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"Anyway, before I got to the hotel, I started to go in this dumpy-looking bar, but two guys came out, drunk as hell, and wanted to know where the subway was. One of them was this very Cuban-looking guy, and he kept breathing his stinking breath in my face while I gave him directions. I ended up not even going in the damn bar. I just went back to the hotel.
The whole lobby was empty. It smelled like fifty million dead cigars. It really did. 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.
The first thing when I got in the elevator, the elevator guy said to me, "Innarested in having a good time, fella? Or is it too late for you?"
"How do you mean?" I said. I didn't know what he was driving at or anything.
"Innarested in a little tail t'night?"
"Me?" I said. Which was a very dumb answer, but it's quite embarrassing when somebody comes right up and asks you a question like that.
"How old are you, chief?" the elevator guy said.
"Why?" I said. "Twenty-two."
"Uh huh. Well, how 'bout it? Y'innarested? Five bucks a throw. Fifteen bucks the whole night." He looked at his wrist watch. "Till noon. Five bucks a throw, fifteen bucks till noon."
"Okay," I said. It was against my principles and all, but I was feeling so depressed I didn't even think. That's the whole trouble. When you're feeling very depressed, you can't even think.
"Okay what? A throw, or till noon? I gotta know."
"Just a throw."
"Okay, what room ya in?"
I looked at the red thing with my number on it, on my key. "Twelve twenty-two," I said. I was already sort of sorry I'd let the thing start rolling, 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 some water on my hair, but you can't really comb a crew cut or anything. Then I tested to see if my breath stank from so many cigarettes and the Scotch and sodas I drank at Ernie's. All you do is hold your hand under your mouth and blow your breath up toward the old nostrils. It didn't seem to stink much, but I brushed my teeth anyway. Then I put on another clean shirt. 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 quite a few opportunities to lose my virginity and all, but I've never got around to it yet. Something always happens. For instance, if you're at a girl's house, her parents always come home at the wrong time—or you're afraid they will. 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. I mean some girl in front keeps turning around to see what the hell's going on. Anyway, something always happens. I came quite close to doing it a couple of times, though. One time in particular, I remember. Something went wrong, though—I don't even remember what any more. 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 keeps telling you to stop. The trouble with me is, I stop. Most guys don't. I can't help it. You never know whether they really want you 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'll be on you, not them. Anyway, I keep stopping. The trouble is, I get to feeling sorry for them. I mean most girls are so dumb and all. After you neck them for a while, you can really watch them losing their brains. You take a girl when she gets really passionate, she just hasn't any brains. I don't know. They tell me to stop, so I stop. I always wish I hadn't, after I take them home, but I keep doing it anyway.
Anyway, while I was putting on another clean shirt, I sort of figured this was my big chance, in a way. I figured 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 château and all on the Riviera, in Europe, and all he did in his spare time was beat women off with a club. He was a real rake and all, but he knocked women out. 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. It was a very corny book—I realize that—but I couldn't get that violin stuff out of my mind anyway. In a way, that's why I sort of wanted to get some practice in, in case I ever get married. Caulfield and his Magic Violin, boy. It's corny, I realize, but it isn't too corny. I wouldn't mind being pretty good at that stuff. Half the time, if you really want to know the truth, when I'm horsing around with a girl, I have a helluva lot of trouble just finding what I'm looking for, for God's sake, if you know what I mean. Take this girl that I just missed having sexual intercourse with, that I told you about. It took me about an hour just to get her goddam brassière off. By the time I did get it off, she was about ready to spit in my eye.
Anyway, I kept walking around the room, waiting for this prostitute to show up. I kept hoping she'd be good-looking. I didn't care too much, though. I sort of just wanted to get it over with. Finally, somebody knocked on the door, and when I went to open it, I had my suitcase right in the way and I fell over it and damn near broke my knee. I always pick a gorgeous time to fall over a suitcase or something."
- J. D. Salinger, "The Catcher in the Rye"
When I opened the door, I have to admit, I didn't know who she was at first glance. I mean she was dressed kind of normal. You get to thinking about prostitutes and all, and you expect them to dress a certain way. I sure didn't know what the hell I was expecting, but I thought she'd probably be wearing a real tight dress, with those kinds of sleeves that don't really cover the shoulder, but just kind of hang off the sides—which really defeats the point of putting sleeves on a dress, if you ask me—and her skirt would be too high, high enough to see her shoes and her calves and maybe even the tops of her knees. Boy, that would have been a picture.
She didn't fit it, though. The picture, I mean. She fit the dress, all right, and the dress fit her; but she didn't look like a prostitute, is what I'm trying to say. I should guess that prostitutes can't really afford nice things, but boy, she'd prove me wrong with just one look. It was like she was going to a cocktail party or something in her royal little gown. And aside from that, she had on a pearl necklace. Really! A pearl necklace, just like those old women who go to church every Sunday and sit on their porches every other day, just shouting at kids who walk by. I didn't think she sat on her porch and shouted at people that walked by—really, I didn't—but I figured with a necklace like that, she probably had a grandmother who did.
It was making me feel lousy as hell, looking at this lost girl in the doorway and staring at her grandmother's pearl necklace and her pretty little gown and everything; but then I got the idea into my head that she must be the one I was waiting for. Suddenly it all made a lot more sense. I guessed playing her little game of dress-up made her seem more enticing for the poor saps who hired her. Hell, it was working pretty well on me already. The dress fit real good on her, even though it looked like some movie-star piece. It was a nice pale green too, like the foil wrappers they put on those little peppermint chocolates in the wintertime. She looked like a little peppermint chocolate. And it was around this time that the little peppermint chocolate started to look like maybe she was a little perplexed that she wasn't being invited in, so I thought I'd better say something.
"How do you do?"
"Just fine," she said back. Her voice was real soft and quiet, like snow in the air. "You the guy Maurice said?"
"Is he the elevator boy?"
"Yeah, he is," she said. Boy, her voice was nice. It almost made me forget about everything else about her. There wasn't a lot to forget, anyway. She was like any other girl. Her hair was kind of curled and fluffed up, but not really, like she hadn't put any special effort into it, and that was just the way it happened to be. And her eyes were clear and wide, this (e/c) color that I'd never seen anywhere else, but then felt like I'd seen a million times before. Her voice was the best part, though. Boy, her voice just knocked me out. "May I come in?"
"Oh. Oh, yeah." I kind of stumbled over my words like a moron. The same kind of moron who keeps his suitcase in the doorway for people to go banging their knees on. But she didn't pay it any mind. All she did was lower her eyelashes, the little fluttering things; and take a big step over my suitcase lying diagonal there. And she swept past me with a kind of glance. She was trying to tell me something, I think, but I wouldn't have known it. I'm kind of dumb when it comes to girls. They seem to talk a lot with their expressions and such, which is just something I cannot understand. It's not that I can't be bothered to try to learn a thing or two—I do try. I just really can't read a lot of the looks I get. And I liked the look she was giving me and all, but I still wished she would use her voice, because I could stand to hear more of it. She wouldn't, though. She just kept looking over her shoulder.
Eventually I figured something out and got the door shut behind me, which was a miracle with all the crummy thoughts going through my head, about that pale green dress and everything. She kept looking at me, and I didn't know what to do—so like any moron, you know what I did? I started making the bed. Honest to God. I started turning down the corners on the bed, and pulling the sheets taut and everything. And I talked to her while I was doing it, too.
"And, uh, may I have your name?" I didn't know what to say, as you can probably tell. I think maybe she had less of an idea, because she came over and watched me for a little bit, staring while I fluffed the pillows and everything, and then, after a good long time, she spoke. "I'm (Y/N). (Y/N) (L/N). And you are…?"
"Holden Caulfield." I let go of the sheet I was wrestling with, and I turned to shake her hand, but I was feeling pretty nervous, so when I was done shaking I brought my hand right up to my head and gave it a good hard scratch, like I didn't know what I was doing here, and was trying to figure it out. Really, that was the truth. I had no idea what I was doing here. There was a prostitute—a beautiful one, a really beautiful one—in my hotel room, and I had to pay for her to be there, and I knew I was supposed to do something, but I just couldn't figure out what. Luckily enough, she kind of came to my rescue, and touched me on the arm. I quit scratching my head so she wouldn't think I had lice or bed bugs or something. Her hands were real soft, just like her voice. I mean, it wasn't completely unnatural that a girl should have soft hands. But hers were such that you could just tell they were soft, even through a piece of fabric. You'd know it if she touched the other side of a brick wall you were leaning on, that's how soft her hands were. It carried through the atmosphere, or something. I don't know. All I really did know was that I liked it. And I hoped she'd maybe consider keeping her hands on me.
She considered it, all right. I must have given her some kind of go-ahead look or something, because she smiled at me, delicate as ever, and flickered her little dark eyelashes and reached up and tugged on my collar a bit. Now, I like to think I'm sane, perfectly sane as the next guy. But sometimes you get with a girl, and she starts doing things you never in a million years would have thought you'd liked. Sometimes, you get with a girl, and she just gives you a mysterious smile and pulls on your collar a bit, and all of a sudden you get this rush all through you like you're going to kiss her until neither of you can breathe, and it seems like a pretty damn good idea until you realize you're too much of a yellow belly to go through with it.
She wasn't yellow-bellied at all, though. She kept talking right through it, and it was the strangest situation I have ever been in, listening to her soft-as-down voice and then listening to my loud-as-a-fog-horn thoughts. She would tell me one thing—lean in real close, and say something really nice, really sexy, in that kind of kittenish voice of hers—and then I'd listen to what my thoughts had to say about that, and often it was really good up until I started getting nervous about what she was going to do to me. Or, more accurately, what I was supposed to do to her. I think maybe she wanted me to pick her up and set her down on the bed, and just start ravishing her—that's what a lot of guys do in books and movies, you know, they'd just pick her up and ravish her—but I couldn't do it. I made myself put my hands on her hips, and then I couldn't stop thinking about how silky that old green dress felt, and how it was probably very expensive, and how she probably bought it to get all dolled up and I didn't want to be the one to take it off her when it was her dress, and then she'd say something else to me and I'd look up and there would be her eyes, these beautiful (e/c) eyes, so clear I could practically see her thoughts in them. It disturbed me a little. I mean, I liked having her there, whispering things to me. And I liked her hands on my collar and everything. She even went so far as to put both her palms flat on my chest, like maybe she was going to shove me away, but it didn't feel like that, didn't feel like that at all—instead it was kind of like she was holding me there, admiring me, kind of like she'd put her hands on a good, solid cliff and was looking over the edge at something curious and interesting. I liked that a lot—but her eyes looked right through me, and I started sweating. And not even a normal amount. I mean a lot. I couldn't help it, she just made me so nervous. And every look she gave me made me feel like maybe she was psychic and could hear my thoughts or something, which just made me sweat even more, for fear of being found out. I don't know what I was going to be found out about. There was nothing to be found out. But I was afraid of it anyway.
"Are you alright, Holden?" I heard her ask, and the way she asked it made me feel awfully awkward. She and I—we were kind of in a compromising position. I mean, she'd just kind of hooked her leg over my hip, and I'd just kind of put my hand on her thigh to keep it there, and all of a sudden she was holding my face and looking at me like maybe something was wrong. And if she'd asked me, "Holden, is something wrong?", I would have understood a little more, felt a little better. If she'd asked me "what's wrong with you?", I would have been insulted, but I would have been able to take it. But the way she asked it—"Are you alright, Holden?"—was just plain miserable. Not to her, I'm sure, she probably didn't think twice about it—but it made me feel really melancholy all of a sudden, and I let her down from my hip and all, because I wasn't sure I could hold her like that, with her making me feel the way I did. I couldn't understand it, at first. It wasn't bad, the way she'd said it. It just made me feel sad. I don't know. If I had a dime for every time I didn't know something about what the hell was going on inside my head, I would be the richest man alive, and then some. But hell, I didn't know. And I wasn't getting any richer. It just made me sad, how much she seemed to care. I mean, how many guys did she do this with, in a night? How many guys did she meet where she had to ask if they were alright? Probably not many. It was probably just me. The genius who couldn't even spend one night with a girl without getting sappy on her. Jesus. I tried to think of something good to say, but nothing would come out, and she just kept looking at me, her eyes all wide and clear and full of emotion. I began to worry again that she could read my thoughts with those eyes.
"I don't know, (Y/N). I guess I'm just not in the mood."
I don't know what I was expecting her to say. Maybe I was expecting her to get mad at me. Girls will do that a lot, I find. You can't really know what's going to come out of a girl's mouth when she doesn't get what she expected in the first place—and a lot of the time, it surprises you. You always think girls can't cuss until they do. But anyway, she wasn't cussing. She wasn't even upset, really. At least, not that I could tell. She just looked at me, like she had been looking at me, and she let go of my collar, and fingered those pearl beads around her own neck like maybe it helped her think somehow.
"Well, okay." She said, in acceptance, and at that, I was amazed. "That's fine. But the least you could do is let me have a bath."
"Sure," I said immediately. I was so shocked I forgot how to think for a minute. All I could do was thank some higher power—God or Jesus or whoever it was out there—that she hadn't blown up in my face or anything, or that she hadn't taken it personal. Gee, I was sure glad she hadn't taken it personal. You know, some girls do that—they think it's all their fault that you just aren't in the mood for anything sexy, and then they start to wilt and cry, like a flower in the rain. It just isn't appealing, and furthermore, it's usually not her fault. You can't always expect a guy to want to give you the time at the drop of a hat. Especially when he's nervous. Sometimes it just doesn't happen, and it isn't the girl's fault. It's not because she isn't pretty, and it's not because you don't want her; although sometimes these are invariably true, and in that case maybe the girl should take it personally, though you wouldn't and shouldn't ever tell her—most of the time, though, it's just that she's feeling good and you're not, and you don't know what to do that'll make it better for either of you. So you don't do anything, you just say you're not in the mood. And then she starts to cry.
This girl, though, was real patient. All she did was ask me to show her around, and without even thinking about it, I did. I led her straight to the bath, and then when she looked real confused at the kind of faucet knobs the hotel room had—they were kind of fancy, I guess, real crystal knobs, instead of the old steel-type—I had to turn the water on for her, and I kind of talked like an idiot while it was running, practically yelling over the thundering noise as the tub filled with hot water and steam. And she laughed a lot, which I guess was pretty good, since neither of us could really hear what I was saying. When the bath was all good and drawn, I kind of made a sweeping motion toward it, like "hey, here you go," and I went to leave, but she kind of whirled around and said "Oh, please," in a voice that meant I wasn't supposed to go yet. But I didn't know what else she could possibly want. I mean, there was soap on the ledge, and there were clean towels on the rack off to the side. So I didn't understand what it was she could want from me. And she kind of hemmed and hawed about it for a minute, playing with the pearls around her neck, unsure of what to say until she was sure.
"Here, you oughta help me." She said, and then turned around so I could see the latch on her pearls, and the zipper on her dress.
That about stopped my brain for a second. I mean a full stop too, not just a gear-grinding. I swear I would have fainted right there if it hadn't started working again within the minute.
"Uh… um… oh… okay." I didn't know what to say, either. I sounded like a stuttering idiot as I reached for her necklace, and carefully unlatched it, and brought it out from around her neck.
She turned a little to look at me, and the look in her eyes was a little concerned, just a tinge of worry. "Be careful with those. Please."
"Okay, I will," I said, which was about my first coherent sentence of the night, and I did what I was told. I was real careful with them. I even went so far as to lay them out on a dry washcloth, and wrap them all up in a little bundle at the side of the sink, so they wouldn't be affected by the moisture in the air, or what have you. I don't really know if pearls are affected by such things, but I wanted to be careful. Just like she'd told me to.
When I finally set them down, she looked relieved, and then she turned around again, ready for me to help her with the zipper on her dress. I kind of understood then why she needed the help. I mean, the first few inches, that zipper was sliding down great. And then it got caught on the fabric, and I accidentally swore out loud, because I thought I'd ripped the dress a new one, and instead of getting mad at me for my language she just laughed and told me to pull up a little, and try again. It worked, somewhat; but the damn thing just kept getting stuck, and I had to pull it up and down and up and down and up and down about a million goddamn times, and the whole time she was laughing so softly and shaking just below my hands, so that it felt like I was doing something good, at the same time as that zipper was really getting me steamed. As dumb as I am, I did eventually get it off of her, and she stood up straight and stepped out of it, her peppermint-chocolate foil dress. I didn't know where to look, really. I mean, I thought I would have had the decency to maybe look away when she was about half naked in front of me—but I didn't. Now my brain couldn't be stopped. It was like a runaway train—I just kept having all these thoughts about how she looked underneath her dress, with all her faded freckles and sunmarks like cake crumbs on her skin; and how she wore mismatched underwear, and I thought that was remarkably swell of her. And then I got to thinking about how small she was, how willowy. Guys talk a lot of show about girls and their figures, and how they're supposed to be thin and curved like an hourglass at the waist and everything, but all of a sudden, I kind of just wanted to sit her down for a meal or something. The dress took a lot away from her. Standing there in her underwear, she looked like a naked baby bird, a frail little thing that would shake from the cold if you put her outside at night. But her eyes were brighter than stars, and her skin was so smooth and soft that at the same time as I thought that, I couldn't keep my eyes away from her. It was awful of me. It really was.
Then she wanted me to take off the rest of her clothing. I guess the moral man in me should have refused, but, well, I did ask for her to be there, and she was a prostitute, so she was probably used to it. The thing was, though, that there are certain things you can figure out about a guy by the way he looks at a brassiere. If he doesn't even glance at it and has it off of you within ten seconds, he's been with a lot of girls, or he's been with one girl for a really long time, and has had a lot of practice with such things. Me?
Well, after a minute or two of staring, she laughed real quiet and asked, "Holden, how old are you, anyway?"
"Me? Oh, well, I'm—uh—twenty-two. Who's asking?" I asked, even though I knew it was her, and I knew she'd figured me out, at least halfway. She didn't seem to care, though. She just turned towards me and smiled, pressing a kiss to my chin, before she turned back around and said "Watch this."
I was watching, I think, but mostly I was turning redder than a radish at her kiss, the wholesome feeling of some girl's lips on my face. I don't know. It was kind of nice at the same time as it was sad. It was like I was just so helpless and adorable that she couldn't help but give me a kiss out of pity. And if there was one thing I hated, it was pity. I didn't like that she'd done that, really, but then she showed me how to undo a brassiere, and then I forgot all about it because I realized how easy it was to get the damn thing off.
"So that's all you have to do?" I asked, and she nodded and let it fall to the floor, and I forgot all about covering my eyes when she turned back toward me. And, you know—I didn't mind so much. I didn't suppose I could mind anyway, because I didn't have much of one left. Again, she stopped my thoughts in all their tracks, and my head was as silent as the snow in the middle of winter as I looked at her, naked from the waist up, with her fairy-like arms and her pretty, rounded shoulders and her collar bone that kind of jutted out a little, and her bosoms; not enormous, but just the right kind of handful size; sweet and round and with little rosebuds in the middle, like you see in all those old paintings of women. I don't know what came over me, but I'm pretty sure it was the same thing all those artists were thinking such a long time ago. I mean, she was beautiful. She really was.
"Holden?" She asked, and slid her hands up, palms flat, to my own chest, where I hardly felt her touching me, I was so enamored. Her voice was soft and kittenlike, as it had been for the whole evening, but there was a touch of a different tone now, almost a whine, like she was playing at something.
"Yes?" I said, suddenly feeling winded, like I'd just run a mile or something. I thought about how really incredibly nice it would be to just pull her to me, and feel that softness straight through my shirt, feel her all warm and plush and everything against me—but I couldn't do that, I just couldn't. I swallowed hard and leaned on the sink's countertop a little as she pressed forward a little and whispered in my ear,
"Would you be a dear and get me a cigarette?"
I couldn't tell you exactly what it was I said at that moment, but in short, yes, I was a dear, and I got her a cigarette. I got her the lighter out of my jacket, too; from where I'd hung it up in the shabby little hotel closet, and before I walked back into the bathroom I had to stop and really think about what I was doing. I mean really think. I knew it wasn't worth two cents, with how my brain had turned into oatmeal—but I had to get a hold on things before I walked back in and made a complete goddamn fool of myself. I kept thinking in circles, rolling the cigarette between my fingertips and wondering whether she might like the feeling, and then blushing so hard I thought my goddamn face was going to burn up, and then scolding myself for even thinking I could do that to a sweet girl like her. And then I would think, well, she's a prostitute, for Chrissake! And I couldn't deny that, exactly. She was a prostitute. But there was still something about her, how small she was, how easygoing and everything, and how playful; like a ragdoll kitten—I don't know. It made me think maybe she was just a girl looking for money in the wrong place. Like maybe she knew a lot more about me than she let on, but by personal experience of her own. I thought maybe she'd been kicked out of school too. Or maybe she just didn't know what to do with herself, and had ended up here with me in kind of the same way I'd ended up here with her. Maybe that guy from the elevator had told her about me, and she'd been thinking about something else; so she shrugged and said "okay".
After I thought about that, I got to feeling normal again. I don't mean normal in a good way, either. I got to feeling sordid and miserable, like the whole world was coming down around me. And that was because I knew it was true. When the elevator boy told her about me, there was no way she thought anything about it—this wasn't a movie, for Chrissake, it was real life. There was no way she'd looked at him with those bright (e/c) eyes and exclaimed "be right there!". There was no way she'd gotten dressed like girls do in the movies, excitedly running around their room and fretting over the stupidest details that guys just don't notice unless you ask them to. There was no way she'd done anything but just looked up from whatever she was doing and said "okay". To her, I was just money. I had to be, because she had to eat somehow. And if my five dollars was going to pay for her breakfast tomorrow, I was sure okay with it. It just hurt to think of her like that. As being phony like the rest of them. Like the rest of everybody else in this whole goddamn world. I might as well have been alone in that damn hotel room. It would have suited me just fine, and it would have made me feel no different. Really.
Anyway. This was all pretty status-quo stuff, pretty usual for me and my mind on a random midweek night, so it was pretty easy for me to ignore once I remembered I had a cigarette and a lighter in my hand and that I had a job to do. I walked over to the bathroom to give (Y/N) her cigarette, and all of a sudden, it all changed. If I could describe it in a way that made sense to you, I would do it, but when I walked in there, I didn't know what the hell had hit me. All I knew was that it was different, somehow. I felt different.
When I entered the bathroom, the first thing I noticed was that I was warm all over from the steam. I guess I hadn't realized how hot the water was; but (Y/N) didn't seem to mind any. The mirror and windows were all fogged up, and she'd slipped out of her underwear and garters and stockings and whatever the hell else girls wear under all those stupid layers they have to put on, and she was sitting in the tub now; surrounded by bubbles and pouring something into the water from a little decanter-looking thing that only had a picture of a rose embossed on its glass. She looked up at me with her starlit eyes and smiled, and something in my chest did this strange flip-flopping thing, and everything I'd just been thinking about, I mean about being miserable and all; it went melting away, straight to the ground, just like snow in the spring. I couldn't explain it to you any better if I tried. It was just like that. Just by sitting there, and smiling at me, she was so gentle it almost hurt—but in a good way, like when you get ice put on your sore head, or when somebody pats you on the shoulder after a hard day. I kind of wanted to run away for a second—and don't bug me about it, either, I know it wasn't logical—but I didn't. I didn't, and I stayed. Which I think was a pretty good decision, seeing as she wanted her cigarette, and all. She leaned forward so I could place it between her lips for her and light it and everything, and she wouldn't have to sully anything with her wet, soapy hands. I guessed I wouldn't mind if she wanted to sully me with her wet hands, but then I figured that now wasn't the time for that, since right now, she was busy making me feel okay. Not particularly sexy, or anything. Just okay. Like I could stand to sit somewhere and do a little of nothing, without any of my damn thoughts bothering me. It was really nice. I liked it a lot. After I lit her cigarette and everything, and she gave it a couple of puffs and blinked at me as if to ask for an ashtray; and after I got that for her and gave her a towel to wipe her hands so she could ash her cigarette properly—I'm hopeless around girls, I know it—I just sat by the edge of the tub, waiting. I don't have a clue what I was waiting for. I guess just to feel more of that same niceness. It radiated off of her, like sunshine glinting off the Hudson.
It didn't take her very long to smoke her cigarette, but I'm sure I could have watched it forever. She kind of reminded me of an aunt of mine, except much younger and much prettier. She and this aunt were the only women I really knew who smoked seriously. And I don't mean to say that I don't know girls who smoke—I do. But I mean, there's a difference between girls who smoke to look a certain way; who smoke to fit in with the movie star crowd and be aspiring little angels, and those who smoke seriously, with the intent on getting the stuff into their lungs, holding it there, and letting it go in a wisp or two of pleasant, tobacco-scented relaxation. Though I'd always been kind of afraid of that aunt growing up—she looked an awful lot like a dragon when she puffed like that—I liked how (Y/N) looked, sitting there in the bath, her good posture disappeared from her. Her shoulders were slumped forward a little and her soft petal lips were pursed around the body of the cigarette, her lower lip jutting out just slightly in a pretty pout. When she did exhale, she tipped her head back and blew the smoke out in little huffs of air, making it so that it curled up through the steam to meet the ceiling of the bathroom. I thought about catching it a few times, like if maybe I had a mason jar and enough sense, I could capture the way she blew the smoke out, and keep it forever, a reminder of that kind of carelessness and wholesomeness she had. But I didn't do it, because I knew smoke wasn't the kind of thing to be caught. And anyway, it wasn't anything I, personally, could ever hold onto. That kind of thing deserved to be free—as free as she was.
When she ashed her cigarette in the tray for the final time, that was when she really got down to business, and she started humming softly as she plucked the bar of soap back up from its ledge on the wall and began sudsing up her hands with it. And, you know, I was awfully curious about that kind of thing. I'd been in the shower rooms at about a half a million schools—Pencey, Whooton, Elkton Hills; you name it, I'd been kicked out of there—but in all the times I'd been there, I hadn't ever really seen anybody take the time to really wash up. I mean, sure, you had guys who were obsessed with combing their hair, and guys who at least knew how to put on a deodorant every now and again. And sure, there was always at least one who spent an hour or more in the shower getting clean and using up all the hot water. But I'd never seen somebody wash themselves as carefully and as patiently as (Y/N) washed herself, and it made something inside me churn and roll over itself, as if maybe I was going to be violently homesick for some reason I didn't understand. I felt lost, sitting there. I didn't know what to feel. All I knew was I liked the way her hands were covered in white lather, and how she smelled of jasmine and lavender and roses, and how she kept her hands at a steady glide, first soaping up her shoulders, and then her arms, and then her neck and her collar; then scrubbing a little behind her ears before she came down to her front and scrubbed up her belly and her sides, and—
I wasn't sure I was supposed to be watching, really, but I couldn't tear my eyes away. She soaped up her hands one more time on the bar sitting on the ledge, and slid her palms, covered in the stuff, all across her breasts and everything. She closed her eyes as she did it too, real lightly, still humming, but softer now, like she was about to fall asleep or something, and I couldn't stop looking, couldn't stop thinking about her, how beautiful she was, how I would go crazy for somebody to really care about me like that—I mean, the way she touched herself, it was reverent, it was special, in a way that suggested she knew her worth and she knew the best parts of her and she knew that if I wasn't so goddamn shy, I'd be the one touching her like that. And I guess it really got to me, because all of a sudden I blurted out the stupidest goddamn thing I'd heard myself say all night.
"You don't seem much like a prostitute."
She opened one eye to look at me, paused in her movements, like a cat lazing in the sunshine with its paws up to its chest. "Maybe I don't. So what?"
"I don't know." My God. I felt my tongue swelling up, my throat drying out. Here it was. I was making a complete idiot of myself, as always seemed to happen in front of some girl I might actually like to spend my time with. "You just don't seem like one. You're too nice."
She seemed to think about this for a second, and opened both her eyes, going back into the motions she'd been making; rinsing her hands in the soap-clouded water and cupping them to pour rivulets over herself, all down her front, like the world's tiniest, most beautiful waterfall. "You know, Holden, there's an old saying that not everything is as it seems." If she were any kind of phony, if she were anything like the rest of them, like the whole world outside this one room; she would have smiled at me, would have had that little twinkle in her white teeth and told me something dull that I'd already heard a million times before. But she didn't. She simply rubbed the soap bar between her hands again, lifted one slender, dripping leg from the water, and began to wash the rest of herself as delicately and as seriously as she had begun. She didn't even look at me, she just kept talking, without even the hint of a smile. And I found myself appreciating the sincerity. Even if she wasn't paying attention to me, I could understand that she was, at least, being honest.
"I would like to add that not everyone is as they seem. And even then, my dear, I am not at all what you would call 'everyone'." She smiled halfway, almost to herself; but she quit it before she looked at me, and then got this kind of wistful look. "You're a nice boy, Holden. Don't you think you deserve to be treated kindly every once in a while?"
I didn't answer that. It wasn't that it wasn't a good question—it was. It made you think. But the problem was that I didn't want to think. My brain had already run me through about a million scenarios where I ruined the night for both of us, and here I was, not even knowing this was one of the possibilities. Had she really picked up on me being the way I was? Had she really seen inside my head just now, wishing somebody would be that nice to me? I had half a mind to ask her if she really was psychic or if perhaps she'd talked to somebody who knew a guy who knew me, but that would've been a stupid question, because in a city so big, there were no such coincidences. And if there were, they were few and far between. Besides, it was just a question. She didn't mean to hurt me at all. She probably didn't even know how deep it reached. She only meant to ask.
Instead of saying anything, I just kind of turned my back to her so she could get on with her bathing without a peeping Tom right in her goddamn bathroom (I'd begun to think of it as her bathroom, now, even though it was my hotel room), and I began to feel miserable again, like a rotting vegetable in somebody's garden. No. No, I really didn't deserve it. I couldn't think why—I wanted people to be kind to me, sure, but the fact of the matter was just that it wasn't going to happen. People weren't kind to one another out of anything other than greediness, or stupidity, or some third thing, some reason for the thickheaded phoniness that seemed to prop the world up where it stood. And along with that, I couldn't bring myself to believe I deserved kindness anyway. There were so many things I'd done—so many stupid things—that I just couldn't take it. You can't believe that kind of thing when you go home and make your mother cry over how many schools you've been kicked out of. You can't believe that kind of thing when you have a constant barrage of teachers telling you you just need to apply yourself and then you'll be fit as an academically-advanced fiddle. You can't believe that kind of thing when the only girl you can get is a prostitute, and even then, you can't get up the guts to give her the time properly.
After some time of my rotten spiral of thinking (and I don't know how much time, I'm dumb when it comes to that kind of thing, not once in my life have I been able to bring myself to wear a wristwatch and actually look at it), I heard her get out of the tub, with a great swishing of water, and a kind of splatter as she spilled some water outside of where the bathmat was. I thought about how bathmats are never big enough to save you from having to clean up a mess afterward; I looked down at the floor and thought about it real hard, and watched her bare feet creep across the tile to the towel rack, and I didn't look past her shin until she'd gotten a towel firmly secured around herself, and had wrung her hair out over the side of the tub. Then I tried to ignore the way my heart kept flip-flopping and making my whole chest feel like it was turning itself inside out, but it was really hard to do that when she leaned her warm, fluffy towel-covered leg against my shoulder to reach over me and get the stopper out of the tub so the water could drain away. I swear she must have heard me and how loud I swallowed, because then she bent down to look at me, and her eyes were the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen.
"Hey," she said, real soft, and simple, like the barest tone above a whisper. "Follow me."
So I did. I watched her get up and stride across the bathroom floor without a sound, slowly padding out to the hotel room again, just out of sight past the bathroom door. I dragged myself to my feet and came after her, half miserable, half curious about what she was doing, where she was taking me. When I saw her again, she was standing near the edge of the bed, looking out the window through the little sliver of open curtain I'd left behind. There was a building across the way whose rooms were still lit this bright orange-yellow, and because our own light fixture was pretty dim, I could see the colors decorating the sides of her face. I felt like I was in my own private movie theater with my own private actress as I watched her, the way she blinked twice, and then sighed and collapsed onto the bed, taking no more than three tosses and turns to get comfortable. I stood in the doorway, awkwardly, just watching her, not wanting to be seen or heard or felt. I just wanted to watch. I just wanted to know.
"Holden," she said, not exasperatedly or impatiently, but with a certain exhausted tone, like she'd been working all day and simply could not bear with it any longer. "Come lay down with me, won't you?"
It wouldn't be right to say no, was what I told myself. That was what I started telling myself, anyway, before I got into bed with her. I don't know what it was entirely—maybe it was just the sum of everything at once—but when I walked around to the other side and climbed in among those crisp white sheets I'd just been pulling taut to the corners an hour ago; and when I felt her exuding warmth next to me, and putting out her hand for me to hold, I don't know. Something just broke.
"Hey," she whispered again, real quiet and almost childlike, nudging closer like we were two kids at a sleepover, one wracked by guilt and circumstance and the other wondering just what the hell happened. "Holden. Hey. Holden. It's alright. Don't worry. It's alright."
"It's not alright," I sobbed, without knowing what was wrong, as she pressed her long, willowy body against mine; and if I wanted to, I could feel her soft-as-a-peach skin; if I wanted to, I could put my hand on her leg or grace her shoulder or brush her hair; but I didn't. All I could stand to do was put my arms to my own chest like I was guarding it with my life and bawl like a little kid who'd taken a baseball to the face. "It's not alright. It's not. Nothing's alright. Everything in this whole goddamn world is wrong, it's upside down, I can never make any goddamn sense of it, and I don't know what I'm doing here, I don't know, I never know…"
She shushed me, kind of, and put her lips all over my face, which I guess was meant to comfort me somehow, but it only made me sadder because it reminded me of butterflies. And butterflies on their own, they're not inherently sad creatures. In fact, they're quite beautiful. But I was thinking of these butterflies in particular that would flock around the fields where I used to play catch with Allie, and that only led me to thinking about him, and his bright red hair, and his goofy smile. And then I couldn't think anymore, I could only heave and cry and suck in air and make a whole bunch of noises I'm sure some farm animals would be real ashamed of. (Y/N) didn't mind, though. She was real sweet to me, and once I waved her away and told her to knock it off with the butterfly bullshit, she just held me and laid her head on my chest and listened to my misery come tumbling out of me. It was nice of her. It really was. I'm sure she didn't like that I was using her hair as a kind of handkerchief, since she'd just gotten out of the bath and all; but I'll tell you again, I couldn't help it. Her hair was warm and soft and a little damp from the steam and it smelled like roses and jasmine and something kind of spicy underneath, like maybe she'd had a brush with somebody else's cologne. I knew it wasn't likely the truth, but I liked to think, just for the moment, that it was her father's cologne. I liked to think she was a real dignified girl, and that she was good to her parents in ways I couldn't be. I liked to think she was the kind of girl who bounced around the house and called her father "Daddy" in that affectionate, chipper way. And I didn't want to think about her being with another man, ever.
I guess I told her about a lot of things, then. I don't like to relive it much, because then it just starts to hurt all over again, and I'd probably be just as miserable, crying while I write this, and crying while I read and re-read it for spelling errors, and whatnot. But I know what I did tell her, and I'll mention it so you know too. I told her all about Jane Gallagher, and exactly what kind of a girl she was, and how I wanted her to be okay for once, and happy, and to not go on any old date with any old sleazebag from any old academy. And I told her all about my brother D. B. and how he was a real good writer, and how he was prostituting—well, okay, maybe that was the wrong word to use in front of her, but she really didn't seem to mind—he was prostituting his talents for these goddamn money grubbers who just churn out movie after movie and don't ever give any credit to the guys behind the masterpieces. I told her about Phoebe, too, that spunky little sport, and I told her about old Sally Hayes—and then I started in on Allie. And oh, boy. It was okay when I was remembering him, mostly. I actually calmed down a little bit because I had to think about everything I wanted to tell her; which was a lot, and there was a lot to remember, so I had to focus on something other than the feeling of a gaping hole in my chest and all the pain rushing, cutting through me like a river cuts through rock. She laid quiet and patient through about a million and one stories about Allie, stories about everything he did that made him just so goddamn brilliant. I told her about the baseball glove, and about the green ink, and the poems he liked. I told her about the way his hair kind of looked like strawberries sometimes, when he was out in the sun and everything, and his skin got so tan sometimes it was hard to tell where he stopped and his hair started. He was like the spirit of summer in one person's body, a little ball of light, just shining with all the worth in the world. I told her how sometimes I thought that with Allie around, it didn't matter if I amounted to much in the end, because we'd always have him to look out for. It wasn't that he was the golden child, I explained to her. No. He wasn't the golden child at all. He was the star.
And then he had to go and get leukemia, of all things. I really did try my best to keep my head up while I was telling her all this, but once you get to a certain point of certain things that are too painful to say; and you feel her little willow-reed arms around you, squeezing you gently like she knows and she loves and she cares; once you feel all that, I bet you'd burst right back into tears too. I buried my nose in her hair and breathed deep and tried to keep it all at bay, but I started remembering the hospital room and everything, and I shut my eyes so hard it started to hurt, and I curled up around (Y/N) and squeezed her so tight I was afraid I might open my eyes and suddenly see her lying there, blue and white, like Allie had been. And the thought made me shake. I mean it really, really made me shake. I would have screamed, I think, had she not been there, still managing to stroke my back real nice and easy, making her comforting noises every now and again.
"I thought I could make it when he was still around. I really thought I could." I managed to tell her, after a good while of miserable sniveling. "But now he's gone and it's like—it's like when your mother tells you to run and get something from the cellar and somebody shuts the door on you. There's no lights down there. It's cold and wet and there are spiders and other things in the dark, and you know you're supposed to be grown up about it and just walk to the door and open it, but it's too goddamn dark and you're scared and things keep brushing past you."
"That sounds terrifying," she murmured against my collar, and I searched for more words, the right words to tell her exactly what I meant; in exactly such a way that she would say something like that again, and I'd get to feel her sweet, warm breath on my neck.
"It is. And waking up every day is even worse. It's like somebody reached up to the sun and found out it was just a giant lightbulb after all. So somebody's unscrewed the sun and you're looking up and thinking, 'hey, goddammit, where'd my light go?' But it doesn't matter much to everyone else, because they all have their goddamn torches and lanterns and kerosene lamps. They're all laughing and smiling with their own little lights. And you have nothing." I tightened my grip on her for a second, but then realized I was doing it, and quit it. I figured that even if she was a prostitute, she probably wouldn't like to be held like that, wouldn't like one of her ribs accidentally snapped by the world's most morose individual. I sniffed again and hated myself for doing it. "It's just wrong. There's something wrong with me and no matter how much I try and pretend it's not there or how I try and fix it, it just feels inevitable. I'm going to fail, no matter what. I'm going to get kicked out of school after school after school, until some poor sap takes pity on me and teaches me to be an assistant shoemaker or something. And I won't have the means to get any other job, so a shoemaker I'll have to be. And I'll make pitiful wages, being a shoemaker, but at least it'll be something, and I'll get to create, won't I? I will. But it won't be enough. I won't be doing what I love, but I don't know what I love, so I probably won't be too unhappy. I won't get a wife because nobody marries a shoemaker unless it's a widowed lady who's looking for some kind of experienced love. And even if I marry a widow, she'll just marry me because I made her a pair of Cinderella shoes because she looked at me real nice. And the whole time I'm married to her, I'll be wondering if she really loves me, even if we have kids and everything I'll be wondering. And then I'll wonder what life could have been like, if there weren't so many things missing from me. I'll wonder if Allie would have liked being an uncle to some shoemaker's kids, and then I'll just about die."
She listened to me go on and on and on, without even trying to stop me, as people sometimes did. Often I get cut off in the middle of a thought, which, you ought to know, is very frustrating and one of the things I hate most. I mean, for Chrissake, if you're going to invite me to have the thought, why not let me finish the goddamn thing? But I didn't have to worry about that with (Y/N), because she didn't speak through the whole manifesto and the utter depression of it all, to the point where I thought maybe I should shut my yap and make sure she hadn't fallen asleep or anything. When I did, she waited a minute or two, and then spoke.
"Holden, you seem really, really worried about a lot of things. You're…" she searched for a word or two, and where I would have spilled a paragraph on it, she just said plainly, "Fatalistic. You're fatalistic."
"Is that supposed to make me feel better?" I muttered, not meaning it the wrong way, but she didn't take it the wrong way either, so I guessed it was okay to be a little snippy with her. She seemed to understand what I meant anyway.
"Not really. It's just to tell you how you are." She pulled her head away from my chest so she could look at me like she really meant business. Her eyes were real wide and clear, like they had been the whole night, and I couldn't bear to spare them more than a passing glance, because I knew my own two eyeballs looked like they'd been through a war and a half; all red and wet and swollen and everything. "You're so concerned with your future, and how everything being dark now means that there will never be light again. But there can be, Holden. It's not impossible to relight a candle. It's not impossible that you'll be happy again."
"Yeah, well." I tried to think of something I could use to tell her she was wrong. "What about a candle that doesn't have a wick? Can't ever light something like that up."
She pressed one of her soft hands to my cheek and gently tipped my head so I'd look at her. I could only stare into her eyes for a second, though, before I chickened out and focused on her lips instead. They were real nice and pretty, moving into slow shapes as she whispered,
"Those are the candles you put on the stove. You surround them with light. You warm them, gently, and they melt all over with a little love and care. Even they aren't left in the dark forever."
I didn't say anything more, because I supposed I couldn't exactly refuse her point, and when I didn't speak again, she leaned forward and closed her eyes and kissed me. It was the strangest thing, that kiss. I couldn't put my finger on what it was exactly that made me think that, but after I got over how sweet and clementinish she tasted—that, and how velvety her lips were—after I got over all that business, I realized my mind had been wiped cleaner than a slate. And it made me kind of exhausted, really. I lay completely still on the bed as she leaned up and started with the butterfly kissing again, and I felt her lips touch my hairline, my cheekbone, the tip of my nose, the outer corner of my eyebrow. It was real nice, for the few minutes it lasted. She got up on her elbows once to give me a peck on the very top of my head, and I let her, because when she leaned over the smell of her warm skin washed over me and it kept all the thoughts at bay. It was like the warm ocean, washing tidal waves over disruptions in the sand. I don't know why I didn't let her do that sooner, but I was starting to get the feeling like maybe I'd said my piece, and was willing to listen to hers now. I half hoped she would tell me about her life, and why she was the way she was; because, if I'm being honest, I was really intrigued by her nature. I mean I wanted to know what made her the way she was. Even if it was a sad story—which I'm sure it was—I could have listened. I would have listened to her, even if it had been the most depressing story in the world. I didn't care. I wanted to know what made her so kind, even in the face of some random guy she would probably never see again. The thought gave me pause for a second, but instead of the overwhelming feeling of dread that usually accompanied such thoughts, I considered it again with a blank slate. She would probably never see me again. I guessed that just made it all the more special that she thought I was worth the time.
"You know," she said after a couple more kisses, one at the corner of my eye and another on my chin, "there are a lot of people like you. A lot of people who suffer, and yet do the world a whole lot of good."
"Like who?" I asked, real quiet, because her voice was doing that beautiful thing again, where it sounded like a soft breeze, like the shuffling of buds breaking open in spring, when the snow's still on the ground and the pond's still half-frozen. Somebody across the way turned out their light, and the hotel room lost a little of its orange-yellow glow through the curtains. I was reminded again of how late it was, but forgot it when she traced her fingertips over my cheek and smiled at me.
"Oh, most of the greats. Ernest Hemingway. Sylvia Plath. Van Gogh." A lock of her hair tumbled down from the side of her head just behind her ear as she was talking to me, and it kind of tickled my face, but I wasn't going to move it, because I didn't want her to think that she should keep her hair out of my face. I didn't mind it being there either, but she tucked it back into place with a smile anyway. "And, you know, I'm pretty sure F. Scott Fitzgerald was like that, too."
"Now I know you're messing with me," I said, and she shook her head, still smiling.
"Not at all. There are many, many people like you, Holden. People who have trouble finding the light, but never seem to have trouble being the light."
I stared at her for a minute or two there, trying to decide if it felt like my heart was breaking, or if it felt like it was being stitched back together. She got kind of impatient with my looking so hard at her, I guess, and she gently reached out and closed my eyes, so she could lean over and kiss me on the eyelids. The fluttering feeling it gave me only made me sure that she'd healed my heart a little, instead of tearing it open even further, which seemed to happen a lot more often these days. I really didn't know what to say—but that turned out to be okay after all, because she kept talking to me, even after she'd said the most brilliant thing she ever could say. (Y/N) was just intent on outdoing herself, I guess. And on proving she was the least prostitute-like woman I'd ever met in my entire life.
"You are the light, Holden, I know you are. You burn with this careless intensity, and sometimes you burn others, and sometimes you burn yourself, but the light itself is always beautiful. It is always red and orange and yellow, in dancing waves, in high, flickering patterns on the walls and ceiling of the rooms you enter. People notice you, they notice things about you. Your red hat, for instance." I'd forgotten I left it out on the table, but evidently, she'd seen it—and I didn't mind that she had. "And your winter-pale skin, like the flesh of an apple. And your hair, the color of soot; and two smudgy eyebrows, like dashes through the coal pile." I opened my eyes up, because I could feel her moving away from me, and I wondered where she was going—not to worry, though, because she was simply raising herself up, to get a better look at me. Her eyes were wondrously (e/c) in the dying light from the city falling sleep outside, and I caught sight of a faint freckle or two, shadows of her beauty in speckles across her cheeks and jaw. She blinked and sighed, smiling softly. "Your eyes are the most beautiful, honeyed sunset-gold I have ever seen. And they see so much." She leaned forward and kissed me on the cheek, and I wondered if it was possible that she ever got tired of kissing people. "You see everything in the world, and you think about it all of the time, turning it over and over in that head of yours. I know you're brilliant, Holden, but you think too much about the world, and all its miseries and pains. It would do you a little good to walk on the more imaginative side of life."
"There's no point in imagining things," I tried to tell her, but this time she did cut me off, with another kiss, no less. I decided in that moment I didn't mind being cut off that much if that was how she was going to do it. But when she spoke again, I could feel a kind of restlessness in my soul. Something in me wanted to disregard her. And it wasn't just because she was a prostitute, it wasn't because of anything like that. I really did think I valued her opinion. But I had this steadfast thing in me that said she was wrong. It was like having a rock stuck in your gut, just sitting there, feeling ugly, wanting you to be mean to the poor girl in front of you and tell her she was stupid for imagining the world to be any better than it was. But I told it to shut up, and tried to be patient and understand what she was saying.
"Listen. People imagine things all the time. That's how they get by." (Y/N) spoke, and ran her fingers through my hair, which gave me a kind of deep shiver down my spine, even though I was at present trying to work my way around believing her in the slightest. "It's how it always has been and how it always will be. Look, give it a chance, will you? Just let me talk to you. Let yourself listen. And, at the end of your imagining, you can decide whether you feel better, or whether I'm phony just like the rest of them."
"Oh, you're not phony, you never could be phony," I told her, even though it was a lie, because plenty of times I'd been with girls who I thought could never be phony, and yet it turned out they were. It felt like that with her, though. I just had the inkling that, wherever she was or whatever she was doing; she could not possibly be like everyone else. She wasn't just another face in the crowd. She wasn't just another girl you walked by on the sidewalk. She wasn't the sort to leave you without at least one good memory of her.
"Thank you," she said, softly, and then followed it up with "Now listen. Close your eyes."
I did. It was a little strange to be lying there, knowing someone was watching you with their eyes open while you had to sit there with your eyes closed. But I was tired and ready to let her do whatever she wanted. I didn't care anymore. I just listened, and let her comb her fingers through my hair every now and again as she spoke to me.
"You know what the world's like. It's full of sadness, and black-and-white colors, and every shade of grey in between. Every day there are millions of people who just hustle on to the next step. Babies are born. Kids grow up. There's prom nights and first kisses and car keys and house deeds and big weddings and fights and lovemaking and peace and war and then there's funerals and memorials, and there's stories being told, everywhere, all the time. You listen to all these stories, you hear them, and all you can take from them is the drudgery, the sadness that this world brings to those around you. But I promise you, when others look at you, this is not the sadness they see. They simply see a perplexed young man, who appears as if perhaps he is working on the next brilliant mathematical formula, or the next great American novel." She paused, and started up again, quieter this time. I felt her fingertips leave my hair, but her palm came down again, stroking my scalp as if I were just a homely little cat. If I'm being honest, it was a pleasure I really couldn't deny myself. I liked when she touched me. It wasn't the usual kind of touch girls offered—but then, it wasn't a prostitute's touch, either. I wasn't sure what it was, but it was warm, and gentle, and comforting, so I liked it a whole lot. And after she started doing that, she moved on, in her almost-whisper voice, like the shuffling of willow reeds by the lake.
"I cannot change the way you see these things, Holden, but I can tell you what I see," she said. "And I see a beautiful young man. He's laying down right now, resting; as young men should occasionally do. This young man in particular is lying on his back in a bed of gold rye…" I felt her nudge me so that I would roll onto my back, and to humor her, I did just that, keeping my eyes shut to the ugly, bare ceiling of the hotel room. "...and there is the open blue above him, crisp countryside sky, untouched by anything at all other than a gentle wisp of cloud here and there. As far as he is concerned, it's a perfect summer's day. There's not a single telephone pole in sight, but even so, there are these little black birds on the horizon, dancing just out of view; black Vs with feathers so small you'd never notice them if they fell on you. But he notices—he notices everything. He knows from the way his forehead and cheeks are rosy with the sunlight that it's getting later on in the evening, that some church bells in the distance are going to ring their six o'clock mass, a distant bonggg bonggg bongggg, as the wind shuffles through the rye and carries the noise to him. Just beyond the sun and the blackbirds and the endless blue and the gold stalks, there are children laughing, brother and sister. He's the oldest of them all, so they make jokes about him napping in the sun; they laugh about him being so old now he can barely stay awake for more than two hours, that he's sleeping like a cat. They, though, are young and spry and can still throw a baseball around for hours and hours, singing songs and playing games not until they are tired, but until someone calls them in for dinner, because the sky is turning that shade of indigo before night; and in the far, far distance, blackbirds have been replaced with silver stars."
There was a long silence before she spoke again, and I wasn't sure what she was doing in that silence, but I didn't need to know. I was busy thinking about the kind of hold she had over me. I hadn't meant to start imagining things as they were, but I knew what she was getting at; and the way she painted pictures with her words was all too enticing for me to listen to. What else was I supposed to do but imagine it? So I did. And I have to admit, it hurt a little to do, because it was such a familiar scene. I knew who she'd placed in the field with me.
After another long moment, in which she brushed her fingertips through my hair again, she spoke. "When I see you, you're playing baseball with Allie; just after he chucked the ball in your direction, thinking you wouldn't catch it because you were asleep. You surprise him, though. You catch it; and now you're up again, laughing and light on your feet, as Phoebe giggles and runs circles around you both, making up new rules to the game of catch as it goes on. By the end of the night, your feet hurt, your arms are tired and your cheeks hurt from smiling so, but the sun still lingers on tanned skin and red hair, and you've watched Allie pen another poem into the palm of his glove, and everything is alright. Everything is alright." She stroked my hair again like I was a cat, and from the way the sides of my face were getting real hot, I could tell I was crying again. My cheeks were wet and I was hot all over from trying to keep the goddamn sobs in, because I didn't think a prostitute should have to watch her poor sap of a client cry more than once in one night. But then she kept talking, and the words sent ripples through me that just made me want to curl up into a depressing little ball right then and there.
"And he's afraid he's an idiot for crying, really, but he's not, he's not at all. It's just the way life goes sometimes, it's like the rain. There will always be people who complain about the rain, but when the land goes without, everything dries up and gets miserable. And the rye must have its water. So he cries. Because he misses Allie, and Phoebe. And he misses the blackbirds and the silver stars and the indigo blue sky. And he misses when life had color. And the rain will come, and come, and come, until there isn't any left, not for a while. Nothing can stop the rain." Her lips touched my forehead. "Nothing can stop it now."
I guess if we're strictly speaking about weather, there was a rainstorm that night. I got tired of it eventually, and stopped crying, because the rain had just pattered out in my mind, and I couldn't think of anything else to be sad about. But while it was going, I thought about it all. I thought about Allie, mostly. And about all the schools I'd been to. How my mother would cry, and my father would be disappointed and angry with me no matter what I did. I thought about all the girls who are really smart and kind who become prostitutes because they just don't have the means to do anything better, and I thought about all the dogs and cats in the world who have to stay out in the rain, even when it's cold; and I thought about the pond and where the ducks might go for the winter and how it was that they would return, faithfully, whenever spring came back to the city. I thought about sleazy bars and hotshot musicians and really pretty ugly girls who couldn't dance worth a dime, and I thought about taxi drivers and busboys and elevator guys who brought you one step closer to something you wouldn't be able to forget, whether that was for better or worse. I thought about the countryside and going up to the lake in the summer, and of course, I thought about the rye fields, the golden rye that always seems to swish and sway around you, even when there isn't a breeze at all. When I was near the tail end of all those thoughts, I finally opened my eyes and got up and did something for once, which was to kiss her properly on the lips, and to take her hands in mine like I wanted to. And maybe it was awful of me to want something like that, I don't know. But it felt pretty right to me. It felt so right that I kept kissing her—not necking, really, it wasn't as serious as that—but just kissing her, like she'd done to me, all the way down the side of her face and to her jaw and then to her collar, and then I took the liberty of unwrapping her towel from her and breathing in the warmth that came off her body even as she shivered, and I kissed her shoulders with their little shadow-freckles here and there, and I put my lips to where I'd feel her pulse just under her pearls, and then I had to pause for a moment because she had asked me something and I wasn't sure I'd heard her through all the white noise in my head.
"What?"
"I asked if you—" She seemed to choke on the words a little, and gave a little cough, her face turning this beautiful rose red in embarrassment. "I just wanted to know if you were still interested in… you know… a throw."
"No. No, not at all. I just want to do this. Can I just do this?" And, like a real man, I'm sure; I put my arms around her waist and pulled her and her naked body towards me.
She let out a little squeak, which I thought was really kind of sweet, and then she nodded, lost for words. Finally, I was the one getting some awkwardness from her. It excited me a little, I'll admit, because I was finally feeling like I had some control here, even for a guy who was just crying over his miserable past. But I wasn't going to give her the time at all. I just—I had this fascination I wanted to satisfy. More than that, I wanted her to know what she meant to me. I wanted to touch her, all of her, and remind her that even for a prostitute she was still pretty goddamn beautiful. I knew that if I tried to tell her anything, it would all come out in a jumbled mess, and she would try her best to understand it but end up not getting anything—so I did my best with something I thought she would understand.
"Oh," she whispered. I was pretty preoccupied with caressing her bosom and everything, fascinated by the feel of those rosebuds beneath my palm. And I loved her little sounds more than anything, especially when I leaned down to kiss her stomach, and then to hold onto her hips real good and tight, to let her know she was firm and withstanding and that I liked her for that, I appreciated it. And she drew in a real sharp breath when I bent to kiss the top of her thigh, but I promise you, it stopped there. I let her blush all red from the tips of her ears down to her collar, and then I laid back with the white pillows and the crisp sheets, and I gathered her legs up and tugged her over to me, swinging her over my hip and curling up to her bare chest. She was just so goddamn warm. I swear, if she hadn't been as warm as she was, I would have forgotten about the whole thing. But I couldn't resist her. She was as warm and soft as a cake just out of the oven—a beautiful, tender thing. She didn't speak much while she was busy blushing, but she did start running her fingers through my hair again, which I figured was just going to have to be good enough.
I have no idea how long we stayed put together that way. It was awfully nice, for the time we spent. But eventually the lights started to go off in the rooms across the boulevard, and we didn't have any more orange-yellow to go by but for the dim bulb hanging above us in a light fixture that kind of looked like maybe it was going to fall on our heads and kill us. But I didn't think about it as much as I usually did. All I did was watch her get out of bed and go turn the lights off on the other side of the room, and then run back to bed to fight off the cold, clutching her arms to her chest and shivering all the way. I sort of laughed a little at the view, and she gave me a look, but smiled anyway. She had a good sense of humor. I appreciated that about her.
But after her turning out the light, and coming back to bed to get real cozy with me, I don't remember much. It's because I fell asleep straight away. I was exhausted by everything, if you couldn't tell. Everything that happened that night was worth about eight years of hibernation, and I was set on catching up on everything I'd missed. Plus, my eyes were kind of sore from all the dramatic heaving. I figured they needed the rest as much as I did. Somewhere, though she didn't say it out loud, I knew (Y/N) agreed.
Come morning, she was gone. I never did find out who exactly it was she worked for, or whether there was a number I could call to get in touch with her. The whole thing had me feeling kind of mysterious, and really heartbroken, if you want to know the truth. I liked (Y/N) a whole lot. I don't know if I loved her, I really don't, but I thought that maybe it would be good to keep her in my life, if not for the pure understanding she gave, then for the idea that she might make a pretty good magic violin one of these days. But I couldn't fault her for leaving, either. I knew what she was like, as much as she knew me. Everything had its way with her. It was like the rain. As naturally as water falls from the sky; she was going to be gone in the morning; whether you liked it or not. But she'd always leave you on a good note. She'd always leave you with a sweet taste in your mouth, and something good to remember her by.
That morning, I woke up and rolled over, and saw her pearl necklace resting on the pillow beside my head. And I guessed I probably should have gotten up and tried to get a hold of the elevator boy before he left to go home after his shift—I should have asked him about the girls he prostituted out, or at least asked him where I could get the phone number of somebody who'd know (Y/N). But I didn't. It was the strangest thing—all I could do was look at those pearls and smile. And even though I wasn't tired, because I'd just had the world's best sleep; I laid down again and turned to face the window, where the sun was kind of coming in through the slit in the curtains. I closed my eyes, and thought I heard the noise of the pearls glittering as the light hit them; when really, it was just the shuffling of rye in the field; the calls of blackbirds on the horizon. The whole morning, I laid in a bed of gold, listening to laughter from beyond some veil, and watching a girl in a pale green dress grin and shout joyfully as she played catch with Allie and Phoebe.
I never did see her again, that girl. But all the same, I knew she'd always be there, giving me butterfly kisses whenever she felt like it, and stroking my hair every night, just before I went to bed. It was simple, really.
All I had to do was imagine.