowers on your stomach on Sunday, and all that crap. Who wants flowers when you're dead? Nobody.
I started thinking how old Phoebe would feel if I got pneumonia and died. It was a childish way to think, but I couldn't stop myself. She'd feel pretty bad if something like that happened. She's quite fond of me. She really is. Anyway, I couldn't get that off my mind, so finally I decided to sneak home and see her, in case I died and all. I had my door key with me and I could sneak in the apartment, very quietly and all, and just have a chat with her for a while. The only thing that worried me was our front door. It creaks like a bastard. It's a pretty old apartment house, and everything creaks and squeaks. I was afraid that my parents might hear me sneaking in. But I decided I'd try it anyhow.

Chapter 21

When I got home, it was really a terrific break. There was a new night elevator boy. So, if I could sneak into our apartment, I would be able to say hello to old Phoebe and then leave and nobody would even know I had been around. I told the new elevator boy to take me up to the Dicksteins'. They had the other apartment on our floor. I told him that I was their nephew. I got off at our floor and started walking over toward the Dicksteins' side. When the elevator doors closed, I turned around and went over to our side. I took out my door key and opened our door.
Naturally, it was dark as hell in the foyer. I had to be careful not to make any noise. Very slowly, I walked toward old Phoebe's room. Old Phoebe wasn't in her room. I forgot that she always sleeps in D. B.'s room when he's away in Hollywood or some place. She likes it because it's the biggest room in the house. Also because it has this big, gigantic bed that's about ten miles wide and ten miles long. I don't know where he bought that bed. Anyway, old Phoebe likes to sleep in D.B.'s room when he's away, and he lets her.
I went into D.B.'s room and turned on the lamp on the desk. Old Phoebe didn't even wake up. When the light was on and all, I sort of looked at her for a while. Then I went around the room, very quietly and all, looking at things for a while. I felt swell, for a change. Then I lit another cigarette - it was my last one. Then, finally, I woke her up.
She wakes up very easily.
"Holden!" she said right away. She put her arms around my neck and all. She's very loving. I sort of gave her a kiss, and she said, "When did you get home?" She was glad as hell to see me.
"Not so loud. Just now. How are you anyway?"
"I'm fine. Did you get my letter? I wrote you a five-page -"
"Yeah - not so loud. Thanks."
She wrote me this letter. I didn't get a chance to answer it, though. It was all about this Christmas play in school. She told me not to make any dates or anything for Friday so that I could come to see it.
"How's the play?" I asked her. "What is the name of it?"
"A Christmas Pageant for Americans. It's stupid, but I'm that traitor general, Benedict Arnold. I have practically the biggest part," she said. She was wide awake. "It starts out when I'm dying. This ghost comes in on Christmas Eve and asks me if I'm ashamed and everything. You know. For betraying my country and everything. Are you coming to it?"
"Sure I'm coming."
"Mother said you'd be home Wednesday," she said.
"I got out early. Not so loud. You'll wake everybody up."
"What time is it? They won't be home till very late, Mother said. They went to a party in Norwalk, Connecticut," old Phoebe said.
"Did they say what time they would be back?"
"No, but not till very late. Daddy took the car and everything so they won't have to worry about trains."
I began to relax, sort of. I finally stopped worrying about whether they would catch me at home or not. She looked at me strangely. "Holden," she said, "how is it that you're home before Wednesday! You didn't get kicked out again, did you?"
"I told you. They let us out early."
"You got kicked out! You did!" old Phoebe said. Then she hit me on the leg with her fist. "You did! Oh, Holden!" She had her hand on her mouth and all. She gets very emotional, I swear to God.
"Who said I got kicked out? Nobody said I -"
"You did. You did," she said. Then she hit me again with her fist. If you don't think that hurts, you're crazy. "Daddy'll kill you!" she said. Then she put the goddamn pillow over her head. She does that quite often.
"Stop it, now," I said. "Nobody's going to kill me. Hey, Phoebe, take that goddamn thing off your head. Nobody's going to kill me."
But she only said again and again, "Daddy's going to kill you."
"Nobody's going to kill me. Use your head. In the first place, I'm going away. I may get a job on a ranch or something for a while. I know this guy whose grandfather's got a ranch in Colorado. I may get a job out there," I said. "I'll call you up and write when I'm gone, if I go. Hey. Take that off your head. Hey, Phoeb. Please. Please, will you?"
I tried to pull the pillow off, but she's strong as hell. If she wants to keep a pillow over her head, she keeps it. "Phoebe, please. Come out of there," I said again and again.
She didn't listen to me. Finally, I got up and went out in the living room and got some cigarettes out of the box on the table and put some in my pocket.

Chapter 22

When I came back, she had the pillow off her head all right - I knew she would - but she still didn't look at me. When I sat down on the bed again, she turned her crazy face the other way. She was ostracizing the hell out of me.
"Daddy'll kill you."
"No, he won't. The worst he'll do, he'll give me hell again, and then he'll send me to that goddam military school. And in the first place, I won't even be around. I'll be away. I'll be - I'll probably be in Colorado on this ranch."
"Don't make me laugh. You can't even ride a horse."
"Sure I can. They can teach you in about two minutes," I said. "Who gave you that haircut?" I asked her. I just noticed what a stupid haircut somebody gave her. It was too short.
"None of your business," she said. She can be very snotty sometimes. "I think you failed in every subject again," she said - very snotty. It was sort of funny, too, in a way. She sounds like a goddamn school teacher sometimes, and she's only a little child.
"No, I didn't," I said. "I passed English."
Then all of a sudden, she said, "Oh, why did you do it?" She meant why I got the ax again. It made me sort of sad, the way she said it.
"Oh, God, Phoebe, don't ask me," I said. "A million reasons why. It was one of the worst schools I ever went to. It was full of phonies. And mean guys. And they had this goddam secret fraternity that I was too yellow not to join. There was this one pimply, boring guy, Robert Ackley, that wanted to join that fraternity, and they didn't let him. Just because he was boring and pimply. It was a stinking school. Take my word."
Old Phoebe didn't say anything, but she was listening. And I know that she understands what the hell you're talking about when she is listening.
I was sort of in the mood to talk about the school.
"Even the couple of nice teachers on the faculty, they were phonies, too," I said. "There was this one old guy, Mr Spencer. His wife was always giving you hot chocolate and all that stuff, and they were really pretty nice. But when the headmaster, old Thurmer, came in the history class and sat down in the back of the room, and after a while started to interrupt what old Spencer was saying, and started to make a lot of stupid jokes, old Spencer practically killed himself laughing and smiling and all, as if Thurmer was a goddamn prince or something."
"Don't swear so much."
"Then, on Veterans' Day," I said. "They have this day, Veterans' Day, when all the jerks that graduated from Pencey around 1776 come back and walk all over the place, with their wives and children and everybody. One old guy, about fifty years old, came in our room and knocked on the door and asked us if we'd mind if he used the bathroom. The bathroom was at the end of the corridor - I don't know why the hell he asked us. You know what he said? He said that he wanted to see if his initials were still in one of the can doors. He carved his goddam stupid sad old initials in one of the can doors about ninety years ago, and he wanted to see if they were still there. So he looked for his initials in all the can doors. And all the time he talked to us, telling us that his school days were the happiest days of his life, and giving us a lot of advice for the future and all. How he depressed me! I don't mean he was a bad guy - he wasn't. But you can be a good guy and depress people when you give them a lot of phony advice while you're looking for your initials in some can door. God, Phoebe! I can't explain. I just didn't like anything that was happening at Pencey. I can't explain."
"You don't like anything that's happening," she said.
It made me even more depressed when she said that.
"Yes I do. Yes I do. Sure I do. Don't say that. Why the hell do you say that?"
"Because you don't. You don't like any schools. You don't like a million things. You don't."
"No, you're wrong! Why the hell do you say that?" I said.
"Because you don't," she said. "Name one thing."
"One thing? One thing I like?" I said. "Okay."
But I couldn't concentrate. Sometimes it's hard to concentrate. I could think only about those two nuns that went around collecting money in those old straw baskets. And this boy whom I knew at Elkton Hills. His name was James Castle. He refused to take back something he said about this very conceited boy, Phil Stabile. James Castle called him a very conceited guy, and one of Stabile's lousy friends went and told Stabile about it. So Stabile, with about six other dirty bastards, went down to James Castle's room and went in and locked the goddamn door and tried to make him take back what he said, but he refused to do it. So they started in on him. I won't even tell you what they did to him - it's too bad - but he still didn't take it back, old James Castle. He was a thin little guy, with wrists about as big as pencils. Finally, instead of taking back what he said, he jumped out the window. He died. And they just expelled those guys from school. They didn't even go to jail.
Yes, I only could think of those two nuns and this boy James Castle.
"You can't even think of one thing."
"Yes, I can. Yes, I can."
"Well, do it, then."
"I like Allie," I said. "And I like doing what I'm doing right now? Sitting here with you, and talking, and thinking about stuff, and -"
"Allie's dead - You always say that! If somebody's dead and everything, and in Heaven, then it isn't really -"
"I know he's dead! Just because somebody's dead, you don't just stop liking them, for God's sake - especially if they were about a thousand times nicer than the people that are alive and all."
Old Phoebe didn't say anything for a while.
"All right, name something you'd like to be. Like a scientist. Or a lawyer or something."
"I couldn't be a scientist. I'm no good in science."
"Well, a lawyer - like Daddy and all."
"Lawyers are all right, I think - but it doesn't attract me," I said. "They're all right if they save innocent guys' lives all the time, but lawyers don't do that kind of stuff. They make a lot of money and play golf and play bridge and buy cars and drink Martinis and look like a hot-shot. And even if they saved guys' lives and all, how can I know that they really wanted to save guys' lives? Maybe, they really just wanted to be a terrific lawyer and get congratulations in court when the goddam trial was over, the reporters and everybody, as it is in the dirty movies? How can I know that they aren't phonies?"
"Daddy's going to kill you. He's going to kill you," she said.
But I was thinking about something else - something crazy. "You know what I'd like to be?" I said. "You know what I'd like to be? If I had my goddam choice?"
"What? Stop swearing."
"You know that song 'If a body catch a body coming through the rye'?' I'd like -"
"It's 'If a body meet a body coming through the rye'!" old Phoebe said. "It's a poem. By Robert Burns."
"I know it's a poem by Robert Burns."
She was right, though. It is 'If a body meet a body coming through the rye.' I didn't know it then, though.
"I thought it was 'If a body catch a body,'" I said. "Anyway, I see such a picture: all these little kids are playing some game in this big field of rye and all. Thousands of little kids, and nobody's around - nobody big, I mean - except me. And I'm standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. And my job is to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff - I mean if they're running and they don't look where they're going. I come out from somewhere and catch them. That's all I'd like to do all day. I'd just like to be the catcher in the rye and all. I know it's crazy, but that's the only thing I'd really like to be."
Old Phoebe didn't say anything for a long time. Then, all she said was, "Daddy's going to kill you."
"I don't give a damn if he does," I said. I got up from the bed then. "I have to make a phone call," I told Phoebe. I wanted to phone up this guy that was my English teacher at Elkton Hills, Mr Antolini. He lived in New York now. He left Elkton Hills. He took this job teaching English at New York University. "I'll be right back. Don't go to sleep."

Chapter 23

I made a very short phone call because I was afraid that my parents might come right in the middle of it. Mr Antolini was very nice. The first thing he asked me was if anything was wrong, and I said no. I said I'd flunked out of Pencey, though. He said "Good God," when I said that. He had a good sense of humor and all. He said I could come right over if I wanted to.
He was about the best teacher I ever had, Mr Antolini. He was a pretty young guy, not much older than my brother D.B., and you could kid around with him without losing your respect for him. He was the one that picked up that boy that jumped out the window, James Castle. Old Mr Antolini felt his pulse and all, and then he took off his coat and put it over James Castle and carried him all the way over to the infirmary. He didn't even give a damn if his coat got all bloody.
When I got back to D.B.'s room, old Phoebe'd turned the radio on. This dance music was coming out. "You want to dance?" I asked. I taught her how to dance and all when she was a tiny little kid. She's a very good dancer. I mean I just taught her a few things. She learned it mostly by herself. You can't teach somebody how to really dance.
"You have shoes on," she said.
"I'll take them off. Come on."
And I danced with her for a while. She's really damn good. I don't like people that dance with little kids, because most of the time it looks terrible. I don't do it out in public with Phoebe or anything. We just horse around in the house. It's different with her anyway, because she can dance. You can even dance tango with her, for God's sake.
We danced about four numbers, and then I turned off the radio. Old Phoebe jumped back in bed and got under the covers. "I'm improving, aren't I?" she asked me.
"And how!" I said. I sat down next to her on the bed again. I was sort of out of breath. I was smoking so damn much. She wasn't even out of breath.
"Feel my forehead," she said all of a sudden.
"Why?"
"Feel it. Just feel it once."
I felt it. I didn't feel anything, though.
"Does it feel very hot?" she said.
"No. Must it?"
"Yes - I'm making it. Feel it again."
I felt it again, and I still didn't feel anything, but I said, "I think it's starting to be hot, now."
She nodded. "I can make it very hot. Alice Holmborg showed me how. You cross your legs and hold your breath and think of something very, very hot. A radiator or something. Then your whole forehead gets so hot you can burn somebody's hand."
That killed me. I pulled my hand away from her forehead, as if I was in terrific danger. "Thanks for telling me," I said.
"Oh, I won't burn your hand - Shhh! The front door!" she said in this loud whisper. "It's them!"
I quickly jumped up and turned off the light over the desk. Then I put out my cigarette on my shoe and put it in my pocket. It was a mistake that I smoked in Phoebe's room. Then I took my shoes and got in the closet and shut the door. My heart was beating like a bastard.
My mother came in the room.
"Phoebe?" she said. "Now, stop that. I saw the light, young lady."
"Hello!" old Phoebe said. "I couldn't sleep. Did you have a good time?"
"Marvelous," my mother said, but you could tell she didn't mean it. She doesn't enjoy herself much when she goes out. "Why are you awake, may I ask? Were you warm enough?"
"I was warm enough, I just couldn't sleep."
"Phoebe, have you been smoking a cigarette in here? Tell me the truth, please, young lady."
"I just lit one for one second. I just took one puff. Then I threw it out the window."
"Why, may I ask?"
"I couldn't sleep."
"I don't like that, Phoebe. I don't like that at all," my mother said. "Do you want another blanket?"
"No, thanks. G'night!" old Phoebe said. She was trying to get rid of her, you could tell.
"Well. Go to sleep now. How was your dinner?"
"Lousy," Phoebe said.
"You heard what your father said about using that word. What was lousy about it? You had a lovely lamb chop."
"The lamb chop was all right, but Charlene always breathes on me when she puts something down. She breathes all over the food and everything."
"Well. Go to sleep. Give Mother a kiss. Did you say your prayers?"
"I said them in the bathroom. G'night!"
"Good night. Go right to sleep now."
My mother went out and closed the door. I waited a couple of minutes. Then I came out of the closet. It was very dark, and I couldn't see Phoebe. I found the edge of the bed in the dark and sat down on it and started putting on my shoes. I was pretty nervous. I admit it.
"I must go," I said.
"Don't go now," Phoebe whispered. "Wait till they're asleep!"
"No. Now. Now's the best time," I said. "She'll be in the bathroom and Daddy'll turn on the news or something. Now's the best time."
Then I asked Phoebe if she had any money because I spent nearly all my money that day. She is a very kind little girl, and she let me have some of her Christmas money.
"If you go away, you won't see me in the play," she said. Her voice sounded funny when she said it.
"Yes, I will. I won't go away before that," I said. "I'll probably stay at Mr Antolini's house till maybe Tuesday night. Then I'll come home. If I get a chance, I'll phone you."
Then, all of a sudden, I started to cry. Phoebe tried to make me stop, but when you get started, you can't just stop. I was still sitting on the edge of the bed when I did it, and she put her arm around my neck, and I put my arm around her, too, but I still couldn't stop for a long, long time. She told me I could sleep with her if I wanted to, but I said no, that Mr Antolini was waiting for me and all. Then I took my hunting hat out of my coat pocket and gave it to her. She likes that kind of crazy hats. She didn't want to take it, but I made her take it. Then I told her that I would give her a buzz if I got a chance, and then I left.
I walked all the way downstairs, instead of taking the elevator. I went down the back stairs. The elevator boy didn't even see me. He probably still thinks that I'm up at the Dicksteins'.

Chapter 24

Mr and Mrs Antolini had this very swanky apartment on Sutton Place, with two steps that you go down to get in the living room, and a bar and all. I'd been there quite a few times, because after I left Elkton Hills Mr Antolini came up to our house for dinner quite often to find out how I was getting along. He wasn't married then. Then when he got married, I played tennis with him and Mrs Antolini quite often, at the West Side Tennis Club, in Forest Hills, Long Island. Mrs Antolini was a member of that club. She had a lot of dough. She was about sixty years older than Mr Antolini, but they got along quite well together. They were both very intellectual, especially Mr Antolini except that he was more witty than intellectual when you were with him, sort of like D.B. Mrs Antolini was mostly serious. They both read all D.B.'s stories, and when D.B. went to Hollywood, Mr Antolini phoned him up and told him not to go. Mr Antolini said that Hollywood was no place for anybody who could write so well as D.B.
I didn't want to spend any of Phoebe's Christmas dough, but I felt funny when I got outside. Sort of dizzy. So I took a cab.
Old Mr Antolini answered the door when I rang the bell. He had on his bathrobe and slippers, and he had a highball in one hand. He was a pretty elegant guy, and he was a pretty heavy drinker. "Holden, m'boy!" he said. "My God, he's grown another twenty inches. Fine to see you."
"How are you, Mr Antolini? How's Mrs Antolini?"
"We're both just swell." He took my coat off me and hung it up. "I thought that you would hold a day-old infant in your arms. Nowhere to go. Snowflakes in your eyelashes." He's a very witty guy sometimes. He turned around and yelled out to the kitchen, "Lillian! How's the coffee coming?" Lillian was Mrs Antolini's first name.
"It's all ready," she yelled back. "Is that Holden? Hello, Holden!"
"Hello, Mrs Antolini!"
You were always yelling when you were there. That's because they were never in the same room at the same time. It was sort of funny.
"Sit down, Holden," Mr Antolini said. I could see that they had just had a party. Glasses were all over the place, and dishes with peanuts in them. "We've been entertaining some friends of Mrs Antolini's from Buffalo... Some buffaloes, as a matter of fact," he said. I laughed.
"What was the trouble?" Mr Antolini asked me. "How did you do in English? I'll show you the door if you flunked English, you little expert in writing compositions."
"Oh, I passed English all right. It was mostly literature, though. I only wrote about two compositions the whole term," I said. "I flunked Oral Expression, though."
"Why?"
"Oh, I don't know." I didn't like it much. I was still feeling sort of dizzy or something, and I had a helluva headache all of a sudden. But he was interested, so I told him a little bit about it. "It's this course where each boy in class has to get up in class and make a speech. You know. Spontaneous and all. And if the boy digresses at all, you are to yell 'Digression!' at him as fast as you can. It just about drove me crazy."
"Why?"
"Oh, I don't know. That digression business got on my nerves. I don't know. The trouble with me is that I like when somebody digresses. It's more interesting and all."
"You don't like when somebody sticks to the point when he tells you something?"
"Oh, sure! I like when somebody sticks to the point and all. But I don't like when they stick to the point all the time. The boys that got the best marks in Oral Expression were those who stuck to the point all the time - I admit it. But there was this one boy, Richard Kinsella. He didn't stick to the point too much, and they were always yelling 'Digression!' at him. It was terrible, because in the first place, he was a very nervous guy and his lips were always shaking when it was his time to make a speech, and you could hardly hear him if you were sitting in the back of the room. But I liked his speeches better than anybody else's. He practically flunked the course, though, too. They were yelling 'Digression!' at him all the time. For example, he made this speech about this farm that his father bought in Vermont. They were yelling 'Digression!' at him the whole time he was making it, and this teacher, Mr
Vinson, gave him a low mark on it because he hadn't told what kind of animals and vegetables and stuff grew on the farm and all. He started telling you all about that farm - then all of a sudden he started telling you about this letter which his mother got from his uncle, and how his uncle got polio and all when he was forty-two years old, and how he didn't let anybody come to see him in the hospital because he had this brace on. It wasn't about the farm - I admit it - but it was nice. It's nice when somebody tells you about his uncle because all of a sudden he gets more interested in his uncle. I mean it's dirty to yell 'Digression!' at him when he's all nice and excited. I don't know. It's hard to explain."
"Holden... One short pedagogical question. Don't you think there's a time and place for everything? Don't you think if someone starts out to tell you about his father's farm, he should stick to his topic, then get around to telling you about his uncle's brace? Or, if his uncle's brace is such an interesting subject, shouldn't he choose it as his subject - not the farm?"
"Yes - I don't know. I think he should. But what I mean is, lots of time you don't know what interests you most till you start talking about something that doesn't interest you most. What I think is, you shouldn't yell at somebody if he's at least being interesting and he's getting all excited about something. You just didn't know this teacher, Mr Vinson. He could drive you crazy sometimes, him and the goddam class. Mr Vinson was very intelligent and all, but you could tell he didn't have too much brains."
Finally, Mrs Antolini brought in this tray with coffee and cakes and stuff on it. She said that she was going to bed because she was very tired and asked us if we could make up the bed for me by ourselves.
"We'll take care of everything. You run along to bed," Mr Antolini said. He gave Mrs Antolini a kiss and she said good- by to me and went in the bedroom. They were always kissing each other a lot in public.
I had part of a cup of coffee and about half of some cake that was as hard as a rock. Mr Antolini had another highball, though. He makes them strong, too, you could tell. He may become an alcoholic if he isn't careful.
"I had lunch with your dad a couple of weeks ago," he said all of a sudden. "Did you know that?"
"No, I didn't."
"You know, of course, that he's terribly worried about you."
"I know it. I know he is," I said.
"Frankly, I don't know what the hell to say to you, Holden."
"I know. It's very hard to talk to me. I realize that."
"I have a feeling that you're riding for some kind of a terrible, terrible fall. But I don't know what kind... Are you listening to me?"
"Yes."
You could tell he was trying to concentrate and all.
"It may be the kind where, at the age of thirty, you sit in some bar hating everybody who comes in and you think that he might have played football in college. Or you may pick up some education and hate people who make grammar mistakes. Or you may end up in some business office, throwing paper clips at the nearest stenographer. I just don't know. But do you understand what I'm talking about, at all?"
"Yes. Sure," I said. And I understood, really. "But you're wrong about that hating business. I mean about hating football players and all. I don't hate too many guys. I may hate them for a little while, as this guy Stradlater I knew at Pencey, and this other boy, Robert Ackley. I hated them from time to time - I admit it - but not very long. After a while, if I didn't see them, if they didn't come in the room, or if I didn't see them in the dining room for a couple of meals, I sort of missed them."
Mr Antolini didn't say anything for a while. He started concentrating again.
"All right. Listen to me a minute now... I think you're riding for a special kind of fall, a horrible kind, when the falling man doesn't feel or hear when he hits bottom. He is just falling and falling. This fall is for men who, at some time or other in their lives, were looking for something which their own environment couldn't give them. Or they thought that their own environment couldn't give it to them. So they stopped looking. They stopped before they ever really even started. You follow me?"
"Yes, sir."
"Sure?"
"Yes."
He got up and poured some more booze in his glass. Then he sat down again. He didn't say anything for a long time.
"I don't want to scare you," he said, "but I can very clearly see you dying nobly, one way or another, for some highly unworthy cause." He gave me a funny look. "If I write something down for you, will you read it carefully? And keep it?"
"Yes. Sure," I said. I did, too. I still have the paper he gave me.
He went over to this desk on the other side of the room, and without sitting down wrote something on a piece of paper. Then he came back and sat down with the paper in his hand. "This wasn't written by a practicing poet. It was written by a psychoanalyst named Wilhelm Stekel. Are you still with me?"
"Yes, sure I am."
"Here's what he said: 'The immature man wants to die nobly for a cause, while the mature man wants to live humbly for a cause.'"
It was nice of him to go to all that trouble. It really was. But I felt so damn tired all of a sudden.
He wasn't tired at all, though. He was pretty drunk, for one thing. "I think that one of these days," he said, "you're going to find out where you want to go. And then you must start going there. But immediately. You can't afford to lose a minute. Not you."
I nodded, but I wasn't too sure what he was talking about. I was too damn tired.
"And I hate to tell you," he said, "but I think that when you have a clear idea where you want to go, you'll begin to work hard at school. You're a student - whether you like the idea or not. You're in love with knowledge. And you'll get closer to the kind of information that will be very, very dear to your heart. Among other things, you'll find that you're not the first person who was ever confused and frightened and even sickened by human behavior. Many, many men have been just as troubled morally and spiritually as you are right now. Some of them kept records of their troubles. You'll learn from them - if you want to. And someday, if you have something to offer, someone will learn something from you. And it isn't education. It's history. It's poetry." He stopped and took a big drink out of his highball. Then he started again. "I'm not trying to tell you," he said, "that only educated and scholarly men are able to give something important to the world. It's not so. But I think that brilliant and creative educated and scholarly men leave much more important records behind them than men who are merely brilliant and creative. They express themselves more clearly, and they usually follow their thoughts through to the end. And - most important - nine times out of ten they have more humility than the unscholarly thinker. Do you follow me at all?"
"Yes, sir."
He didn't say anything again for quite a while. I tried not to yawn. I wasn't bored or anything - I wasn't - but I was so damn sleepy all of a sudden.
"An academic education will give you an idea about the size of your mind. After a while, you'll have an idea what kind of thoughts your mind needs, what ideas don't suit you, aren't becoming to you. You'll begin to know your true measurements and dress your mind accordingly."
Then, all of a sudden, I yawned. What a rude bastard, but I couldn't help it!
Mr Antolini just laughed, though. "C'mon," he said, and got up. "We'll make the bed for you."
We both made the bed together.
"How're all your women?"
"They're okay." I was being a lousy conversationalist, but I was too tired and sleepy.
"How's Sally?" He knew old Sally Hayes. I introduced him once.
"She's all right. I had a date with her this afternoon. We don't have too much in common any more."
"Helluva pretty girl. What about that other girl?"
"Oh - Jane Gallagher. She's all right. I'm probably going to give her a buzz tomorrow."
"You know where the bathroom is. I'll be in the kitchen for a while."
"Thanks a lot. You and Mrs Antolini saved my life tonight."
"All right. Good night, handsome."
"G'night, sir. Thanks a lot."
He went out in the kitchen and I went in the bathroom and got undressed and all. I didn't have any pajamas and Mr Antolini forgot to lend me some. So I got in bed with just my shorts on. I thought for just a couple of seconds about finding out the size of my mind and all, and then I fell asleep.
Then something happened. I don't even like to talk about it.
I woke up all of a sudden. I felt something on my head, some guy's hand. It really scared hell out of me. It was Mr Antolini's hand. He was sitting on the floor right next to the bed, in the dark and all, and he was sort of patting me on the goddam head. Boy, I'll bet I jumped about a thousand feet.
"What the hell are you doing?" I said.
"Nothing! I'm simply sitting here, admiring -"
I was embarrassed as hell.
"I have to go, anyway," I said. I started putting on my damn pants in the dark. I could hardly get them on. I was so damn nervous. I know more damn perverts, at schools and all, than anybody you ever met, and they're always being perverty when I'm around.
"You have to go where? " Mr Antolini said. He was trying to act very goddam casual and cool and all, but he wasn't any too goddam cool. Take my word.
"I left my bags and all at the station. I think maybe I'll go down and get them. I have all my stuff in them."
"They'll be there in the morning. Now, go back to bed. I'm going to bed myself. What's the matter with you?"
"Nothing's the matter, it's just that all my money and stuff's in one of my bags. I'll be right back. I'll get a cab and be right back," I said.
"Don't be ridiculous, Holden. Get back in that bed. I'm going to bed myself. The money will be there in the morn -"
"No, no kidding. I must go. I really must." I was damn near all dressed already. Old Mr Antolini was sitting now in the big chair, watching me. It was dark and all and I couldn't see him very well, but I knew he was watching me, all right. He was still drinking, too. I could see his highball glass in his hand.
"You're a very, very strange boy."
"I know it," I said. "good-by, sir," I said. "Thanks a lot. No kidding."
He walked right behind me when I went to the front door, and when I rang the elevator bell he stayed in the damn doorway. He said that I was a "very, very strange boy" again. Strange, my ass. Then he waited in the doorway and all till the goddam elevator came. I never waited so long for an elevator in my whole goddam life. I swear.
I didn't know what the hell to talk about while I was waiting for the elevator, and he was standing there, so I said, "I'm going to start reading some good books. I really am." I had to say something. It was very embarrassing.
"You take your bags and come right back here again. I'll leave the door unlocked."
"Thanks a lot," I said. "good-by!" The elevator was finally there. I got in and went down. I was shaking like a madman. That kind of perverty stuff has happened to me about twenty times since I was a kid. I hate it.

Chapter 25

It was pretty cold outside. I walked to the subway station because I didn't want to spend all Phoebe's dough. I took the subway down to Grand Central. My bags were there and all. I decided to sleep in that crazy waiting room on a bench. It wasn't too bad for a while because there weren't many people around. I only slept till around nine o'clock because a million people started coming in the waiting room and I had to sit up. I still had that headache. It was even worse. And I think I was more depressed than I ever was in my whole life.
I started thinking about old Mr Antolini. I thought that maybe I was wrong about thinking that he was making a flitty pass at me. I started thinking that even if he was a flit he certainly had been very nice to me. I thought how he hadn't minded it when I'd called him up so late, and how he'd told me to come right over to his apartment. And how he went to all that trouble giving me that advice about finding out the size of your mind and all, and how he was the only guy that'd even gone near that boy James Castle when he was dead. I thought about all that stuff. And it made me more and more depressed.
There was this magazine that somebody had left on the bench next to me, so I started reading it because I wanted to stop thinking about Mr Antolini and a million other things for at least a little while. But I felt even worse reading it. It was all about lousy hormones and cancer. And I looked and felt exactly as if I had lousy hormones and cancer. I stopped reading it and went outside for a walk. I thought that I would be dead in a couple of months because I had cancer. It certainly didn't make me feel too cheerful.
I decided that I ought to get some breakfast. I wasn't at all hungry, but I thought that I ought to at least eat something. So I went in this very cheap-looking restaurant and had doughnuts and coffee. Only, I didn't eat the doughnuts. I couldn't swallow them. The thing is, if you get very depressed about something, it's hard as hell to swallow. I just drank the coffee. Then I left and started walking over toward Fifth Avenue.
It was Monday and all, and pretty near Christmas, and all the stores were open. So it wasn't too bad walking on Fifth Avenue. All those Santa Clauses were standing on corners ringing those bells. It was pretty Christmasy all of a sudden. A million little kids were there with their mothers, getting on and off buses and coming in and out of stores. I walked and walked up Fifth Avenue. Then all of a sudden, something very spooky started happening. Every time when I started to cross the street, I had this feeling that I would never get to the other side of the street. I thought I would just go down, down, down, and nobody would ever see me again. You can't imagine how it scared me. Then I started doing something else. Every time when I started to cross the street, I imagined that I was saying to my brother Allie, "Allie, don't let me disappear. Allie, don't let me disappear. Allie, don't let me disappear. Please, Allie." And then, when I was on the other side of the street without disappearing, I thanked him. I walked and walked. I was sort of afraid to stop, I think - I don't remember, to tell you the truth. But finally, I stopped and sat down on this bench. I sat there, I think, for about an hour. Finally, I decided that I would go away and never go home again and I would never go away to another school again. I decided to see old Phoebe and sort of say good-by to her and all, and give her back her Christmas dough, and then start hitchhiking my way out West where it was very pretty and sunny and where nobody would know me and I would get a job. I could get a job at a filling station somewhere, putting gas and oil in people's cars. I thought I would pretend that I was one of those deaf-mutes. That way there would be no goddam stupid useless conversations with anybody. If anybody wanted to tell me something, they would have to write it on a piece of paper and show it to me. They would get bored as hell doing that after a while, and then there would be no conversations for the rest of my life. I would build me a little cabin somewhere and live there for the rest of my life. I would build it near the woods, but not in the woods, because I want a sunny as hell place all the time. And later on, if I wanted to get married or something, I would meet this beautiful girl, also a deaf-mute, and we'd get married. We would live in my cabin, and if she wanted to say anything to me, she'd have to write it on a goddamn piece of paper, as everybody else. If we had any children, we would hide them somewhere. We could buy them a lot of books and teach them how to read and write by ourselves.
I got excited as hell thinking about it. I knew that the part about pretending that I was a deaf-mute was crazy, but I liked thinking about it anyway. But I really decided to go out West and all. I just wanted to say good-by to old Phoebe. So all of a sudden, I ran like a madman across the street and went in this store and bought a pad and pencil. I decided to write her a note about where we are to meet. I put the pad and pencil in my pocket and started walking fast as hell up to her school because there was not much time till the lunch time at school. She went home for lunch, and I wanted to pass the note before she went home.
I knew where her school was, naturally, because I went there myself when I was a kid. When I got there, nobody was around at all, probably because it wasn't a break period, and it wasn't lunchtime yet.
I went over to the stairs and sat down on the first step and took out the pad and pencil, and wrote this note:

Dear Phoebe,
I can't wait around till Wednesday any more so I will probably hitch hike out west this afternoon. Meet me at the Museum of art near the door at quarter past 12 if you can and I will give you your Christmas dough back. I didn't spend much.
Love, Holden

Her school was practically right near the museum, and she had to pass it on her way home for lunch anyway, so I knew she could meet me all right.
Then I started walking up the stairs to the principal's office so I could give the note to somebody that would bring it to her in her classroom. While I was walking up the stairs, though, all of a sudden I thought I was going to puke. Only, I didn't. I sat down for a second, and then I felt better. But while I was sitting down, I saw something that drove me crazy. Somebody had written "Fuck you" on the wall. I thought how Phoebe and all the other little kids would see it, and how they wouldn't know what the hell it meant, and then finally some dirty kid would tell them, and how they would all think about it and maybe even worry about it for a couple of days. I wanted to kill that perverty bum that had sneaked in the school late at night and then wrote it on the wall. But I knew that I wouldn't have the guts to do it. I knew that. That made me even more depressed. I was even afraid to rub it off the wall with my hand, if you want to know the truth. I was afraid some teacher would catch me rubbing it off and would think I had written it. But I rubbed it out anyway, finally. Then I went on up to the principal's office.
Some old lady around a hundred years old was sitting at a typewriter. I told her I was Phoebe Caulfield's brother, in 4B-1, and I asked her to please give Phoebe the note. I said it was very important because my mother was sick and wouldn't have lunch ready for Phoebe and that she'd have to meet me and have lunch in a cafe. She was very nice about it, the old lady. She called some other lady, from the next office, and the other lady went to give it to Phoebe.
I went down by a different staircase, and I saw another "Fuck you" on the wall. I tried to rub it off again, but it was scratched on, with a knife or something. It's hopeless, anyway. Even in a million years you couldn't rub out even half the "Fuck you" signs in the world. It's impossible.
While I was waiting for Phoebe in the museum, two little kids came up to me and asked me if I knew where the mummies were. I horsed around with the two of them a little bit. "The mummies? What're they?" I asked the one kid.
"You know. The mummies - them dead guys. That get buried in them toons and all."
Toons. That killed me. He meant tombs.
"Why aren't you two guys in school?" I said.
"No school today," the kid that did all the talking said. He was lying, sure as I'm alive, the little bastard. I didn't have anything to do, though, till old Phoebe came, so I helped them find the place where the mummies were.
Before you got to the mummies, you had to go down this very narrow sort of hall with stones on the side that they'd taken out of the Pharaoh's tomb and all. It was pretty spooky, and the two kids weren't enjoying it too much. One of them was holding onto my sleeve. "Let's go," he said to the other. "I seen 'em already. C'mon, hey." He turned around and went away.
"He's got a yellow streak a mile wide," the other one said. "So long!" He left, too.
I was alone in the tomb then. I sort of liked it. It was so nice and peaceful. Then, all of a sudden, you'll never guess what I saw on the wall. Another "Fuck you." It was written with a red crayon or something, right under the glass part of the wall, under the stones.
That's the whole trouble. You can't ever find a place that's nice and peaceful, because there isn't any. You may think there is, but when you get there, when you're not looking, somebody'll sneak up and write "Fuck you" right under your nose. I think, even, if I ever die, and they put me in a cemetery, and I have a tombstone and all, it'll say "Holden Caulfield" on it, and then what year I was born and what year I died, and then right under that it'll say "Fuck you." I'm sure, in fact.
After I came out of the place where the mummies were, I had to go to the bathroom. I sort of had diarrhea, if you want to know the truth. When I was coming out of the can, right before I got to the door, I sort of passed out. It was a funny thing, though. I felt better after I passed out. I didn't feel so damn dizzy any more.
I went to the museum entrance door and waited for old Phoebe. I thought how it might be the last time I'd ever see her again. Any of my relatives, I mean. I thought I would probably see them again, but after many years. I might come home (when I was about thirty-five) if somebody got sick and wanted to see me before they died, but that would be the only reason that I would leave my cabin and come back. I even started imagining how it would be when I came back. I knew that my mother would get nervous as hell and start to cry and beg me to stay home and not go back to my cabin, but I would go anyway. I would ask them all to visit me sometime if they wanted to. I'd let old Phoebe come out and visit me in the summertime and on Christmas vacation and Easter vacation. And I'd let D.B. come out and visit me for a while if he wanted a nice, quiet place for his writing, but he couldn't write any movies in my cabin, only stories and books. I'd have this rule that nobody could do anything phony when they visited me. If anybody tried to do anything phony, they couldn't stay.
At last, I saw Phoebe through the glass part of the door. She had my crazy hunting hat on - you could see that hat about ten miles away. I went out the doors and started down these stone stairs to meet her. The thing I couldn't understand, she had this big suitcase with her. She was just coming across Fifth Avenue, and she was dragging this goddam big suitcase with her. She could hardly drag it. It was my old suitcase. I used it when I was at Whooton. I couldn't understand what the hell she was doing with it. "Hi," she said. She was all out of breath from dragging that crazy suitcase.
"I thought maybe you weren't coming," I said. "What the hell's in that bag? I don't need anything. I'm not even taking the bags from the station. What the hell have you got in there?"
She put the suitcase down. "My clothes," she said. "I'm going with you. Can I? Okay?"
"What?" I said. I almost fell over when she said that. I got sort of dizzy and I thought I was going to pass out or something again.
"I took them down the back elevator so nobody saw me. It isn't heavy. I have two dresses and my moccasins and my underwear and socks and some other things in it. It isn't heavy. Can't I go with you? Holden? Can't I? Please."
"No. Shut up."
I didn't mean to tell her to shut up and all, but I thought I was going to pass out again.
"Why can't I? Please, Holden! I won't do anything - I'll just go with you, that's all!"
"You can't take anything. Because you're not going. I'm going alone. So shut up."
"Please, Holden. Please let me go."
"You're not going. Now, shut up!" I said.
She started to cry.
"I thought you were going to be Benedict Arnold in that play and all," I said. I said it very nasty. That made her cry even harder. I was glad. I almost hated her. I think I hated her most because she wouldn't be in that play any more if she went away with me.
I went back to the museum and left the crazy suitcase in the checkroom, so that Phoebe could get it again at three o'clock, after school. I knew she couldn't take it back to school with her.
She didn't go with me. She was still standing on the sidewalk, but she turned her back on me when I came up to her. "I'm not going away anywhere. I changed my mind. So stop crying, and shut up," I said. The funny part was, she wasn't even crying when I said that. "I'll walk you back to school. Come on, now. You'll be late."
She didn't say anything. She took off my red hunting hat and practically threw it right in my face. Then she turned her back on me again. It nearly killed me, but I didn't say anything. I just put it in my coat pocket.
"Come on, hey. I'll walk you back to school," I said.
"I'm not going back to school."
I didn't know what to say when she said that.
"You have to go back to school. You want to be in that play, don't you? You want to be Benedict Arnold, don't you?"
"No."
"Sure you do. Certainly you do. C'mon, now, let's go," I said. "In the first place, I'm not going away anywhere, I told you. I'm going home. I'm going home as soon as you go back to school."
"I said I'm not going back to school. You can do what you want to do, but I'm not going back to school," she said. "So shut up." It was the first time she ever told me to shut up. It sounded terrible. It sounded worse than swearing. She still didn't look at me, and she didn't let me put my hand on her shoulder.
"Listen, do you want to go for a walk?" I asked her. "Do you want to take a walk down to the zoo? If I let you not go back to school this afternoon and go for a walk, will you stop this crazy stuff? Will you go back to school tomorrow like a good girl?"
"I may and I may not," she said. Then she ran right the hell across the street.
I didn't follow her, though. I knew she would follow me, so I started walking toward the zoo, on the park side of the street, and she started walking on the other goddam side of the street.
When we got to the zoo, I yelled over to her, "Phoebe! I'm going to the zoo! Come on, now!" She didn't look at me, but she heard me, and when I started down the steps to the zoo I turned around and saw that she was crossing the street and following me and all.
The day was cold and there weren't too many people in the zoo. We saw the feeding of sea lions - a guy was throwing fish at them, then stopped by the bears, only the polar bear was out, the brown bear was in his goddam cave and didn't want to come out. All the time old Phoebe didn't look at me, didn't talk to me and didn't let me put my hand on her shoulder.
After we left the bears, we left the zoo and went through a little tunnel that was on the way to the carrousel. Old Phoebe still didn't talk to me or anything, but she was sort of walking next to me now. She was still sore at me. But not as sore as she was before. Anyway, we got closer to the carousel and you could hear that funny music it always plays. It was playing "Oh, Marie!" It played that same song about fifty years ago when I was a little kid. That's one nice thing about carrousels, they always play the same songs.
"I thought the carousel was closed in the wintertime," old Phoebe said. It was the first time she practically said anything. She probably forgot that she was sore at me.
"Maybe because it's around Christmas," I said.
She didn't say anything when I said that. She probably remembered that she was sore at me.
"Do you want to go for a ride on it?" I said. When she was a tiny little kid, she was mad about the carrousel.
"I'm too big." she said. I thought she wasn't going to answer me, but she did.
"No, you're not. Go on. I'll wait for you. Go on," I said. I went and bought old Phoebe a ticket. Then I gave it to her. She was standing right next to me.
"Aren't you going to ride, too?" she asked me. She was looking at me sort of funny. You could tell she wasn't too sore at me any more.
"Maybe I will the next time. I'll watch you," I said. "Got your ticket?"
"Yes."
"Go ahead, then - I'll be on this bench right over here. I'll watch you." She went and got on the carrousel. She walked all around it and then she sat down on this big, brown, old horse. Then the carrousel started. There were only about five or six other kids on the carrousel. When the ride was over she got off her horse and came over to me. "You ride once, too, this time," she said.
"No, I'll just watch you. I think I'll just watch," I said. I gave her some more of her money. "Here. Get some more tickets."
She took the money. "I'm not mad at you any more," she said. Then all of a sudden she gave me a kiss. Then she held her hand out, and said, "It's raining. It's starting to rain." Then she took my red hunting hat from my coat pocket and put it on my head. It damn near killed me.
"Don't you want it?" I said.
"You can wear it a while."
"Okay. Hurry up, or you won't get your own horse or anything."
She didn't go at once.
"You really aren't going away anywhere? Are you really going home afterwards?" she asked me.
"Yeah," I said. I wasn't lying to her. I really did go home afterwards. "Hurry up, now," I said. "The thing's starting."
She ran and bought her ticket and got back on the goddam carrousel just in time. Then she walked all the way around it till she got her own horse back. Then she got on it. She waved to me and I waved back.
It began to rain in buckets, I swear to God. All the parents went over and stood right under the roof of the carrousel, but I sat on the bench for quite a while. I got pretty wet, especially my neck and my pants. My hunting hat really gave me quite a lot of protection, but I got soaked anyway. I didn't care, though. I felt so damn happy all of sudden, looking at old Phoebe going around and around. I was damn near bawling, I felt so damn happy, if you want to know the truth. I don't know why. It was just that she looked so damn nice, going around and around, in her blue coat and all.

Chapter 26

That's the end of story. I'm not going to tell you what I did after I went home, and how I got sick and all, and what school I'm going to next fall, after I get out of here. That stuff doesn't interest me too much right now.
A lot of people, especially this one psychoanalyst guy here, asks me if I'm going to work hard when I go back to school next September. It's such a stupid question, in my opinion. How do you know what you're going to do till you do it? The answer is, you don't. I think I am, but how do I know? I swear it's a stupid question.
D.B. isn't as bad as the rest of them, but he asks me a lot of questions, too. He asked me what I thought about everything that happened to me last Christmas. I didn't know what the hell to say. If you want to know the truth, I don't know what I think about it. I'm sorry that I told so many people about it. I only know that I sort of miss everybody about whom I told you. Even old Stradlater and Ackley, for instance. I think I even miss that goddam Maurice. It's funny. Don't ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody.