by Jack Finney
A cab! she answered. Why, you'll never find a cab in this rain. Look, we have to eat, but we don't have to drown. You get that wet coat off and sit down by the fireplace. I'll put on an apron and stir us up some crepes suzette. And we'll have a quiet evening. How does that sound?
It didn't sound so good to Ralph Shultz, because he threw the magazine across the room.
How does that sound? he said. A quiet evening alone with a babe like that! It sounds wonderful, he said miserably. Marvelous! It sounds impossible! Oh, life, real life, when are you ever going to catch up with life in these marvelous stories?
Well, out of the clouds, down to earth, back to grim life. The gray, miserable, sickly daylight always comes around, as you very well know, and you've got to get up, go to work, work all day, and trudge home again at night. Which is what happened to Ralph Shultz the following day. He, was coming home, walking along toward Fifth Avenue and thinking — well, it would be nice to say he was thinking some profound thoughts. But this is real life, don't forget, and about all he was thinking was: What a lousy job: I'd like to quit. I'd like to walk in and tell that old … Wish I could start my own business. Raise hamsters, maybe. They say there's money in that. Or start a diaper service. Hire a secretary, a nice-looking one, and …
Ah, excuse me, mister! Ralph said aloud. I'm sorry! I was —
Hey, if de sidewalk's big enough for me, it oughta be big enough for you, Jack.
Ralph apologized to the big fat man and, resuming his thoughts, walked on. But that's enough of Ralph's thoughts. They were pretty much like the ones most of us think.
Ralph arrived at Fifth Avenue, the bus came, he got on, and — well, certainly. Of course, you've guessed it. Of course, Louise Huppfelt was on that bus. And you're saying, Some coincidence, all right! But wait a second. After all, they rode the Fifth Avenue bus every night, so once in a while they'd be bound to take the same one, wouldn't they? Anyway, it's only in stories that coincidences never happen. In real life they're commonplace. Happen all the time.
Well, there was Louise on the bus; not beautiful, but not bad, either. There were no mysterious high lights in her hair, but those plain ordinary high lights were pretty nice, too. And — well, what would you want Ralph to do? Sit down next to a big fat man? He sat next to Louise.
Not bad, he thought; not bad at all. Kind of cute, in fact. Wish she'd say something; ask me where some street is, maybe, or maybe drop something and I could pick it up, and … Hey, look — she's doing a crossword puzzle. Like the girl in that story! Hey, I wonder if I could work that same gag, and — no. Still, maybe. Let's see what she's working on. Twenty-nine verticle, five letters. She's got the first letter, H. Definition: Having to do with bees.
It's hives! he said aloud, a little too loudly, in fact; several people turned around.
What? said Louise. What did you say?
I said — he spoke too quietly, now. Louise could hardly hear him —I said — it's hives.
Hives! she said, her brows arched in surprise and indignation. On my hands? It certainly is not! That's sunburn and nothing else, and I really don't see what business it is of yours!
No! said Ralph. No, what I mean is, that's the word. In the puzzle!
It certainly is not, she said coldly. You're wrong on every count.
Well, I, said Ralph. That is, I — I only meant — I just thought —
Excuse me, said Louise, rising. I get off here.
And that was that. It's too bad, of course. Too bad that life doesn't behave the way it ought to, but it seldom does. In the stories life co-operates with the characters in it. The word in the crossword puzzle is darling, the conversation works out beautifully, and the girl does not get off the bus in the middle of it. But this girl did. She lived on Fortieth Street, this was Fortieth Street, so naturally she got off the bus.
What a dope, Ralph said to himself. What a moron you are. Did you really think it would work out like the story, you poor helpless boob? Did you think her ruby-red lips would curve with laughter, and … oh, nuts.
For a while he sat there,, looking out the window listening to an argument between the bus driver and a poor, old, white-haired lady. Then — I know what I should have said, he thought. I should have smiled and said, very softly, After all — what's a mere word between — friends. Then she'd have smiled, and sort of looked at me, and said, Now, really — Or no. No. Friends? she'd have said, and she'd smile again, and I'd say, Yes — I hope so, that is. And then she'd have said …
And all the way home Ralph Shultz figured out what he should have said, and what she would have said, and — oh, he worked out some very clever remarks. He had her laughing and giggling at some of the wonderful witty things he was saying. Only it was about seventeen minutes too late.
Louise got to thinking, too, as she walked home to her apartment with the cracked ceiling, on Fortieth Street. What in the world was wrong with me? she asked herself. Just why did I have to freeze him dead? He wasn't really trying to act smart, poor guy. He must have read that story about the girl on the bus. So he was just trying to work the same gag, that's all. Only it didn't work out quite right.
He was kind of cute, too, she thought. No magazine illustration or anything, but — nice. She laughed. Hives, he said. I could have helped him out a little. I could have said Mister, the word in the story was darling. Or no. No, that might seem a little too … I should have said, Sir, if you think I'm the kind of girl who could possibly respond to the advances of a strange man on a bus, you're absolutely right! And then he'd laugh, and I'd smile, and then he'd say …
And by the time she got home Louise had quite a little conversation assembled, too. But each of them spent the evening alone. It rained that night, too. It would have been a wonderful evening to spend by the fireplace, just the two of them. If Louise had a fireplace. Which she didn't.
Well, time moved on. It's been noted often that a big city can be a lonely place, and it's true enough. Louise went to work each day and came home again, she ate and slept, and went to the movies pretty often. One of them was about this young man who was phoning his aunt and he dialed the wrong number and called this girl by mistake and they got to talking and they made a date and went to this amusement park and at the shooting gallery he couldn't hit a thing and her turn came and she was afraid of the gun so she just closed her eyes and shot and she hit the target and won this big doll. Then they rode on the roller coaster, and they ate hot dogs and they ended up about three in the morning in this little diner and the man who owned it was such a nice funny old character — well, it was a pretty nice movie, and Louise felt pretty depressed afterward.
Ralph saw the same movie — just this, ordinary average guy, you see, James Stewart, who meets this girl by dialing the wrong number … Ralph wondered if anything like that could really happen. Just for the fun of it, next night, he tried the same thing; just closed his eyes and dialed a number, Huffnagel Cleaning and Dyeing, said a voice, and Ralph hung up. .
He took a lot of walks, too. Ralph liked to walk, he told himself, and he'd walk around for a while, maybe up Lexington Avenue, and then after a while he'd stop in at a bar. He didn't much like to drink, but he kept reading about these interesting people and conversations you run into in bars. But all anyone ever wanted to talk about was baseball.
Well, you know how it is; the one that gets away is the one you can't forget. Louise kept remembering Ralph every once in a while, and Ralph kept thinking about Louise. Days passed, a week went by, and a week or so more, but neither of them moved out of town; they didn't change their jobs or their habits, so it was only a matter of time till they got on the same bus again.
The bus was crowded and Ralph didn't see her till he stood right next to her seat. Then their eyes met, and they both looked away, very quickly. Ralph stared up at the ads and Louise went furiously to work on her puzzle. Now, in a story he'd have sat down, right next to her. But in real life he didn't. He couldn't. A big fat man was sitting there. So Ralph stared
at the ads, and Louise sat there looking at her puzzle, and thinking.
Now, why cut my own throat? she thought. Like last time? Why stand on ceremony? And she began to write on her newspaper.
Ralph tried to keep looking at the ads (there was one on, soup), but then he just couldn't help it; he looked down and saw that Louise was writing, very industriously, in big capital letters, in the margin of her paper. Favorite, she wrote. A minion.
Ralph grinned happily, leaned down and whispered. Darling …
What? said Louise, in a slightly tremulous voice. What did you say?
I said — darling. That's the word you're looking for — isn't it?
Yes, she said faintly. That's the word — I've been waiting for.
Hey, you two screwballs want to sit together? said the big fat man.
Yes! said Ralph. We —
No, said Louise, I — we get off here.
Yeah, that's right, said Ralph softly. We get off here. Because I've got a date — with a gorgeous brown-haired redhead!
With beautiful queen-size eyes, said Louise, as the fat man moved over next to the window, looking disgusted.
Well, they arrived okay — at her luxurious apartment with a loose board in the floor and no heat after ten. Louise turned and said, She stood there; a vision in green. Then she laughed and said, Her old, green, year-before-last coat, with a tear in the hem, and that old, old look.
Yeah, said Ralph, and he stood there — like a big drip.
That reminds me, said Louise. You're dripping wet. It must be pouring out!
Huh? said Ralph. Oh, yeah! he said quickly. I'm drenched! Soaked to the skin! He coughed. Pneumonia. Suppose I go hunt up a — streetcar, while you wait here?
No, said Louise, you just go into my huge living room and find a fireplace. I'll put on my frilly little apron and stir us up some — pancakes.
Ralph grinned at her. At this point, he said, I suppose I ought to think up something pretty terrific. A smash punch line. And I usually do, too. About three weeks too late.
He was right about that. He kissed Louise, and then Louise kissed him, and finally Louise said, I'm glad you read the right magazines.
And Ralph said, So am I — honey.
Which is exactly what he should have said at least three weeks before! Why, if he'd been the hero in a story, he'd have recognized the setup immediately! He'd never have muffed that opportunity. Anyone with the sense a hero is born with would have known that of course the five-letter word beginning with “H” and having to do with bees, just couldn't be anything else but “Honey. ”
So you see? It just goes to show you. That's the trouble with you real-life people — you're so helpless! Why, the only way Louise Huppfelt and Ralph Shultz ever got together was to make real life live up to life as it's lived in these wonderful stories.
Which isn't a bad idea. It's something you might try yourself sometime. Who knows? Maybe it is a solution to world peace.
Second Chance
I can't tell you, I know, how I got to a time and place no one else in the world even remembers. But maybe I can tell you how I felt the morning I stood in an old barn off the county road, staring down at what was to take me there.
I paid out $75 I'd worked hard for after classes last semester — I'm a senior at Poynt College an Hylesburg, Illinois, my home town — and the middle-aged farmer took it silently, watching me shrewdly, knowing I must be out of my mind. Then I stood looking down at the smashed, rusty, rat-gnawed, dust-covered, old wreck of an automobile lying on the wood floor where it had been hauled and dumped 33 years before — and that now belonged to me. And if you can remember the moment, whenever it was, when you finally got something you wanted so badly you dreamed about it, then maybe I've told you how I felt staring at the dusty mass of junk that was a genuine Jordan Playboy.
You've never heard of a Jordan Playboy, if you're younger than forty, unless you're like I am: one of those people who'd rather own a '26 Mercer convertible sedan, or a '31 Packard touring car, or a '24 Wills Sainte Claire, or a '31 air-cooled Franklin convertible — or a Jordan Playboy — than the newest, two-toned, '56 model made; I was actually half-sick with excitement.
And the excitement lasted; it took me four months to restore that car, and that's fast. I went to classes till school ended for the summer; then I worked, clerking at J. C. Penny's. I had dates, saw an occasional movie, ate, and slept. But all I really did — all that counted — was work on that car — from six to eight every morning, for half an hour at lunchtime, and from the moment I got home, most nights, till I stumbled to bed, worn out.
My folks live in the big old house my dad was born in. There's a barn off at the back of the lot, and I've got a chain hoist in there, a workbench, and a full set of mechanic's tools. I built hot rods there for three years, one after another — those charcoal-black mongrels with the rear ends up an the air. But I'm through with hot rods — I'll leave those to the high-school set; I'm twenty years old now. I'd been living for the day when I could soak loose the body bolts with liniment, hoist the body aside, and start restoring my own classic. That's what they're called, those certain models of certain cars of certain years that have something that's lasted, something today's cars don't have for us, and something worth bringing back.
But you don't restore a classic by throwing in a new motor, hammering out the dents, replacing missing parts with anything handy, and painting it chartreuse. “Restore” means what it says, or ought to. My Jordan had been struck by a train, the man who sold it to me said — just grazed, but that was enough to flip it over, tumbling at across a field — and the thing was a wreck; the people in it had been killed. So the right rear wheel and the spare were hopeless wads of wire spokes and twisted rims, and the body was caved in, with the metal actually split in places. The motor was a mess, though the block was sound. The upholstery was rat-gnawed and almost gone. All the nickel plating was flaking off, and exterior parts were gone, nothing but screw holes to show they'd been there. But three of the wheels were intact, or almost, and none of the body was actually missing.
What you do is write letters; advertise in the magazines people like me read; ask around; prowl garages, junk heaps, and barns; and you trade, and you bargain, and one way or another you get together the parts you need. I traded a Winton name plate and hubcaps, plus a Saxon hood, to a man an Wichita, Kansas, for two Playboy wheels — rusty, and some of the spokes bent and loose, but I could fix that. I bought my Jordan runningboard mats and spare-wheel mount from a man in New Jersey. I bought two valve pushrods and had the rest precision-made precisely like the others. And — well, I restored that car, that's all.
The body shell — every dent and bump gone, every tear welded and burnished down — I painted a deep green, precisely matching what was left of the old paint before I sanded it off, Door handles, windshield rim, and every other nickel-plated part were restored, renickeled, and replaced. I wrote 11 letters to leather-supply houses all over the country, enclosing sample swatches of the cracked old upholstery, before I found a place that could match it. Then I paid $112 to have my Playboy re-upholstered, supplying old photographs to show just how it should be done. And at 8:10 one Saturday evening in July I finally finished; my last missing part, a Jordan radiator cap, for which I'd traded a Duesenberg floor mat, had come from the nickel plater's that afternoon. Just for the fun of it, I put the old plates back on — Illinois license 11,206 for 1923. And even the original ignition key, in its old leather case — oiled and worked supple again — was back where I'd found it, and now I switched it on, advanced the throttle and spark, got out with the crank, and started it up. And 33 years after it had bounced, rolled, and crashed off a grade crossing, that Jordan Playboy was alive again.
I had a date and knew I ought to get dressed; I was wearing stained dungarees and my dad's navy-blue, high-necked old sweater. I didn't have any money with me; you lose it out of your pockets, working on a car. I was even out of cigarettes. But I couldn't wait — I h
ad to drive that car — and I just washed up at the old sink in the barn, then started down the cinder driveway in that beautiful car, feeling wonderful. It wouldn't matter how I was dressed anyway, driving around in the Playboy tonight.
My mother waved at me tolerantly from a living-room window, and called out to be careful, and I nodded; then I was out in the street, cruising along, and I wish you could have seen me — seen it, I mean. I don't care whether you've ever given a thought to the wonderful old cars or not, you'd have seen why it was worth all I'd done. Draw yourself a mental picture of a simple, straightlined, two-seater, open automobile with four big wire wheels fully exposed and its spare on the back in plain sight; don't put in a line that doesn't belong there and have a purpose. Make the two doors absolutely square — what other shape should a door be? Make the hood perfectly rounded, louvered at the sides because the motor needs ventilation. But don't add a single unnecessary curve, jiggle, squiggle, or porthole to that car — and picture the radiator facing the windstream squarely upright and looking like a radiator, nothing concealing it and pretending it doesn't exist. And now see that Playboy as I did cruising along, the late sun slanting down through the big old trees along the street, glancing off the bright nickel so that it hurt your eyes, the green of the body glowing like a jewel. It was beautiful, I tell you it was beautiful, and you'd think everyone would see that.
But they didn't. On Main Street I stopped at a light, and a guy slid up beside me in a great big, shining, new '56 car half as long as a football field. He sat there, the top of the door up to his shoulders, his eyes almost level with the bottom of his windshield, looking as much in proportion to his car as a two-year-old in his father's overcoat; he sat there in a car with a pattern of chrome copied directly from an Oriental rug and with a trunk sticking out past his back wheels you could have landed a helicopter on; he sat there for a moment, then turned, looked out, and smiled at my car!