Nine Stories by J. D. Salinger Read Free Book Online

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.