Franny and Zooey (3 page)

    She looked quite stunning as she walked across the dining room to the table, not at all unlike a girl on the qui vive appropriate to a big college weekend. As she came briskly, smiling, to her chair, Lane slowly got up, a napkin in his left hand.

    "God. I'm sorry," Franny said. "Did you think I'd died?"

    "I didn't think you'd died," Lane said. He drew her chair for her. "I didn't know what the hell happened." He went around to his own chair. "We don't have any too goddam much time, you know." He sat down. "You all right? Your eyes are a little bloodshot." He looked at her more closely. "You O.K., or what?"

    Franny lit a cigarette. "I'm marvellous now. I just never felt so fantastically rocky in my entire life. Did you order?"

    "I waited for you," Lane said, still looking at her closely. "What was the matter anyway? Your stomach?"

    "No. Yes and no. I don't know," Franny said. She looked down at the menu on her plate, and consulted it without picking it up. "All I want's a chicken sandwich. And maybe a glass of milk. ... You order what you want and all, though. I mean, take snails and octopuses and things. Octopi. I'm really not at all hungry."

    Lane looked at her, then exhaled a thin, overly expressive stream of smoke down at his plate. "This is going to be a real little doll of a weekend," he said. "A chicken sandwich, for God's sake."

    Franny was annoyed. "I'm not hungry, Lane --I'm sorry. My gosh. Now, please. You order what you want, why don't you, and I'll eat while you're eating. But I can't just work up an appetite because you want me to."

    "All right, all right." Lane craned his neck and caught the waiter's attention. A moment later, he ordered the chicken sandwich and the glass of milk for Franny, and snails, frogs' legs, and a salad for himself. He looked at his wrist-watch when the waiter had gone, and said, "We're supposed to be up at Tenbridge at one-fifteen, one-thirty, incidentally. No later. I told Wally we'd probably stop off for a drink and then maybe we'd all go out to the stadium together in his car. You mind? You like Wally."

    "I don't even know who he is."

    "You've met him about twenty times, for God's sake. Wally Campbell. Jesus. If you've met him once, you've met him--"

    "Oh. I remember. . . . Listen, don't hate me because I can't remember some person immediately. Especially when they look like everybody else, and talk and dress and act like everybody else." Franny made her voice stop. It sounded to her cavilling and bitchy, and she felt a wave of self-hatred that, quite literally, made her forehead begin to perspire again. But her voice picked up again, in spite of herself. "I don't mean there's anything horrible about him or anything like that. It's just that for four solid years I've kept seeing Wally Campbells wherever I go. I know when they're going to be charming, I know when they're going to start telling you some really nasty gossip about some girl that lives in your dorm, I know when they're going to ask me what I did over the summer, I know when they're going to pull up a chair and straddle it backward and start bragging in a terribly, terribly quiet voice--or name-dropping in a terribly quiet, casual voice. There's an unwritten law that people in a certain social or financial bracket can name-drop as much as they like just as long as they say something terribly disparaging about the person as soon as they've dropped his name--that he's a bastard or a nymphomaniac or takes dope all the time, or something horrible." She broke off again. She was quiet for a moment, turning the ashtray in her fingers and being careful not to look up and see Lane's expression. "I'm sorry," she said. "It isn't just Wally Campbell. I'm just picking on him because you mentioned him. And because he just looks like somebody that spent the summer in Italy or someplace."

    "He was in France last summer, for your information," Lane stated. "I know what you mean," he added quickly, "but you're being goddam un--"

    "All right," Franny said wearily. "France." She took a cigarette out of the pack on the table. "It isn't just Wally. It could be a girl, for goodness' sake. I mean if he were a girl--somebody in my dorm, for example--he'd have been painting scenery in some stock company all summer. Or bicycled through Wales. Or taken an apartment in New York and worked for a magazine or an advertising company. It's everybody, I mean. Everything everybody does is so--I don't know--not wrong, or even mean, or even stupid necessarily. But just so tiny and meaningless and--sad-making. And the worst part is, if you go bohemian or something crazy like that, you're conforming just as much as everybody else, only in a different way." She stopped. She shook her head briefly, her face quite white, and for just a fractional moment she felt her forehead with her hand--less, it seemed, to find out whether she was perspiring than to check to see, as if she were her own parent, whether she had a fever. "I feel so funny," she said. "I think I'm going crary. Maybe I'm already crazy."

    Lane was looking at her with genuine concern--more concern than curiosity. "You're pale as hell. You're really pale--you know that?" he asked.

    Franny shook her head. "I'm fine. I'll be fine in a minute." She looked up as the waiter came forward with their orders. "Oh, your snails look beautiful." She had just brought her cigarette to her lips, but it had gone out. "What'd you do with the matches?" she asked.

    Lane gave her a light when the waiter had gone. "You smoke too much," he said. He picked up the small fork beside his plate of snails, but looked at Franny again before he used it. "I'm worried about you. I'm serious. What the hell's happened to you in the last couple of weeks?"

    Franny looked at him, then simultaneously shrugged and shook her head. "Nothing. Absolutely nothing," she said. "Eat. Eat them snails. They're terrible if they're cold."

    "You eat."

    Franny nodded and looked down at her chicken sandwich. She felt a faint wave of nausea, and looked up immediately and dragged on her cigarette.

    "How's the play?" Lane asked, attending to his snails.

    "I don't know. I'm not in it. I quit."

    "You quit?" Lane looked up. "I thought you were so mad about the part. What happened? They give it to somebody else?"

    "No, they did not. It was all mine. That's nasty. Oh, that's nasty."

    "Well, what happened? You didn't quit the whole department, did you?"

    Franny nodded, and took a sip of her milk. Lane waited till he had chewed and swallowed, then said, "Why, for God's sake? I thought the goddam theatre was your passion. It's about the only thing I've ever heard you--"

    "I just quit, that's all," Franny said. "It started embarrassing me. I began to feel like such a nasty little egomaniac." She reflected. "I don't know. It seemed like such poor taste, sort of, to want to act in the first place. I mean all the ego. And I used to hate myself so, when I was in a play, to be backstage after the play was over. All those egos running around feeling terribly charitable and warm. Kissing everybody and wearing their makeup all over the place, and then trying to be horribly natural and friendly when your friends came backstage to see you. I just hated myself. . . . And the worst part was I was usually sort of ashamed to be in the plays I was in. Especially in summer stock." She looked at Lane. "And I had good parts, so don't look at me that way. It wasn't that. It was just that I would've been ashamed if, say, anybody I respected--my brothers, for example--came and heard me deliver some of the lines I had to say. I used to write certain people and tell them not to come." She reflected again. "Except Pegeen in 'Playboy,' last summer. I mean that could have been really nice, only the goon that played the Playboy spoiled any fun it might have been. He was so lyrical--God, was he lyrical!"

    Lane had finished his snails. He sat looking deliberately expressionless. "He got terrific reviews," he said. "You sent me the reviews, if you recall."

    Franny sighed. "All right. O.K., Lane."

    "No, I mean you've been talking for a half hour as though you're the only person in the world that's got any goddam sense, any critical ability. I mean if some of the best critics thought this man was terrific in the play, maybe he was, maybe you're wrong. That ever occur to you? You know, you haven't exactly reached the ripe, old--"

    "He was terrific for somebody that just has talent. If you're going to play the Playboy right, you have to be a genius. You do, that's all--I can't help it," Franny said. She arched her back a trifle, and, with her mouth a trifle open, she put her hand on top of her head. "I feel so woozy and funny. I don't know what's the matter with me."

    "You think you're a genius?"

    Franny took her hand down from her head. "Aw, Lane. Please. Don't do that to me."

    "I'm not doing any--"

    "All I know is I'm losing my mind," Franny said. "I'm just sick of ego, ego, ego. My own and everybody else's. I'm sick of everybody that wants to get somewhere, do something distinguished and all, be somebody interesting. It's disgusting --it is, it is. I don't care what anybody says."

    Lane raised his eyebrows at that, and sat back, the better to make his point. "You sure you're just not afraid of competing?" he asked with studied quietness. "I don't know too much about it, but I'd lay odds a good psychoanalyst--I mean a really competent one--would probably take that statement--"

    "I'm not afraid to compete. It's just the opposite. Don't you see that? I'm afraid I will compete--that's what scares me. That's why I quit the Theatre Department. Just because I'm so horribly conditioned to accept everybody else's values, and just because I like applause and people to rave about me, doesn't make it right. I'm ashamed of it. I'm sick of it. I'm sick of not having the courage to be an absolute nobody. I'm sick of myself and everybody else that wants to make some kind of a splash." She paused, and suddenly picked up her glass of milk and brought it to her lips. "I knew it," she said, setting it down. "That's something new. My teeth go funny on me. They're chattering. I nearly bit through a glass the day before yesterday. Maybe I'm stark, staring mad and don't know it." The waiter had come forward to serve Lane's frogs' legs and salad, and Franny looked up at him. He, in turn, looked down at her untouched chicken sandwich. He asked if the young lady would perhaps like to change her order. Franny thanked him, and said no. "I'm just very slow," she said. The waiter, who was not a young man, seemed to look for an instant at her pallor and damp brow, then bowed and left.

    "You want to use this a second?" Lane said abruptly. He was holding out a folded, white handkerchief. His voice sounded sympathetic, kind, in spite of some perverse attempt to make it sound matter-of-fact.

    "Why? Do I need it?"

    "You're sweating. Not sweating, but I mean your forehead's perspiring quite a bit."

    "It is? How horrible! I'm sorry. . . ." Franny brought her handbag up to table level, opened it, and began to rummage through it. "I have some Kleenex somewhere."

    "Use my handkerchief, for God's sake. What the hell's the difference?"

    'Wo--I love that handkerchief and I'm not going to get it all perspiry," Franny said. Her handbag was a crowded one. To see better, she began to unload a few things and place them on the tablecloth, just to the left of her untasted sandwich. "Here it is," she said. She used a compact mirror and quickly, lightly blotted her brow with a leaf of Kleenex. "God. I look like a ghost. How can you stand me?"

    "What's the book?" Lane asked.

FRANNY literally jumped. She looked down at the disorderly little pile of handbag freight on the tablecloth. "What book?" she said. "This, you mean?" She picked up the little clothbound book and put it back into her handbag. "Just something I brought to look at on the train."

    "Let's have a look. What is it?"

    Franny didn't seem to hear him. She opened her compact again and took another quick glance into the mirror. "God," she said. Then she cleared everything--compact, billfold, laundry bill, toothbrush, a tin of aspirins, and a gold-plated swizzle stick--back into her handbag. "I don't know why I carry that crazy gold swizzle stick around," she said. "A very corny boy gave it to me when I was a sophomore, for my birthday. He thought it was such a beautiful and inspired gift, and he kept watching my face while I opened the package. I keep trying to throw it away, but I simply can't do it. I'll go to my grave with it." She reflected. "He kept grinning at me and telling me I'd always have good luck if I kept it with me at all times."

    Lane had started in on his frogs' legs. "What was the book, anyway? Or is it a goddam secret or something?" he asked.

    "The little book in my bag?" Franny said. She watched him disjoint a pair of frogs' legs. Then she took a cigarette from the pack on the table and lit it herself. "Oh, I don't know," she said. "It's something called 'The Way of a Pilgrim.' " She watched Lane eat for a moment. "I got it out of the library. This man that teaches this Religion Survey thing I'm taking this term mentioned it." She dragged on her cigarette.

    "I've had it out for weeks. I keep forgetting to return it."

    "Who wrote it?"

    "I don't know," Franny said casually. "Some Russian peasant, apparently." She went on watching Lane eat his frogs' legs. "He never gives his name. You never know his name the whole time he's telling the story. He just tells you he's a peasant and that he's thirty-three years old and that he's got a withered arm. And that his wife is dead. It's all in the eighteen-hundreds."