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- I didn't even answer him. I just threw the pieces in the wastebasket. Then I lay
down on my bed, and we both didn't say anything for a long time. He got all undressed,
down to his shorts, and I lay on my bed and lit a cigarette. You weren't allowed to smoke
in the dorm, but you could do it late at night when everybody was asleep or out and
nobody could smell the smoke. Besides, I did it to annoy Stradlater. It drove him crazy
when you broke any rules. He never smoked in the dorm. It was only me.
He still didn't say one single solitary word about Jane. So finally I said, "You're
back pretty goddam late if she only signed out for nine-thirty. Did you make her be late
signing in?"
He was sitting on the edge of his bed, cutting his goddam toenails, when I asked
him that. "Coupla minutes," he said. "Who the hell signs out for nine-thirty on a Saturday
night?" God, how I hated him.
"Did you go to New York?" I said.
"Ya crazy? How the hell could we go to New York if she only signed out for
nine-thirty?"
"That's tough."
He looked up at me. "Listen," he said, "if you're gonna smoke in the room, how
'bout going down to the can and do it? You may be getting the hell out of here, but I have
to stick around long enough to graduate."
I ignored him. I really did. I went right on smoking like a madman. All I did was
sort of turn over on my side and watched him cut his damn toenails. What a school. You
were always watching somebody cut their damn toenails or squeeze their pimples or
something.
"Did you give her my regards?" I asked him.
"Yeah."
The hell he did, the bastard.
"What'd she say?" I said. "Did you ask her if she still keeps all her kings in the
back row?"
"No, I didn't ask her. What the hell ya think we did all night--play checkers, for
Chrissake?"
I didn't even answer him. God, how I hated him.
"If you didn't go to New York, where'd ya go with her?" I asked him, after a little
while. I could hardly keep my voice from shaking all over the place. Boy, was I getting
nervous. I just had a feeling something had gone funny.
He was finished cutting his damn toenails. So he got up from the bed, in just his
damn shorts and all, and started getting very damn playful. He came over to my bed and
started leaning over me and taking these playful as hell socks at my shoulder. "Cut it
out," I said. "Where'd you go with her if you didn't go to New York?"
"Nowhere. We just sat in the goddam car." He gave me another one of those
playtul stupid little socks on the shoulder.
"Cut it out," I said. "Whose car?"
"Ed Banky's."
Ed Banky was the basketball coach at Pencey. Old Stradlater was one of his pets,
because he was the center on the team, and Ed Banky always let him borrow his car when
he wanted it. It wasn't allowed for students to borrow faculty guys' cars, but all the
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