Exposition, Chapter 8 (p. 145-153)

D. woke up quite a bit earlier the next morning. She wondered if she had slept at all or if the sun had crept early to the horizon without warning. She hadn't dreamt, and so her last memory was of dangling her keys above her eyes, thinking.

She panicked and padded around on the bed. She threw the pillows from its head to its foot and looked over the edge at the floor. Jim was sleeping with the key ring between his paws. Quite a guard dog, D. mused.

Jim opened one eye as she picked up the keys. "Good morning, Jim," said D., patting him on the head. Jim stood up and stretched like a cat.

After getting out of bed and putting on her dress, D. walked Jim down to the front door. There was nobody in the courtyard, and the front hall was silent and peaceful, and the morning sun shone through the cracks around the door, sending dust specks into swirls. D. let Jim outside and shut the door quietly. Turning around, she looked up at the stained glass window. She wondered how close the sun would get to its center and was puzzled at a tiny pang of regret that she wouldn't find out. She would be gone by then.

"You look like you're trying to feel a good-bye," called a voice from her left. D. jumped a little. Sitting in one of the chairs on the other side of the dining room table, with his feet up and a notebook resting on his knees, was a young man who looked to be in his mid-to-late twenties. He had scruffy brown hair, dirty sneakers, worn jeans, and a blue sweater.

Partly because she was becoming used to surprises in this house, and partly because her surprise was directed, this time, mostly at herself for not having looked into that room when she came down the stairs, D. paused only slightly before responding, "I'm not trying to, but strangely enough I am."

"Well, if you're going to leave a place, you always feel worse if you don't," said the young man. "I'm Holden."

He didn't show any signs that he intended to stand up, so D. walked toward him and stopped at the spot where one room turned into the other.

"So what's it look like to you?" asked Holden.

"Pardon?"

"That window that you were looking at. Everybody likes to think that it's something different."

D. looked over her shoulder but couldn't see the window from where she stood. The stairs were in the way. "I don't know. Am I allowed to just see a window?"

"Well, I'm not gonna be the one to tell you that you can't. That's all it is to me. But as far as windows go, it's better than most."

"Why do you say that?" asked D., trying to remember what his response might be.

"I don't know. I guess I like a window that you can't see into or out of too easy unless you really want to. I hate windows that you're always seeing people out of whenever you walk by them, even if you're not in the mood for that kind of thing. I mean if you're sort of thinking about something and you're forced to see another thing that makes you think about something else and forget what it was that you wanted to be thinking about. Who wants a window like that? Nobody. With this window, if you are in the mood, then you can look through that piece in the middle and see even better because it's like a magnifying glass."

D. smiled. "Does it work that way?"

"I think so," said Holden, "but I've never tried it."

Letting out a small laugh of a breath, D. glanced toward where the window would be if she were able to see it.

"So you're leaving, then?" asked Holden.

"I suppose."

"Well that's too bad. It'd be nice to see a girl around here for a change. Even if all you did was look out the windows or something."

Smiling sarcastically, D. said, "I'm glad that you have such a liberated view of women."

"Oh!" Holden looked embarrassed. "I didn't mean it like that. Really. I mean, I guess you'd be great and fun to talk to and all, but I don't know you that well. If you're the type of girl that you could hang out with and just sort of play a game with or anything, it'd be nice to have you around. I don't know if I'm saying this right, but you know what I mean. I mean, there aren't many people around here that are clear-headed all the time and able to carry on a normal goddam conversation." He looked down at the notebook on his lap. "So if you're leaving now, why did you come here in the first place?"

"It wasn't on purpose; I can assure you of that."

"It never is. But that doesn't explain why you would want to leave."

D. thought for a moment. "Why would I stay?"

Looking up at her, Holden told her that he didn't know. "There are worse places to be. If you don't have anywhere that you have to be and all."

D. could hear Jim whimpering quietly to be let in, so she crossed the entrance hall and opened the door. There was nobody around, leading her to believe that it was even earlier than she had thought. The morning sun sparkled like a waking eye through the half-filled branches of the trees on the other side of the yard. She heard a page being turned.

"What are you reading?" she asked Holden when she had returned to her post and stood there for a moment as if unnoticed.

"Oh, just a notebook. Nathaniel's got a million of them all stuffed in boxes in here. They're really kind of neat. I could just read these the whole time I'm here and never know how long I'd been doing it."

"What's in them?"

"Mostly just random thoughts and stuff. Some of them are from classes and have algebra and school crap in them. Those are my favorites, because sometimes he would write poems in them to keep from being bored. I was always bored in school."

"Did you write much poetry?"

Holden laughed sheepishly. "No, I never did anything like that. I drew some pictures and that kind of crap. I don't really have the talent for it. Nathaniel, though. Boy, he can write. One of these boxes has a whole bunch of the beginnings of books and stories that he never got around to finishing. He could be a hell of a writer if he ever finished anything. What kills me is when I read those stories and I just have to go call up to his room when I'm all done with what's written and try to get Nathaniel to tell me how it was going to end."

"Does he tell you?"

"No, not yet. He usually asks me what I think and all that teacher type of crap. The thing about Nathaniel is that he knows just about every goddam thing there is to know about. I mean he's one of those guys that knows that you can't know everything and that if somebody really wants to know how a story ends or something, then they probably can figure out how it's supposed to. But then he knows that, too, so he probably knows that if somebody else finishes his stories then they'll do it how they want and it'd be like an insult that they didn't think enough of him to try to write it how he would've. If I did finish one, I probably wouldn't show anybody, anyway, because I'd be worried that they thought that I was trying to write it the way I thought Nathaniel would do it and not the way I wanted to. But I'm not a fiction writer. Maybe some of these other guys could just up and jump into somebody else's story, but not me. What if I finished it the way I wanted and that wasn't the way it was supposed to be at all? Then everybody would get all touchy as hell about it and wish that they had tried because they'd think they could do it better. People are always thinking they can do everything better than you."

"Sounds like charming company."

Holden put his feet down on the ground and shook his head with wide, pleading eyes, like a child who has mistakenly implicated a friend in some misdemeanor. "Oh, I don't mean it like that. These guys are actually better than most other people. I mean, I might be the only normal bastard here, but it's the same everywhere. If you're going to go somewhere to get away, you could go somewhere with a lot more goddam phonies. I mean you could go somewhere where there's all these stupid bastards who don't even have a brain or a sense of humor. Or where everybody's so smart that they know they're smart and act like it. Those kind of people never like to talk to real people, and when they do, they only like to talk about whatever they want to talk about."

Suppressing a yawn, D. began to excuse herself, but Holden asked her to wait.

"You could stay if you wanted, couldn't you? There's nothing you can't do here that you can somewhere else. I mean, if you know a lot about art and literature and those kinds of things you could have quite a good time here for a while. Of course, there isn't any place in the world that you can stay for a long time and not get bored, except maybe if you get drunk all the time. But why did you come in the first place if you're going to leave before you really get to know everybody?"

"I told you, I had no intention of coming in the first place," D. was losing patience. She felt like she was talking to one of those people who's really nice, but who could drive her crazy if she had to talk to them for too long a time.

"How long have you been here?" he asked.

"Longer than I've liked."

"Well then how come it's taken you this long to decide to leave?"

"It hasn't been a question of deciding: I just couldn't. Somebody had my car keys."

Holden offered her a distracted look as if to say that things weren't supposed to happen that way. "Well then now you ought to stay because it would be your choice. People can't just leave everywhere just because they can. Nobody would ever be anywhere, they'd always be in-between. You can't stop doing something that you haven't even started."

"But I haven't started anything."

"Well then what's the point of leaving? It's like Jake told me when I first got here, 'Even if you didn't think you were coming here, or didn't really know you wanted to come here, you must have been looking for something that you couldn't find anywhere else.'"

"I'm trying to explain to you that I didn't come..."

Just then, Jim came scampering down the stairs with Huck close behind him. "Good mornin' all," Huck said. He smiled at D. and greeted Holden. "Anibody want some coffee an' brekfast?"

Huck didn't protest much when he found out that D. was intending to leave before lunch. He merely suggested that she not leave on an empty stomach, told her that he'd be "sahry ta see y'go," and offered to walk her to her car if she wanted. She thanked him and said she'd appreciate it.

Holden waited a little while before he came into the kitchen to get a glass of orange juice. He said that he didn't eat much and might have a Swiss cheese sandwich later.

"Hope ya brought yer own cheese," Huck told him, "'cause we ain't got none."

Holden didn't seem to be too upset. "I'll probably just skip lunch then, I'm not a very big eater. That's why I'm so skinny," he explained. He stopped D. when she was about to dump the eggs that she hadn't eaten in the garbage and asked if he could finish them.

After breakfast, Holden found D. staring out the window in her room, half-mindlessly scratching Jim behind the ears. He stood in her doorway for a while and then said, "I look out the window a lot when I'm feeling lonely."

D. glanced over her shoulder before she turned around.

"Did I scare you?" asked Holden.

"No. Actually you didn't." Then, "I've got this funny feeling that I should be packing or something."

"Packing always depresses me. But sometimes if you feel like you should be packing and you don't have anything to pack it's even sadder. But at least if you don't have anything to pack, then nobody has to look at your suitcases and think about how theirs are better."

D. jumped a little as a branch, moved by a gust of wind, tapped at her window. "Well, one wouldn't want to upset the sensibilities of the better off."

"Oh, I didn't mean it like that," said Holden. "I can be quite sarcastic sometimes. Sometimes I don't really mean a single thing that I say."

Sitting on the bed, D. said, "That's mature."

"I'm not," Holden told her, jumping forward as if to assure her of something. "I know I'm not. People always tell me that I shouldn't always do the kinds of things that I do to keep from getting bored. But I don't always act like that. People always think that just 'cause you do something sometimes you always do them. Sometimes I can be very quiet and humble if there's something to keep my mind off being bored. I really can."

D. glanced toward the window. Perhaps sensing that he was losing his audience, Holden stepped a little farther into the room. "I can see why you would want to leave and all," he said.

"Oh you can?"

"Sure. It's always kind of boring here at first. I mean, when I got here it was in the middle of the summer and everybody was around and having a grand old time. And Nathaniel was always playing the piano. When he wasn't making a fool of himself, that is."

"I was under the impression that you thought that he was a genius."

"He is, though. It's funny, he could write this poem that makes you want to hug him or beat him up or something, but then in person he's always getting as emotional as hell. You know what it is? He's very emotional. He really is. Sometimes he's too affectionate, too. He's exactly the type of guy that could write something that you love to read as long as you can put it down and go look at a goddam beaver make a dam or something and come back to it when you're in the mood again, but you wouldn't want to be stuck listening to him reading it over and over. But who would want to listen to anybody read anything all the time? Not me."

Feigning comprehension with a forced "hmm," D. stood up and looked out the window again. Holden stood where he was for a minute or two and then sat down in the chair and sighed to draw attention to himself.

"You can't really blame him, though. He's gotten a hell of a lot better since my first summer. I mean John would do that to anybody if they were stuck in a house with him for a whole goddam winter and all. Always saying something and then nodding about it and then saying it again. Whatever he's talking about. You know what I think? I think that he doesn't know his ass from his elbow. He's always talking about the rules and stuff like it's his goddam job to make sure that everybody knows all the crap they're supposed to be doing and be not doing. What a swell job for an old-as-hell guy to have."

Holden stopped talking and waited for a response, but D. only looked out at the trees. Then she began to make the excuse of wanting to wash up a little, but Holden interrupted her. "And the only time Nathaniel's really mean at all is when Martin won't leave him alone. I mean I feel sorry for Martin and all, but he's exactly the type of guy that won't leave a room when you want him to. Everybody in the world would know that they weren't wanted around, but not Martin. You practically have to curse at him to get rid of him 'til he finally gets the message. And then he'll still hang around for a while just to make sure that you weren't just horsing around with him. He could bring out the old sadist in anybody.

"But he's alright. It's nice to have him two doors down from your room and all, but I wouldn't want to be right next to him for Chrissakes. If you live next to a guy like Ack... I mean... Martin, he thinks that he can just walk in whenever the hell he wants to and make it look like a mistake. Like he just walked in the wrong door or something and didn't even realize that it wasn't his room until you started talking to him. That's why I picked the middle room on the other side. I didn't want to be right next to Jake. I mean he's smart and witty, if you know what I mean, but he's quite a heavy drinker, and who needs a big guy like that climbing into bed with you in the middle of the night when he's drunk as a bastard and can't see straight enough to tell that he's in the wrong room? Not me. I mean at least Nick can hold his liquor. He's usually pretty friendly, too. Sometimes I don't think he's always acting like himself, but at least he's willing to be the guy who lives in the next room over from Martin. When I first got here, Nick was always hanging around Nathaniel, and of course Martin was always there, too. And Jake was always kind of waiting for his turn. You know what I hate? I hate when people feel like they've gotta take turns to hang around somebody. I don't care; as many people can hang around me as want to.

"Goddam Nick. He's always saying that Nathaniel says 'old sport' all the time, but he really doesn't. Nick kills me with that 'old sport' crap. It's like Nick wants to say it all the time and the only way he feels like he can do it is to say that Nathaniel said it. Nathaniel would never say anything like 'old sport.' It's too phony."

"Listen, Holden, I don't mean to be rude..."

"That's just the thing," Holden leaned back in the chair. "Nathaniel's never rude. I mean you can just say anything to him, and he'll never get mad. He's aces, Nathaniel. Just a little emotional is all."

D. tried to say something.

Holden stood up and started to leave the room. "Well, I've got some things I've got to do." He stopped at the door and turned around. "Say, what'a ya wanna leave for anyway? I mean where do you have to go?"

"Home."

"Yeah, I can understand that, but where do you live? Goddam New York or someplace? I hate New York. What's terrible about New York is that you can hear somebody laugh clear across town. You can never be alone in New York because some chucklehead's always laughing uptown or something. It's the loneliest place in the world. It really is. I mean you could be sitting on your roof and wondering how in the hell you're going to eat or something that week, and the next thing you know some big shot is letting you know just how great his life is way the hell uptown or something. Who wants to spend their summer in a place like that? Not me."

Raising her eyebrows as if to concede the point, D. shrugged.

"You know what I think?" asked Holden. "I think you'll get to New York or wherever and figure out that it doesn't interest you. You could leave this place and find out that you didn't know that you really wanted to stay. I mean, sometimes you don't know where you want to be 'til you hang around someplace that you really don't want to be. At least if you stayed 'til everybody got here you could say that you made a fair choice. Deciding to leave now would be like going to bed when you're not even tired." He paused. "I don't know exactly what I'm trying to say by that, but I mean it." He shuffled his feet. "Well, I have to go do some things. Are you going to stay for lunch at least."

"Yes, I probably will. Huck convinced me that it would be a good idea."

"OK. I'll see you later then."

Holden left the room, and D. could hear his footsteps moving down the balcony.