第49章
《THE CATCHER IN THE RYE(麦田里的守望者英文版)》章节:第49章,宠文网网友提供全文无弹窗免费在线阅读。!
she said. "I can't hear you. One minute you scream at me, and the next
you--"
"I said no, there wouldn't be marvelous places to go to after I went to college and
all. Open your ears. It'd be entirely different. We'd have to go downstairs in elevators
with suitcases and stuff. We'd have to phone up everybody and tell 'em good-by and send
'em postcards from hotels and all. And I'd be working in some office, making a lot of
dough, and riding to work in cabs and Madison Avenue buses, and reading newspapers,
and playing bridge all the time, and going to the movies and seeing a lot of stupid shorts
and coming attractions and newsreels. Newsreels. Christ almighty. There's always a
dumb horse race, and some dame breaking a bottle over a ship, and some chimpanzee
riding a goddam bicycle with pants on. It wouldn't be the same at all. You don't see what
I mean at all."
"Maybe I don't! Maybe you don't, either," old Sally said. We both hated each
other's guts by that time. You could see there wasn't any sense trying to have an
intelligent conversation. I was sorry as hell I'd started it.
"C'mon, let's get outa here," I said. "You give me a royal pain in the ass, if you
want to know the truth."
Boy, did she hit the ceiling when I said that. I know I shouldn't've said it, and I
probably wouldn't've ordinarily, but she was depressing the hell out of me. Usually I
never say crude things like that to girls. Boy, did she hit the ceiling. I apologized like a
madman, but she wouldn't accept my apology. She was even crying. Which scared me a
little bit, because I was a little afraid she'd go home and tell her father I called her a pain
in the ass. Her father was one of those big silent bastards, and he wasn't too crazy about
me anyhow. He once told old Sally I was too goddam noisy.
"No kidding. I'm sorry," I kept telling her.
"You're sorry. You're sorry. That's very funny," she said. She was still sort of
crying, and all of a sudden I did feel sort of sorry I'd said it.
"C'mon, I'll take ya home. No kidding."
"I can go home by myself, thank you. If you think I'd let you take me home,
you're mad. No boy ever said that to me in my entire life."
The whole thing was sort of funny, in a way, if you thought about it, and all of a
sudden I did something I shouldn't have. I laughed. And I have one of these very loud,
stupid laughs. I mean if I ever sat behind myself in a movie or something, I'd probably
lean over and tell myself to please shut up. It made old Sally madder than ever.
I stuck around for a while, apologizing and trying to get her to excuse me, but she
wouldn't. She kept telling me to go away and leave her alone. So finally I did it. I went
inside and got my shoes and stuff, and left without her. I shouldn't've, but I was pretty
goddam fed up by that time.
If you want to know the truth, I don't even know why I started all that stuff with
her. I mean about going away somewhere, to Massachusetts and Vermont and all. I
probably wouldn't've taken her even if she'd wanted to go with me. She wouldn't have
been anybody to go with. The terrible part, though, is that I meant it when I asked her.
That's the terrible part. I swear to God I'm a madman.
18
When I left the skating rink I felt sort of hungry, so I went in this drugstore and
had a Swiss cheese sandwich and a malted, and then I went in a phone booth. I thought
maybe I might give old Jane another buzz and see if she was home yet. I mean I had the
whole evening free, and I thought I'd give her a buzz and, if she was home yet, take her
dancing or something somewhere. I never danced with her or anything the whole time I
knew her. I saw her dancing once, though. She looked like a very good dancer. It was at
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this Fourth of July dance at the club. I didn't know her too well then, and I didn't think I
ought to cut in on her date. She was dating this terrible guy, Al Pike, that went to Choate.
I didn't know him too well, but he was always hanging around the swimming pool. He
wore those white Lastex kind of swimming trunks, and he was always going off the high
dive. He did the same lousy old half gainer all day long. It was the only dive he could do,
but he thought he was very hot stuff. All muscles and no brains. Anyway, that's who Jane
dated that night. I couldn't understand it. I swear I couldn't. After we started going around
together, I asked her how come she could date a showoff bastard like Al Pike. Jane said
he wasn't a show-off. She said he had an inferiority complex. She acted like she felt sorry
for him or something, and she wasn't just putting it on. She meant it. It's a funny thing
about girls. Every time you mention some guy that's strictly a bastard--very mean, or very
conceited and all--and when you mention it to the girl, she'll tell you he has an inferiority
complex. Maybe he has, but that still doesn't keep him from being a bastard, in my
opinion. Girls. You never know what they're going to think. I once got this girl Roberta
Walsh's roommate a date with a friend of mine. His name was Bob Robinson and he
really had an inferiority complex. You could tell he was very ashamed of his parents and
all, because they said "he don't" and "she don't" and stuff like that and they weren't very
wealthy. But he wasn't a bastard or anything. He was a very nice guy. But this Roberta
Walsh's roommate didn't like him at all. She told Roberta he was too conceited--and the
reason she thought he was conceited was because he happened to mention to her that he
was captain of the debating team. A little thing like that, and she thought he was
conceited!