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 a pet shop and bought 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 it 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, Gussie," Lois said. "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.

Lois gave him away a few days later. After Gus consistently refused to be housebroken, Lois began to agree with her parents that it was cruel to keep a dog in the city.

The night she gave away Gus, she told her parents it was dumb to wait till spring to go to Reno. It was better to get it over with. So early in January Lois flew West. She lived at a dude ranch just outside Reno and made the acquaintance of Betty Walker, from Chicago, and Sylvia Haggerty from Rochester. Betty Walker, whose insight was penetrating as any rubber knife, told Lois a thing or two about men. Sylvia Haggerty was a quiet dumpy little brunette, and never said much, but she could drink more scotch-and-sodas than any girl Lois had ever known. When their divorces all came through, Betty Walker gave a party at the Barclay in Reno. The boys from the ranch were invited, and Red, the good-looking one, made a big play for Lois, but in a nice way. "Keep away from me!" Lois suddenly screamed at Red. Everybody said Lois was a rotten sport. They didn't know she was afraid of tall, good-looking men.

She saw Bill again, of course. About two months after she'd returned from Reno, Bill sat down at her table in the Stork Club.

"Hello, Lois."

"Hello, Bill. I'd rather you didn't sit down."

"I've been up at this psychoanalyst's place. He says I'll be all right."

"I'm glad to hear that. Bill, I'm waiting for somebody. Please leave."

"Will you have lunch with me sometime?" Bill asked.

"Bill, they just came in. Please leave."

Bill got up. "Can I phone you?" he asked.

"No."

Bill left, and Middie Weaver and Liz Watson sat down. Lois ordered a scotch-and-soda, drank it, and four more like it. When she left the Stork Club she was feeling pretty drunk. She walked and she walked and she walked. Finally she sat down on a bench in front of the zebras' cage at the zoo. She sat there till she was sober and her knees had stopped shaking. Then she went home.

Home was a place with parents, news commentators on the radio, and starched maids who were always coming around to your left to deposit a small chilled glass of tomato juice in front of you.

After dinner, when Lois returned from the telephone, Mrs. Taggett looked up from her book, and asked, "Who was it? Carl Curfman, dear?"

"Yes," said Lois, sitting down. "What a dope."

"He's not a dope," contradicted Mrs. Taggett.

Carl Curfman was a thick-ankled, short young man who always wore white socks because colored socks irritated his feet. He was full of information. If you were going to drive to the game on Saturday, Carl would ask what route you were taking. If you said, "I don't know. I guess Route 26," Carl would suggest eagerly that you take Route 7 instead, and he'd take out a notebook and pencil and chart the whole thing out for you. You'd thank him profusely for his trouble, and he'd sort of nod quickly and remind you not for anything to turn off at Cleveland Turnpike despite the road signs. You always felt a little sorry for Carl when he put away his notebook and pencil.

Several months after Lois was back from Reno, Carl asked her to marry him. He put it to her in the negative. They had just come from a charity ball at the Waldorf. The battery in Carl's sedan was dead, and he had started to get all worked up about it, but Lois said, "Take it easy, Carl. Let's smoke a cigarette first." They sat in the car smoking cigarettes, and it was then that Carl put it to Lois in the negative.

"You wouldn't wanna marry me, would you, Lois?"

Lois had been watching him smoke. He didn't inhale.

"Gee, Carl. You are sweet to ask me."

Lois had felt the question coming on for a long time; but she had never quite planned an answer.

"I'd do my damnedest to make you happy, Lois. I mean I'd do my damnedest."

He shifted his position in the seat, and Lois could see his white socks.

"You're very sweet to ask me, Carl," Lois said. "But I just don't wanna think about marriage for a while yet."

"Sure," said Carl quickly.

"Hey," said Lois, "there's a garage on Fiftieth and Third. I'll walk down with you."

One day the following week Lois had lunch at the Stork with Middie Weaver. Middie Weaver served the conversation as nodder and cigarette-ash-tipper. Lois told Middie that at first she had thought Carl was a dope. Well, not exactly a dope, but, well, Middie knew what Lois meant. Middie nodded and tipped the ashes of her cigarette. But he wasn't a dope. He was just sensitive and shy, and terribly sweet. And terribly intelligent. Did Middie know that Carl really ran Curfman and Sons? Yes. He really did. And he was a marvelous dancer, too. And he really had nice hair. It was actually curly when he didn't slick it down. It really was gorgeous hair. And he wasn't really fat. He was solid. And he was terribly sweet.

Middie Weaver said, "Well, I always liked Carl. I think he's a grand person."

Lois thought about Middie Weaver on the way home in the cab. Middie was swell. Middie really was a swell person. So intelligent. So few people were intelligent, really intelligent. Middie was perfect. Lois hoped Bob Walker would marry Middie. She was too good for him. The rat.

Lois and Carl got married in the spring, and less than a month after they were married, Carl stopped wearing white socks. He also stopped wearing a winged collar with his dinner jacket. And he stopped giving people directions to get to Manasquan by avoiding the shore route. If people want to take the shore route, let them take it, Lois told Carl. She also told him not to lend any more money to Bud Masterson. And when Carl danced, would he please take longer steps. If Carl noticed, only short fat men minced around the floor. And if Carl put any more of that greasy stuff on his hair, Lois would go mad.

They weren't married three months when Lois started going to the movies at eleven o'clock in the morning. She'd sit up in the loges and chain-smoke cigarettes. It was better than sitting in the damned apartment. It was better than going to see her mother. These days her mother had a four-word vocabulary consisting of, "You're too thin, dear." Going to the movies was also better than seeing the girls. As it was, Lois couldn't go anywhere without bumping into one of them. They were all such ninnies.

So Lois started going to the movies at eleven o'clock in the morning. She'd sit through the show and then she'd go to the ladies room and comb her hair and put on fresh make-up. Then she'd look at herself in the mirror, and wonder, "Well. What the hells should I do now?"

Sometimes Lois went to another movie. Sometimes she went shopping, but rarely these days did she see anything she wanted to buy. Sometimes she met Cookie Benson. When Lois came to think of it, Cookie was the only one of her friends who was intelligent, really intelligent. Cookie was swell. Swell sense of humor. Lois and Cookie could sit in the Stork Club for hours, telling dirty jokes and criticizing their friends.

Cookie was perfect. Lois wondered why she had never liked Cookie before. A grand, intelligent person like Cookie.

Carl complained frequently to Lois about his feet. One evening when they were sitting at home, Carl took off his shoes and black socks, and examined his bare feet carefully. He discovered Lois staring at him.

"They itch," he said to Lois, laughing. "I just can't wear colored socks."

"It's your imagination," Lois told him.

"My father had the same thing," Carl said. "It's a form of eczema, the doctors say."

Lois tried to make her voice sound casual. "The way you go into such a stew about it, you'd think you had leprosy."

Carl laughed. "No," he said, still laughing, "I hardly think it's leprosy." He picked up his cigarette from the ash tray.

"Good Lord," said Lois, forcing a laugh. "Why don't you inhale when you smoke? What possible pleasure can you get out of smoking if you don't inhale?"

Carl laughed again, and examined the end of his cigarette, as though the end of his cigarette might have something to do with his not inhaling.

"I don't know," he said, laughing. "I just never did inhale."

When Lois discovered she was going to have a baby, she stopped going to the movies so much. She began to meet her mother a great deal for lunch at Schrafft's, where the ate vegetable salads and talked about maternity clothes. Men in busses got up to give Lois their seats. Elevator operators spoke to her with quiet new respect in their nondescript voices. With curiosity, Lois began to peek under the hoods of baby carriages.

Carl always slept heavily, and never heard Lois cry in her sleep.

When the baby was born it was generally spoken of as darling. It was a fat little boy with tiny ears and blond hair, and it slobbered sweetly for all those who liked babies to slobber sweetly. Lois loved it. Carl loved it. The in-laws loved it. It was, in short, a most successful production. And as the weeks went by, Lois found she couldn't kiss Thomas Taggett Curfman half enough. She couldn't pat his little bottom enough. She couldn't talk to him enough.

"Yes. Somebody gonna get a bath. Yes. Somebody I know is gonna get a nice clean bath. Bertha, is the water right?"

"Yes. Somebody's going to get a bath. Bertha, the water's too hot. I don't care, Bertha. It's too hot."

Once Carl finally got home in time to see Tommy get his bath. Lois took her hand out of the scientific bathtub, and pointed wetly at Carl.

"Tommy. Who's that? Who's that big man? Tommy, who's that?"

"He doesn't know me," said Carl, but hopefully.

"That's your Daddy. That's your Daddy, Tommy."

"He doesn't know me from Adam," said Carl.

"Tommy. Tommy, look where Mommy's pointing. Look at Daddy. Look at the big man. Look at Daddy."

That fall Lois' father gave her a mink coat, and if you had lived near Seventy-Fourth and Fifth, many a Thursday you might have seen Lois in her mink coat, wheeling a big black carriage across the avenue into the park.

Then finally she made it. And when she did, everybody seemed to know about it. Butchers began to give Lois the best cuts of meat. Cab drivers began to tell her about their kids' whooping cough. Bertha, the maid, began to clean with a wet cloth instead of a duster. Poor Cookie Benson during her crying jags began to telephone Lois from the Stork Club. Women in general began to look more closely at Lois' face than at her clothes. Men in theater-boxes, looking down at the women in the audience, began to single out Lois, if for no other reason than they liked the way she put on her glasses.

It happened about six months after young Thomas Taggett Curfman tossed peculiarly in his sleep and a fuzzy woolen blanket snuffed out his little life.

The man Lois didn't love was sitting in his chair one evening, staring at a pattern on the rug. Lois had just came in from the bedroom where she had stood for nearly a half-hour, looking out the window. She sat down in the chair opposite Carl. Never in his life had he looked more stupid and gross. But there was something had to say to him. And suddenly it was said.

"Put on your white socks. Go ahead," Lois said quietly. "Put them on, dear."

The Stranger.

by J.D. Salinger.

The maid at the apartment door was young and snippy and she had a part-time look about her. "Who'd ya wanna see?" she asked the young man hostilely.

The young man said, "Mrs. Polk." He had told her four times over the squawky house phone whom he wanted to see.

He should have come on a day when there wouldn't be any idiots to answer the house phones and doors. He should have come on a day when he didn't feel like gouging his eyes out, to rid himself of hay fever. He should have come--he shouldn't have come at all. He should have taken his sister Mattie straight to her beloved, greasy chop suey joint, then straight to a matinee, then straight to the train--without stopping once to take out his messy emotions, without forcing them on strangers. Hey! Maybe it wasn't too laugh like a moron, lie and leave.

The maid stepped out of the way, mumbling something about maybe she was out of the tub and maybe not, and the young man with the red eyes and the leggy little girl with him entered the apartment.

It was an ugly, expensive little New York apartment of the kind which seems to rent mostly to newly married couples--possibly because the bride's feet began to kill her at the last renting agency, or because she loves to distraction the way her new husband wears his wrist watch.

The living room, in which the young man and the little girl were ordered to wait, had one Morris chair too many, and it looked as though the reading lamps had been breeding at night. Ah, but over the crazy artificial fireplace there were some fine books.

The young man wondered who owned and cared about Rainer Maria Rilke and the Beautiful and the Damned and A High Wind in Jamaica, for instance. Did they belong to Vincent's girl or Vincent's girl's husband?

He sneezed, and walked over to an interesting, messy stack of phonograph records, and picked up the top record. It was an old Bakewell Howard--before Howard had gone commercial--playing Fat Boy. Who owned it? Vincent's girl or Vincent's girl's husband? He turned the record over, and through his leaky eyes he looked at a patch of dirty white adhesive tape fastened to the title sticker. Printed on the tape in green ink were the identification and warning: Helen Beebers--Room 202, Rudenweg--Stop Thief!

The young man grabbed his hip pocket handkerchief and sneezed again; then he turned the record back to the Fat Boy side. His mind began to hear the old Bakewell Howard's rough, fine horn playing. Then he began to hear the music of the unrecoverable years: the little, unhistorical, pretty good years when all the dead boys in the 12th Regiment had been living and cutting in on other dead boys on lost dance floors: the years when no one who could dance worth a damn had ever heard of Cherbourg or Saint L or Hrtgen Forest or Luxembourg.

He listed to this music until behind him his little sister started practicing belching; then he turned around and said, "Cut it out, Mattie."

At that instant a grown girl's harsh, childish, acutely lovely voice came into the room, followed by the girl herself.

"Hey," she said. "I'm sorry to keep you waiting. I'm Mrs. Polk. I don't know how you're gong to get them into this room. The windows are all funny. But I can't stand looking at that dirty old building across the wuddaya-call-it." She caught sight of the little girl, who was sitting in one of the extra Morris chairs with her legs crossed. "Oh!" she cried ecstatically. "Who's this? Your little girl? Pussy cat!"

The young man had to make an emergency snatch at his pocket handkerchief, and he sneezed four times before he could reply. "That's my sister Mattie," he told Vincent's girl. "I'm not the window man, if that's--"

"You aren't the curtain man? . . . What's the matter with your eyes?"

"I have hay fever. My name is Babe Gladwaller. I was in the Army with Vincent Caulfield." He sneezed. "We were very good friends . . . Don't stare at me when I sneeze, please. Mattie and I came in town to have lunch and see a show, and I thought I'd drop by to see you; take a chance on your being in. I should have telephoned or something." He sneezed again, and when he looked up, Vincent's girl was staring at him. She looked fine. She probably could have lighted up a cigar and looked fine.

"Hey," she said, quietly for her; she was a shouter. "This room is dark as glop. Let's go in my room." She turned around and started to lead the way. With her back turned she said, "You're in the letter he wrote me. You live in a place starting with a 'V.'"

"Valdosta, New York."

They entered a lighter, better room; obviously Vincent's girl's and her husband's room.

"Listen. I hate that living room. Sit in the chair. Just throw that glop on the floor. Pussy cat, baby, you sit here on the bed with me--oh, sweetie, what a beautiful dress! Oh, why did you come to see me? No, I'm glad. Go ahead. I won't look at you when you sneeze."

There was never a way, even back in the beginning, that a man could condition himself against the lethal size and shape and melody of beauty by chance. Vincent could have warned him. Vincent had warned him. Sure he had.

Babe said, "Well, I thought--"

"Listen, why aren't you in the Army?" Vincent's girl said. "Aren't you in the Army? Hey? Are you out on that new points thing?"