“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?”
“No—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.