What is the impression Holden wants to make on the three girls in the cocktail lounge by saying he’s Jim Steele? What do Rudolph Schmidt and Jim Steele have in common?

Holden “gives the eye” to three women at another table, in particular a blonde one. He asks the blonde one to dance, and Holden judges her to be an excellent dancer, but a moron. Holden is offended when the woman, Bernice Krebs, asks his age, but he tells these women, who are visiting from Seattle, that his name is Jim Steele.

This chapter continues a pattern of pseudonyms that Holden adopts for himself. He treats his interaction with others as a performance, refusing to honestly depict himself to those around him. His honesty is entirely internalized; he admits his faults and lies in narration, but cannot do the same with other persons.