J. Salinger - Nine Stories

"Party," he said.

"At a party? When?"

"I don't know. Christmas, '42." From his breast pajama pocket he two-fingered out a cigarette that looked as though it had been slept on.

"How 'bout throwing me those matches?" he said. Ginnie handed him a box of matches from the table beside her. He lit his cigarette without straightening out its curvature, then replaced the used match in the box. Tilting his head back, he slowly released an enormous quantity of smoke from his mouth and drew it up through his nostrils. He continued to smoke in this "French-inhale" style. Very probably, it was not part of the sofa vaudeville of a showoff but, rather, the private, exposed achievement of a young man who, at one time or another, might have tried shaving himself lefthanded.

"Why's Joan a snob?" Ginnie asked.

"Why? Because she is. How the hell do I know why?"

"Yes, but I mean why do you say she is?"

He turned to her wearily. "Listen. I wrote her eight goddam letters.

Eight. She didn't answer one of 'em."

Ginnie hesitated. "Well, maybe she was busy."

"Yeah. Busy. Busy as a little goddam beaver."

"Do you have to swear so much?" Ginnie asked.

"Goddam right I do."

Ginnie giggled. "How long did you know her, anyway?" she asked.

"Long enough."

"Well, I mean did you ever phone her up or anything? I mean didn't you ever phone her up or anything?"

"Naa."

"Well, my gosh. If you never phoned her up or any--"

"I couldn't, for Chrissake!"

"Why not?" said Ginnie.

"Wasn't in New York."

"Oh! Where were you?"

"Me? Ohio."

"Oh, were you in college?"

"Nope. Quit."

"Oh, were you in the Army?"

"Nope." With his cigarette hand, Selena's brother tapped the left side of his chest. "Ticker," he said.

"Your heart, ya mean?" Ginnie said. "What's the matter with it?"

"I don't know what the hell's the matter with it. I had rheumatic fever when I was a kid. Goddam pain in the--"

"Well, aren't you supposed to stop smoking? I mean aren't you supposed to not smoke and all? The doctor told my--"

"Aah, they tellya a lotta stuff," he said.

Ginnie briefly held her fire. Very briefly. "What were you doing in Ohio?" she asked.

"Me? Working in a goddam airplane factory."

"You were?" said Ginnie. "Did you like it?"

"'Did you like it?'" he mimicked. "I loved it. I just adore airplanes. They're so cute."

Ginnie was much too involved now to feel affronted. "How long did you work there? In the airplane factory."

"I don't know, for Chrissake. Thirty-seven months." He stood up and walked over to the window. He looked down at the street, scratching his spine with his thumb. "Look at 'em," he said. "Goddam fools."

"Who?" said Ginnie.

"I don't know. Anybody."

"Your finger'll start bleeding more if you hold it down that way,"

Ginnie said.

He heard her. He put his left foot up on the window seat and rested his injured hand on the horizontal thigh. He continued to look down at the street. "They're all goin' over to the goddam draft board," he said.

"We're gonna fight the Eskimos next. Know that?"

"The who?" said Ginnie.

"The Eskimos.... Open your ears, for Chrissake."

"Why the Eskimos?"

"I don't know why. How the hell should I know why? This time all the old guys're gonna go. Guys around sixty. Nobody can go unless they're around sixty," he said. "Just give 'em shorter hours is all. ... Big deal."

"You wouldn't have to go, anyway," Ginnie said, without meaning anything but the truth, yet knowing before the statement was completely out that she was saying the wrong thing.

"I know," he said quickly, and took his foot down from the window seat. He raised the window slightly and snapped his cigarette streetward. Then he turned, finished at the window. "Hey. Do me a favor.

When this guy comes, willya tell him I'll be ready in a coupla seconds?

I just gotta shave is all. O.K.?"

Ginnie nodded.

"Ya want me to hurry Selena up or anything? She know you're here?"

"Oh, she knows I'm here," Ginnie said. "I'm in no hurry. Thank you."

Selena's brother nodded. Then he took a last, long look at his injured finger, as if to see whether it was in condition to make the trip back to his room.

"Why don't you put a Band-Aid on it? Don't you have any Band-Aid or anything?"

"Naa," he said. "Well. Take it easy." He wandered out of the room.

In a few seconds, he was back, bringing the sandwich half.

"Eat this," he said. "It's good."

"Really, I'm not at all--"

"Take it, for Chrissake. I didn't poison it or anything."

Ginnie accepted the sandwich half. "Well, thank you very much," she said.

"It's chicken," he said, standing over her, watching her. "Bought it last night in a goddam delicatessen."

"It looks very good."

"Well, eat it, then."

Ginnie took a bite.

"Good, huh?"

Ginnie swallowed with difficulty. "Very," she said.

Selena's brother nodded. He looked absently around the room, scratching the pit of his chest. "Well, I guess I better get dressed....

Jesus! There's the bell. Take it easy, now!" He was gone.

Left alone, Ginnie looked around, without getting up, for a good place to throw out or hide the sandwich. She heard someone coming through the foyer. She put the sandwich into her polo-coat pocket.

A young man in his early thirties, neither short nor tall, came into the room. His regular features, his short haircut, the cut of his suit, the pattern of his foulard necktie gave out no really final information.

He might have been on the staff, or trying to get on the staff, of a news magazine. He might have just been in a play that closed in Philadelphia. He might have been with a law firm.

"Hello," he said, cordially, to Ginnie. "Hello."

"Seen Franklin?" he asked.

"He's shaving. He told me to tell you to wait for him. He'll be right out."

"Shaving. Good heavens." The young man looked at his wristwatch. He then sat down in a red damask chair, crossed his legs, and put his hands to his face. As if he were generally weary, or had just undergone some form of eyestrain, he rubbed his closed eyes with the tips of his extended fingers. "This has been the most horrible morning of my entire life," he said, removing his hands from his face. He spoke exclusively from the larynx, as if he were altogether too tired to put any diaphragm breath into his words.

"What happened?" Ginnie asked, looking at him.

"Oh. . . . It's too long a story. I never bore people I haven't known for at least a thousand years." He stared vaguely, discontentedly, in the direction of the windows. "But I shall never again consider myself even the remotest judge of human nature. You may quote me wildly on that."

"What happened?" Ginnie repeated.

"Oh, God. This person who's been sharing my apartment for months and months and months--I don't even want to talk about him.... This writer," he added with satisfaction, probably remembering a favorite anathema from a Hemingway novel.

"What'd he do?"

"Frankly, I'd just as soon not go into details," said the young man.

He took a cigarette from his own pack, ignoring a transparent humidor on the table, and lit it with his own lighter. His hands were large. They looked neither strong nor competent nor sensitive. Yet he used them as if they had some not easily controllable aesthetic drive of their own.

"I've made up my mind that I'm not even going to think about it. But I'm just so furious," he said. "I mean here's this awful little person from Altoona, Pennsylvania--or one of those places. Apparently starving to death. I'm kind and decent enough--I'm the original Good Samaritan--to take him into my apartment, this absolutely microscopic little apartment that I can hardly move around in myself. I introduce him to all my friends. Let him clutter up the whole apartment with his horrible manuscript papers, and cigarette butts, and radishes, and whatnot.