In this chap­ter, the nar­ra­tor reflects on his evening after leav­ing a skat­ing rink, feel­ing hun­gry. He vis­its a drug­store for a Swiss cheese sand­wich and a malt­ed drink while con­tem­plat­ing call­ing Jane, whom he has shown inter­est in, with hopes of invit­ing her out. His mem­o­ries of Jane reveal a com­plex rela­tion­ship with her for­mer boyfriend, Al Pike, whom he con­sid­ers a show-off, but Jane defends by say­ing he has an infe­ri­or­i­ty com­plex. This leads the nar­ra­tor to pon­der the para­dox­i­cal nature of how girls per­ceive boys, sug­gest­ing that they often mis­in­ter­pret behav­ior based on their feel­ings.

When Jane doesn’t answer his call, the nar­ra­tor explores alter­na­tive com­pan­ion­ship options in his thin address book, which only has a few names—Jane, a for­mer teacher named Mr. Antoli­ni, and his father’s office. Final­ly, he decides to con­tact Carl Luce, an intel­lec­tu­al from his past, hop­ing to engage in stim­u­lat­ing con­ver­sa­tion. Luce is busy but agrees to meet for a drink lat­er.

To pass time before their meet­ing at the Wick­er Bar, the nar­ra­tor heads to a movie the­ater. He finds the stage show mediocre, par­tic­u­lar­ly crit­i­ciz­ing the strange­ness of per­form­ers like the Rock­ettes and roller-skat­ing comics. The main film he watch­es fol­lows a war vet­er­an expe­ri­enc­ing mem­o­ry loss and falling in love with a girl who appre­ci­ates lit­er­a­ture. The nar­ra­tor is dis­gust­ed by the unre­al­is­tic plot and pre­dictable hap­py end­ing, feel­ing that such movies elic­it insin­cere emo­tions from audi­ences.

He observes a woman near­by who cries dur­ing the film, not­ing a dis­con­nec­tion between her tears and her lack of kind­ness towards her bored child. This leads him to a broad­er reflec­tion on the nature of com­pas­sion and the authen­tic­i­ty of emo­tion­al respons­es in peo­ple who often engage with insin­cere nar­ra­tives.

Final­ly, the nar­ra­tor mus­es on war and his broth­er D.B.‘s expe­ri­ences in it, express­ing a deep-seat­ed aver­sion to mil­i­tary life and the poten­tial hor­rors of com­bat. He con­trasts his own loathing of mil­i­tary cul­ture with a puz­zle­ment over why D.B. could praise war lit­er­a­ture such as “A Farewell to Arms,” which ulti­mate­ly leads him to ques­tion the sin­cer­i­ty of the mes­sages con­veyed in such works. His feel­ings res­onate with a desire to rebel against imposed nar­ra­tives and con­formist expec­ta­tions.