J. Salinger - Three Stories

“All right,” I said vaguely. I didn’t want any actors around.

“If there’s anything—”

“Go home, willya fella?” Holden said.

Gweer smiled at him sadly, and started to leave. He didn’t seem to like his exit. He was also curious after his little chat with Mary, the maid. “What is it — his heart?

He’s only a kid, isn’t he?”

“Yes.”

“Go home. Willya?”

Later on I felt like laughing. I told Holden the ocean was full of bowling balls, and the little dope nodded and said,

“Yeah, Vincent,” as though he knew what I was talking about.

He died at ten after eight that night.

Maybe setting all this down will get him out of here. He’s been in Italy with Holden, and he’s been in France, Belgium, Luxembourg, and part of Germany with me. I can’t stand it. He shouldn’t be sticking around these days.

Miss Collins was coming out of his room, having little trouble closing the double doors behind her despite the tray of used luncheon dishes she carries. It seemed to the approaching Ethel that Miss Collins was always coming out of his room.

“How is he today? Ethel hospital whispered.

“Oh Mrs. Nicolson!” Miss Collins greeted loudly, as though saluting a relative thought dead 20 years, “Oh, he’s much better.” He was always much better. Miss Collins with a veiny, capable hand raised the cover from the largest plate. “Just had his lunch, ate his chop, the potato, but wouldn’t touch the carrots,” He was always not touching something.

“Can I go in for a minute?” Ethel asked. “I mean he isn’t asleep?”

“Sleep?” said Miss Collins, “That Man?”

Ethel tiptoed into the room. The head of Ray’s bead was cranked up to prop him into a sitting position. Ray sat. His light brown hair was neatly combed, as though by a mother, and the lapels of his polka-dot robe were drawn close to his almost beardless throat.

He looked at Ethel, the dull expression on his face unaltered. It appeared as though it were his business to be sitting there just so.

“Ethel’s here. Hello, sweetie.” — this, shutting the inner double door. “My sitting-up sweetie.” She went over to him, bent, and kissed him wetly with an MMmm square on the mouth, a gesture for the like of which Mr. Pierce, at the shop, would have given her an apartment in the 50s. “Happy birthday, darling. Happy, happy, happy, happy birthday.”

“Thanks. Hey. You’re leaning on my stomach.”

She sat down in the straight chair to the right of his bed and took his hand in hers.

“My birthday boy.”

“Uh.”

“Why didn’t you eat your carrots? Will you kindly tell me?”

“Somebody chewed them before they got to me!”

Ethel giggled, which she did very well.

“Miss Collins maybe. She looks like she goes around eating people’s carrots. 22 year old birthday boy’s carrots.”

Ray grunted.

“Sweetie, you must eat,” Ethel told him.

He took his hand out of hers and looked out the window to his left. There was the other side of the building to see.

“Look at me,” Ethel ordered. “22. The man’s catching up to me.” The cowlick at the back of his head was plastered down.

“Hey, look at me,” Ethel said.

“Oh for Chrissake.”

“No Ray. Look at me.”

He turned to her abruptly, making a wide imitation smile out of his mouth. Ethel giggled. Then Ray let his eyes focus dopily on the foot of his bed.

“You ought to hear Miss Collins call me ‘Mrs. Nicolson”. It kills me every time.

“I hate her,” Ray informed in the monotone he was using. “I hate her guts.”

“She has freckles. Like me.”

Ray seemed to think that over. Then he flopped a hand offside the bed to squeeze her left.

“Was your father in today?” Ethel asked him.

“Yeah. Dropped in to cheer me up. Told me how much money he’s losing this month.”

“I brought you a book,” Ethel told him. “It’s not your present, though. That hasn’t come yet. But wait’ll you see it. It’s gorgeous. I wish I had one myself.”

“Yeah. Please don’t give me any wrist watches. I have three wrist watches.”

“It isn’t a wrist watch. What’d your father five you?”

“Nothing. He didn’t know it was my birthday. What book you got there?”

“Didn’t you tell him? I should think his secretary would know!”

“What book?” Ray said.

Ethel looked down at the book on her lap.

“‘Heaven I’m Yours’. Phyllis lent it to me, she raved about it. Want me to read to you?”

“Is it dirty?”

“I didn’t ask her,” Ethel said, and flipped through the pages looking for dialogue.

“Read me one of the dirty parts.”

“I’ll begin at the beginning.”

Ethel proceeded to read aloud, which she did neither badly nor well. The first chapter began: Stephen Dwight drew on his immaculate chamois gloves and signaled for a taxi. “Where to, sir?” asked a grubby cabby. “Tower Apartments, as quickly as possible.” Instructed Stephen Dwight in his authoritative, resonant voice.

“Listen,” Ray interrupted. “You know what you can do with Steven Dwight and his gloves.”

Ethel pseudo-sighed, and shut the book. “Did you go up on the roof this morning?" She asked.

“No. Yeah.”

“You did or you didn’t.”

“Yeah. They wheeled me next to an old guy who talked my ears off.”

“What’d he talk about? What was the matter with him?”

“I don’t know. Gall stones. He has a boy at Yale who looks like me. Only husker. How old am I and what do I do for a living and what’s wrong with me anyhow. Jesus God.”

“What’d you say? Ethel wanted to know.

“What the hell’s the difference what I said?”

“Nobody recognize you? Old Joe Rotogravure.”

“No. Gimme a cigarette,” Ray said.

Ethel took a cigarette from a leather case in her handbag, lighted it, careful of lipstick. She got up, sat on the edge of his bed, and put the cig between his lips. He took two very deep drags with his eyes shut’ then he smoked for a while normally, and looked out the window. Finally he turned to her slowly. The mouth didn’t change from the sluggish repose, but the eyes had warmth.

“Get the hell of this bed, Collins.”

“Nope.”

“Get off or get in.”

“Nope.”

“Let’s see here a minute.”

“No. Somebody might come in. Ray.”

“Nobody’ll come in.”

“Yes. Leggo.”

There was a long kiss, and passion a very remote part of it. Then Ethel broke, and returned to the straight chair. Ray had begun to cry during the kiss. The wobbly of his lips had been her cue.

“Ray” Ethel said from the chair. “Ray, who do you think I saw today?”

What he tried to answer sounded like “…give a goddamn who you saw.”

"Helen Masterson.” Ethel was leaning far forward, “She came in to look at a dress. Smothered in mink. Phyllis was at the door when she came in. Said Masterson went right up to Pierce and asked for me to show her the blue job in Vogue — the one I showed you? Do you remember?”

Ray was jamming his hands through his hair, as thought the pressure of his fingers could do away with it all.

“So I had to show it to her. What do you think was the first thing she said to me? But immediately. ‘How’s Ray?’ I said you were fine. The she asked me when we were going to be married. I said as soon as you got back from Chicago.”

Every time he inhaled, his lower lip got jerked in, making a thhhtttt sound.

“I don’t know why I said Chicago, except it was the furthest place I could think of except California and that was too far.”