Jerome Salinger - The Catcher in the Rye

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 themself, 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 got about a hundred pages to read for history for Monday,” he said. “How ’bout writing a composition for me, for English? I’ll be up the creek if I don’t get the goddam thing in by Monday, the reason I ask. How ’bout 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 goddam composition,” I said.

“Yeah, I know. The thing is, though, I’ll be up the creek if I don’t get it in. Be a buddy. Be a buddyroo. Okay?”

I didn’t answer him right away. Suspense is good for some bastards like Stradlater.

“What on?” I said.

“Anything. Anything descriptive. A room. Or a house. Or something you once lived in or something— you know. Just as long as it’s descriptive as hell.” He gave out a big yawn while he said that. Which is something that gives me a royal pain in the ass. I mean if somebody yawns right while they’re asking you to do them a goddam favor. “Just don’t do it too good, is all,” he said. “That sonuvabitch Hartzell thinks you’re a hot-shot in English, and he knows you’re my roommate. So I mean don’t stick all the commas and stuff in the right place.”

That’s something else that gives me a royal pain. I mean if you’re good at writing compositions and somebody starts talking about commas. Stradlater was always doing that. He wanted you to think that the only reason he was lousy at writing compositions was because he stuck all the commas in the wrong place. He was a little bit like Ackley, that way. I once sat next to Ackley at this basketball game. We had a terrific guy on the team, Howie Coyle, that could sink them from the middle of the floor, without even touching the backboard or anything. Ackley kept saying, the whole goddam game, that Coyle had a perfect build for basketball. God, how I hate that stuff.

I got bored sitting on that washbowl after a while, so I backed up a few feet and 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’s an audience. I’m an exhibitionist. “I’m the goddam Governor’s son,” I said. I was knocking myself out. Tap-dancing all over the place. “He doesn’t want me to be a tap dancer. He wants me to go to Oxford. But it’s in my goddam blood, tap-dancing.” Old Stradlater laughed. He didn’t have too bad a sense of humor. “It’s the opening night of the Ziegfeld Follies.” I was getting out of breath. I have hardly any wind at all. “The leading man can’t go on. He’s drunk as a bastard. So who do they get to take his place? Me, that’s who. The little ole goddam Governor’s son.”

“Where’dja get that hat?” Stradlater said. He meant my hunting hat. He’d never seen it before.

I was out of breath anyway, so I quit horsing around. 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. Ya like it?”

Stradlater nodded. “Sharp,” he said. He was only flattering me, though, because right away he said, “Listen. Are ya gonna 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 ya. 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.”

All of a sudden—for no good reason, really, except that I was sort of in the mood for horsing around—I felt like jumping off the washbowl and getting old Stradlater in a half nelson. That’s a wrestling hold, in case you don’t know, where you get the other guy around the neck and choke him to death, if you feel like it. So I did it. I landed on him like a goddam panther.

“Cut it out, Holden, for Chrissake!” Stradlater said. He didn’t feel like horsing around. He was shaving and all. “Wuddaya wanna make me do—cut my goddam head off?”

I didn’t let go, though. I had a pretty good half nelson on him. “Liberate yourself from my viselike grip.” I said.

“Je-sus Christ.” He put down his razor, and all of a sudden jerked his arms up and sort of broke my hold on him. He was a very strong guy. I’m a very weak guy. “Now, cut out the crap,” he said. He started shaving himself all over again. He always shaved himself twice, to look gorgeous. With his crumby old razor.

“Who is your date if it isn’t Fitzgerald?” I asked him. I sat down on the washbowl next to him again. “That Phyllis Smith babe?”

“No. It was supposed to be, but the arrangements got all screwed up. 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. Her dog used to keep coming over in our—”

“You’re right in my light, Holden, for Chrissake,” Stradlater said. “Ya have to stand right there?”

Boy, was I excited, though. I really was.

“Where is she?” I asked him. “I oughta go down and say hello to her or something. Where is she? In the Annex?”

“Yeah.”

“How’d she happen to 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. How’d she happen to mention me?” I was pretty excited. I really was.

“I don’t know, for Chrissake. Lift up, willya? You’re on my towel,” Stradlater said. I was sitting on his stupid towel.

“Jane Gallagher,” I said. I couldn’t get over it. “Jesus H. Christ.”

Old Stradlater was putting Vitalis on his hair. My Vitalis.

“She’s a dancer,” I said. “Ballet and all. She used to practice 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 used to play checkers with her all the time.”

“You used to play what with her all the time?”

“Checkers.”

“Checkers, for Chrissake!”

“Yeah. She wouldn’t move any of her kings. What she’d do, when she’d get a king, she wouldn’t move it. She’d just leave it in the back row. She’d get them all lined up in the back row. Then she’d never use them. She just liked the way they looked when they were all in the back row.”