22 Out-of-print J. D. Salinger Stories Page 3
Horgenschlag is hauled into court. Shirley, or course, must attend session. They both give their addresses; thereby Horgenschlag is informed of the location of Shirley's divine abode.
Judge Perkins, who can't even get a good, really good cup of coffee in his own house sentences Horgenschlag to a year in jail. Shirley bites her lip, but Horgenschlag is marched away.
In prison, Horgenschlag writes the following letter to Shirley Lester:
Dear Miss Lester,
I did not really mean to steal your purse. I just took it because I love you. You see, I only wanted to get to know you. Will you please write me a letter sometime when you get the time? It gets pretty lonely here and I love you very much and maybe even you could come to see me some time, if you get the time.
Your friend,
Justin Horgenschlag
Shirley shows the letter to all her friends. They say, "Ah, it's cute, Shirley." Shirley agrees that it's kind of cute in a way. Maybe she'll answer it. "Yes! Answer it. Give'm a break. What've ya got to loose?" So Shirley answers Horgenschlag's letter.
Dear Mr. Horgenschlag,
I received your letter and really feel very sorry about what has happened. Unfortunately there is very little we can do about it at this time, but I do feel abominable concerning the turn of events. However, your sentence is a short one and soon you will be out. The best of luck to you.
Sincerely yours,
Shirley Lester
Dear Miss Lester,
You will never know how cheered up you made me feel when I received your letter. You should not feel abominable at all. It was all my fault for being so crazy so don't feel that way at all. We get movies here once a week and it really is not so bad. I am 31 years of age and come from Seattle. I have been in New York 4 years and think it is a great town, only once in a while you get pretty lonesome. You are the prettiest girl I have ever seen even in Seattle. I wish you would come to see me some Saturday afternoon during visiting hours 2 to 4 and I will pay your train fare.
Your friend,
Justin Horgenschlag
Shirley would have shown this letter, too, to all her friends. But she would not answer this one. Anyone could see that this Horgenschlag was a goof. And after all. She had answered the first letter. If she an-swered this silly letter the thing might drag on for months and every- thing. She did all she could do for the man. And what a name. Horgenschlag.
Meanwhile, in prison Horgenschlag is having a terrible time, even though they have movies once a week. His cell-mates are Snipe Morgan and Slicer Burke, two boys from the back room, who see in Horgenschlag's face a resemblance to a chap in Chicago who once ratted on them. They are convinced that Ratface Ferrero and Justin Horgenschlag are one and the same person.
"But I'm not Ratface Ferrero," Horgenschlag tells them.
"Don't gimme that," says Slicer, knocking Horgenschlag's meager food rations to the floor.
"Bash his head in," says Snipe.
"I tell ya I'm just here because I stole a girl's purse on the Third Avenue Bus," pleads Horgenschlag. "Only I didn't really steal it. I fell in love with her, and it was the only way I could get to know her."
"Don't gimme that," says Slicer.
"Bash his head in," says Snipe.
Then there is the day when seventeen prisoners try to make an es-cape. During play period in the recreation yard, Slicer Burke lures the warden's niece, eight-year-old Lisbeth Sue, into his clutches. He puts his eight-by-twelve hands around the child's waist and holds her up for the warden to see.
"Hey, warden!" yells Slicer. "Open up them gates or it's curtains for the kid!"
"I'm not afraid, Uncle Bert!" calls out Lisbeth Sue.
"Put down that child, Slicer!" commands the warden, with all the impotence at his command.
But Slicer knows he has the warden just where he wants him. Seventeen men and a small blonde child walk out the gates. Sixteen men and a small blonde child walk out safely. A guard in the high tower thinks he sees a wonderful opportunity to shoot Slicer in the head, and thereby destroy the unity of the escaping group. But he misses, and succeeds only in shooting the small man walking ner-vously behind Slicer, killing him instantly.
Guess who?
And, thus, my plan to write a boy-meets-girl story for Collier's, a tender, memorable love story, is thwarted by the death of my hero.
Now, Horgenschlag never would have been among those seventeen desperate men if only he had not been made desperate and panicky by Shirley's failure to answer his second letter. But the fact remains that she did not answer his second letter. She never in a hundred years would have answered it. I can't alter facts.
And what a shame. What a pity that Horgenschlag, in prison, was unable to write the following letter to Shirley Lester:
Dear Miss Lester,
I hope a few lines will not annoy or embarrass you. I'm writing, Miss Lester, because I'd like you to know that I am not a common thief. I stole your bag, I want you to know, because I fell in love with you the moment I saw you on the bus. I could think of no way to become acquainted with you except by acting rashly--foolishly, to be accurate. But then, one is a fool when one is in love.
I loved the way your lips were so slightly parted. You represented the answer to everything to me. I haven't been unhappy since I came to New York four years ago, but neither have I been happy. Rather, I can best describe myself as having been one of the thousands of young men in New York who simply exist.
I came to New York from Seattle. I was going to become rich and famous and well-dressed and suave. But in four years I've learned that I am not going to become rich and famous and well-dressed and suave. I'm a good printer's assistant, but that's all I am. One day the printer got sick, and I had to take his place. What a mess I made of things, Miss Lester. No one would take my orders. And I don't blame them. I'm a fool when I give orders. I suppose I'm just one of the millions who was never meant to give orders. But I don't mind anymore. There's a twenty-three-year-old kid my boss just hired. He's only twenty-three, and I am thirty-one and have worked at the same place for four years. But I know that one day he will become head printer, and I will be his assistant. But I don't mind knowing this anymore.
Loving you is the important thing, Miss Lester. There are some people who think love is sex and marriage and six o'clock kisses and children, and perhaps it is, Miss Lester. But do you know what I think? I think love is a touch and yet not a touch.
I suppose it's important to a woman that other people think of her as the wife of a man who is either rich, handsome, witty or popular. I'm not even popular. I'm not even hated. I'm just--I'm just--Justin Horgenschlag. I never make people gay, sad, angry or even disgusted. I think people regard me as a nice guy, but that's all.
When I was a child no one pointed me out as being cute or bright or good-looking. If they had to say something they said I had sturdy little legs.
I don't expect an answer to this letter, Miss Lester. I would like an answer more than anything else in the world, but truthfully I don't expect one. I merely wanted you to know the truth. If my love for you has only led me to a new and great sorrow, only I am to blame.
Perhaps one day you will understand and forgive your blundering admirer.
Justin Horgenschlag
Such a letter would be no more likely than the following:
Dear Mr. Horgenschlag,
I got your letter and loved it. I feel guilty and miserable that events have taken the turn they have. If only you had spoken to me instead of taking my purse! But then, I suppose I should have turned the conversational chill on you.
It's lunch hour at the office, and I'm alone here writing you. I felt that I wanted to be alone today at lunch hour. I felt that if I had to go have lunch with the girls at the Automat and they jabbered through the meal as usual, I'd suddenly scream.
I don't care if you're not a success, or that you're not handsome, or rich, or famous or suave. Once upon a time I would have cared. When I was in high s
chool I was always in love with the Joe Glamour boys. Donald Nicolson, the boy who walked in the rain and knew all Shakespere's sonnets backwards. Bob Lacey, the handsome gink who could shoot a basket from the middle of the floor, with the score tied and the chukker almost over. Harry Miller, who was so shy and had such nice, durable brown eyes.
But that crazy part of my life is over.
The people in your office who giggled when you gave them orders are on my black list. I hate them as I've never hated anybody.
You saw me when I had all my make-up on. Without it, believe me, I'm no raving beauty. Please write me when your allowed to have visitors. I'd like you to take a second look at me. I'd like to be sure that you didn't catch me at my phony best.
Please let me know when I may come to see you.
Yours sincerely,
Shirley Lester
But Justin Horgenschlag never got to know Shirley Lester. She got off at Fifth-Sixth Street, and he got off at Thirty-Second Street. That night Shirley Lester went to the movies with Howard Lawerence with whom she was in love. Howard thought Shirley was a darn good sport, but that was as far as it went. And Justin Horgenschlag that night stayed home and listened to the Lux Toilet Soap radio play. He thought about Shirley all night, all the next day, and very often during that month. Then all of a sudden he was introduced to Doris Hillman who was beginning to be afraid she wasn't going to get a husband. And then before Justin Horgenschlag knew it, Doris Hillman and things were filing away Shirley Lester in the back of his mind. And Shirley Lester, the thought of her, was no longer available.
And that's why I never wrote a boy-meets-girl story for Collier's. In a boy-meets-girl story the boy should always meet the girl.
5. The Long Debut Of Lois Taggett
LOIS TAGGETT was graduated from Miss Hascomb's School, standing twenty-sixth in a class of fifty-eight, and the following autumn her parents thought it was time for her to come out, charge out, in what they called Society. So they gave her a five-figure la-de-da Hotel Pierre affair, and save for a few horrible colds and Fred-hasn't-been-well-lately's, most of the preferred trade attended. Lois wore a white dress, an orchid corsage, and a rather lovely, awkward smile. The elderly gentlemen guests said, "She's a Taggett, all right;" the elderly ladies said, "She's a very sweet child;" and the young gentlemen said, "Where's the liquor?"
That winter Lois did her best to swish around Manhattan with the most photogenic of the young men who drank scotch-and-sodas in the God-and-Walter Winchell section of the Stork Club. She didn't do badly. She had a good figure, dressed expensively and in good taste, and was considered Intelligent. That was the first season when Intelligent was the thing to be.
In the spring, Lois' Uncle Roger agreed to give her a job as a receptionist in one of his offices. It was the first big year for debutantes to Do Something. Sally Walker was singing nightly at Alberti's Club; Phyll Mercer was designing clothes or something; Allie Tumbleston was getting that screen test. So Lois took the job as receptionist in Uncle Roger's downtown office. She worked for exactly eleven days, with three afternoons off, when she learned suddenly that Ellie Podds, Vera Gallishaw, and Cookie Benson were going to take a cruise to Rio. The news reached Lois on a Thursday evening. Everybody said it was a perfect riot down in Rio. Lois didn't go to work the following morning. She decided instead, while she sat down on the floor painting her toenails red, that most of the men who came into Uncle Roger's downtown office were a bunch of dopes.
Lois sailed with the girls, returning to Manhattan early in the fall--still single, six pounds heavier, and off speaking terms with Ellie Podds. The remainder of the year Lois took courses at Columbia, three of them entitled Dutch and Flemish Painters, Technique of the Modern Novel, and Everyday Spanish.
Come springtime again and air-conditioning at the Stork Club, Lois fell in love. He was a tall press agent named Bill Tedderton, with a deep, dirty voice. He certainly wasn't anything to bring home to Mr. and Mrs. Taggett, but Lois figured he certainly was something to bring home. She fell hard, and Bill, who had been around plenty since he'd left Kansas City, trained himself to look deep enough into Lois' eyes to see the door to the family vault. Lois became Mrs. Tedderton, and the Taggetts didn't do very much about it. It wasn't fashionable any longer to make a row if your daughter preferred the iceman to that nice Astorbilt boy. Everybody knew, of course, that press agents were icemen. Same thing.
Lois and Bill took an apartment in the Sutton Place. It was a three-room, kitchenette job, and the closets were big enough to hold Lois' dresses and Bill's wide-shouldered suits.
When her friends asked her if she were happy, Lois replied, "Madly." But she wasn't quite sure if she were madly happy. Bill had the most gorgeous rack of ties; wore such luxurious broadcloth shirts; was so marvelous, so masterful, when he spoke to people over the telephone; had such a fascinating way of hanging up his trousers. And he was so sweet about--well, you know--everything. But...
Then suddenly Lois knew for sure that she was Madly Happy, because one day soon after they were married, Bill fell in love with Lois. Getting up to go to work one morning, he looked over at the other bed and saw Lois as he'd never seen her before. Her face was jammed against the pillow, puffy, sleep-distorted, lip-dry. She never looked worse in her life--and at that instant Bill fell in love with her. He was used to women who wouldn't let him get a good look at their morning faces. He stared at Lois for a long moment, thought about the way she looked as he rode down the elevator; then in the subway he remembered one of the crazy questions Lois had asked him the other night. Bill had to laugh right out loud on the subway.
When he got home that night, Lois was sitting in the Morris chair. Her feet, in red mules, were tucked underneath her. She was just sitting there filing her nails and listening to Sancho's rhumba music over the radio. Seeing her, Bill was never so happy in his life. He wanted to jump in the air. He wanted to grit his teeth, then let out a mad, treble note of ecstasy. But he didn't dare. He would have had trouble accounting for it. He couldn't just say to Lois, "Lois. I love you for the first time. I used to think you were just a nice little drip. I married you for your money but now I don't about it. You're my girl. My sweetheart. My wife. My baby. Oh, Jesus, I'm happy." Of course, he couldn't say that to her; so he just walked over where she sat, very casually. He bent down, kissed her, gently pulling her to her feet. Lois said, "Hey! What's goin' on?" And Bill made her rumba with him around the room.
For fifteen days following Bill's discovery, Lois couldn't even stand at the glove counter at Saks' without whistling Begin the Beguine between her teeth. She began to like all her friends. She had a smile for conduct-ors on Fifth Avenue busses; was sorry she didn't have any small change with her when she handed them dollar bills. She took walks to the zoo. She spoke to her mother over the telephone every day. Mother became a Grand Person. Father, Lois noticed, worked too hard. They should both take a vacation. Or at least come to dinner Friday night, and no arguments, now.
Sixteen days after Bill fell in love with Lois, something terrible happened. Late on that sixteenth night Bill was sitting in the Morris chair, and Lois was sitting on his lap, her head back on his shoulder. From the radio pealed the sweet blare of Chick West's orchestra. Chick himself, with a mute in his horn, was taking the refrain of that swell oldie, Smoke Gets in Your Eyes.
"Oh, darling," Lois breathed.
"Baby," answered Bill softly.
They came out of a clinch. Lois replaced her head on Bill's big shoulder. Bill picked up his cigarette from the ashtray. But instead of dragging on it, he took I between his fingers, as though it were a pencil, and with it made tiny circles in the air just over the back of Lois' hand.
"Better not," said Lois, with a mock warning. "Burny Burny."
But Bill, as though he hadn't heard, deliberately, yet almost idly, did what he had to do. Lois screamed horribly, wrenched herself to her feet, and ran crazily out of the room.
Bill pounded on the bathroom door. Lois had locked it
.
"Lois. Lois, baby. Darling. Honest to God. I didn't know what I was doing. Lois. Darling. Open the door."
Inside the bathroom Lois sat on the edge of the bathtub and stared at the laundry hamper. With her right hand she squeezed the other, the injured one, as though pressure might stop the pain or undo what had been done.
On the other side of the door, Bill kept talking to her with his dry mouth.
"Lois. Lois, Jesus. I tellya I didn't know what I was doing. Lois, for God's sake open the door. Please, for God's sake."
Finally Lois came out and into Bill's arms.
But the same thing happened a week later. Only not with a cigarette. Bill, on a Sunday morning, was teaching Lois how to swing a golf club. Lois wanted to learn to play the game, because everybody said Bill was a crackerjack. They were both in their pajamas and bare feet. It was a helluva lot of fun. Giggles, kisses, guffaws, and twice they both had to sit down, they were laughing so hard.
Then suddenly Bill brought down the head-end of his brassie on Lois' bare foot. Fortunately, his leverage was faulty, because he struck with all his might.
That did it, all right. Lois moved back into her old bedroom in her family's apartment. Her mother bought her new furniture and curtains, and when Lois was able to walk again, her father immediately gave her a check for a thousand dollars. "Buy yourself some dresses," he told her. "Go ahead." So Lois went down to Saks' and Bonwit Teller's and spent the thousand dollars. Then she had a lot of clothes to wear.
New York didn't get much snow that winter, and Central Park never looked right. But the weather was very cold. One morning, looking out her window facing Fifth, Lois saw somebody walking a wire-haired terrier. She thought to herself, "I want a dog." So that afternoon she went to the pet shop and bought herself a three-months-old scotty. She put a bright red collar and leash on it, and brought the whimpering animal home in a cab. "Isn't is darling?" she asked Fred, the doorman. Fred patted the dog and said it sure was a cute little fella. "Gus," Lois said happily, "meet Fred. Fred meet Gus." She dragged the dog into the elevator. "In ya go, ya little cutie. Yes. You're a little cutie. That's what you are. A little cutie." Gus stood shivering in the middle of the elevator and wet the floor.