The Catcher in the Rye

In the cab, Holden watches the empty late-night streets until he asks the driver, Horwitz, if he knows what happens to the ducks in Central Park in winter. Horwitz doesn’t know, but he starts talking about the fish and how they don’t go anywhere. He becomes very animated, incorrectly saying the fish absorb their nutrients from the ice while they’re frozen. When they arrive at Ernie’s, Holden invites him in for a drink, but he declines.

Inside, Ernie is playing the piano, which is a big draw at the club—the audience loves it, but Holden finds it pretentious and wishes Ernie wouldn’t be so ostentatious when he plays. Holden is seated at a small, cramped table by the wall where he can’t come and go, and he eavesdrops on the conversations around him. On one side, a man is telling his date about a football game, and on the other, a man is trying to cop a feel on his date under the table while telling a story about his dormmate’s attempted suicide. Holden thinks everyone around him is a jerk.

It’s not long before Lillian Simmons, a woman D. B. dated, recognizes Holden. She stops to talk to him, to the consternation of her date, a Navy officer.