by Jack Finney
LOVE, YOUR MAGIC
SPELL IS EVERYWHERE
LOVE, YOUR MAGIC SPELL IS EVERYWHERE
I'm a big noon-hour prowler. I like to duck out of the office when I haven't a lunch date, grab a fast bite, pick up a Hershey bar or a Snickers or something, and then poke around—into a Second Avenue antique store with a bell that clanks when you open the door, or an unclaimed-parcel auction, a store-front judo school, secondhand bookshop, pinball emporium, pawnshop, fifth-rate hotel lobby— you know what I mean?
You do if you've ever been a noon-hour prowler, but there aren't too many of them, not real ones. The only other one I ever ran into from our office—Simon & Laurentz, an advertising agency on Park near Forty-fourth—was Frieda Piper from the art department. I wandered into a First Avenue hardware store one noon this last May and there she was back in the store fiddling with a lathe. At least I was pretty sure no one else could look quite that shapeless and down-at-the-heels, though it was a little dark in there and her back was to me. But, when she turned at the sound of the door opening and her hair fell over her face, I knew it had to be Frieda.
She wore her hair like someone in an 1895 out-of-focus tintype, parted somewhere near the middle in a jagged lightning streak, hanging straight down at the sides, and snarled up at the back in a sagging granny-knot. It covered the sides of her face as though she were peeking out through a pair of curtains, and it kept creeping out over her eyes as though she'd ducked back behind them. Walking toward her through the hardware store I was thinking that her dresses were like old ladies' hats; you couldn't imagine where they sold that kind. The one she had on now, like all her others, was no particular color; call it anything and you wouldn't be wrong. It was a sort of reddish, greenish, blackish, brownish, haphazard draping of cloth that looked as though it had accidentally fallen on her from a considerable height; even I could see that the hem on one side was a good three inches lower than the other.
The heels of her shoes—not just the ones she had on now but all her shoes all the time—were so run down that her ankles bent out as though she were learning to skate, and her stocking seams were so crooked you wouldn't have been surprised if they'd actually turned loops. It was an office joke that she bought her stockings in special unmatched pairs with the runs already in, and she's the only young adult woman I ever saw with one of the side pieces of her glasses broken and held together with adhesive tape. They were the same kind of fancy glasses other girls wear, studded here and there with little shiny stones, but half the stones were missing, and the glasses were so knocked out of shape that they hung cockeyed on her nose, one eye almost squinting out over the top of the frame, the other trying to peer out underneath. She looked like the model for some of her own wilder cartoons.
I said, "Hi, Frieda; buying a lathe?"
She surprised me. "Hi, Ted," she said. "Yeah, I'm thinking about it. I've got a drill press, a router, a planer, a belt-sander, and a nine-inch table saw; now I need a lathe." I looked puzzled; someone had told me she lived in a little two-room apartment on upper Madison Avenue somewhere. She said, "Oh, I haven't much room to use them, but I'm crazy about tools! I'm not too interested in clothes," she said as though she thought I might not have noticed, "so I'm filling my hope chest with tools. Some day when I'm married, I can build all our furniture. Maybe even the house."
I was pleased at the thought of a girl with a hope chest full of power tools, and wanted to hear a little more about it, and I brought out a Baby Ruth I'd bought, and offered Frieda some. She said no, she still had half a Love Nest left, and pulled it out of her skirt pocket, and we wandered around the hardware store for a while. She chattered away about her wood-working projects. One of them, a wedding gift for her future husband, was to be an enormous multiple-dwelling birdhouse, a sort of slum-clearance project I gathered, and I figured that the guy who married her would probably appreciate it.
She talked all the way back to the office, looking up at me eagerly through her slanted glasses, shoving the hair back off her face. The upper edge of her glasses bisected her right eye, the lower edge bisected the left; and since one lens made half her eye slightly smaller than normal, while the other lens magnified half of the remaining eye, she seemed to have four separate half-eyes of varying sizes, resembling a Picasso painting, and I got a little dizzy and tripped and nearly fell over a curb.
But I learned that Frieda was a full-fledged noon-hour prowler; she'd been to most of the places I had, and she mentioned several, including a bootleg tattooing parlor in the back of a cut-rate undertaker's place, that I hadn't run across. So I wasn't surprised later that week when I passed a Lexington Avenue dance studio to see Frieda there. It was on the second floor, a corner room with big windows; I'd stopped in one noon and knew they offered you a free trial lesson when you came in. So now as I passed on the opposite side of the street, I glanced up and there was Frieda taking the free lesson, her dress billowing and flapping like loose sails in a typhoon. Her head rested dreamily on the instructor's shoulder, her eyes were closed behind the cockeyed glasses, and she was chewing in time to the music; the hand behind the instructor's back held half a candy bar. He was looking down at her as though he were wondering how he'd ever gotten into this line of business.
The reason I mention Frieda is because of what happened the following week. One noon hour I was clear across town wandering around west of Sixth Avenue in the Forties somewhere, and I came to a narrow little place jammed in between an all-night barbershop and a Turkish bath. It said MAGIC SHOP on the window, and down in a corner in smaller letters, novelties, jokes, jewelry, souvenirs. I went in, of course; there were glass showcases on three sides, practically filling the place. The proprietor was back of one, leaning on the counter reading the Daily News. He was a thin, tired-looking, bald guy about thirty-five, and he just looked up and nodded, then went back to his paper till I was ready for business.
I looked at the stuff in the showcases; it was about what you'd expect. There was some jewelry in one case—fake gold rings mounted with big zircons, imitation turquoise-and-silver Navaho jewelry, Chinese good-luck rings. On one counter was a metal rack filled with printed comic signs, and a display of practical jokes in the showcase underneath; a plastic ice cube with a fly in it; an ink bottle with a shiny metal puddle of what looked like spilled ink—that kind of stuff. I said, "What's new in the magic-trick line?" and the guy finished a line of what he was reading, then looked up.
"Well," he said, "have you seen this?" and reached into the showcase and brought out a little brass cylinder with a handle, but I recognized it. It changed a little stack of nickels into dimes, and I told him I'd seen it. "Well, there's this," he said, and brought out a trick deck of cards, and demonstrated them, staring boredly out the window as he shuffled. I nodded when he finished, and waited. For a moment he stood thinking, then he shrugged a little, reached into the showcase, and pulled out a cheap gray cardboard box filled with a dozen or so pairs of glasses. "These are new; some salesman left them last week." I picked up a pair, and looked at them; it was just a cheap plastic frame with clear-glass lenses, no false nose attached or anything like that, and I looked up at the guy again, and said, "What're they for?"
He reached wearily into the showcase once more—-he'd demonstrated so many little tricks for so many people and made so few sales—and brought out a thin silk handkerchief. He made a fist with his other hand, draped the handkerchief over it, and held it up. "Put on the glasses," he said, and I did.
It wasn't a bad trick. As soon as I put on the glasses I could see his fist under the handkerchief very clearly, the handkerchief itself barely visible. "Not bad," I said. "How's it work?"
He shrugged. "I don't know. Salesman said a few rays of light get through cloth if it's thin, but not enough to see by. The lenses are ground some way to magnify the rays so you can see the hand underneath."
I nodded, taking the glasses off to examine them. "Is that the whole trick?"
"Yeah." He looked away b
oredly. "There are a couple others you can do with it, too."
I glanced out the window. A truck and several cabs stood motionless, blocked in a traffic jam. A man in a business suit and carrying a briefcase turned to cross the street between two of the cabs. A tall good-looking showgirl type from one of the theaters around here walked along the other side of the street. I put the glasses on again absently, wondering if I wanted them; I felt I ought to buy something. The truck and the cabs sat there, the drivers leaning on their wheels trying to keep calm. The man in the business suit stepped up onto the opposite curb. The showgirl was still walking— the showgirl's dress was gone!
There she was, walking along just as before glancing into store windows, and wearing nothing but high heels, a bra, lace-edged panties, and a purse! Then I saw the dress, ghostlike and almost invisible, swaying as she walked. I snatched off the glasses, and instantly the dress was solid—thin but nontransparent cloth. I jammed the glasses back on before she got out of sight, almost putting my eye out with one of the side pieces, the dress became ghostly, and there she was again, by George, that handsome swaying figure under the nearly vanished dress marvelously visible once more.
I rushed to the doorway, looked toward the corner, and there they all were—all the sweet young office girls, not in their summer dresses but walking delightfully along in shoes, bras, and panties. It was entrancing, and I stood there for several happy and amazing minutes. When I finally turned back into the store again the proprietor was reading the News. "Ah, look," I said, hesitating, "these arc fine, but … I was wondering if you had a stronger pair?"
He shook his head. "No, but it's funny, that's something I get a lot of calls for, and I'm going to check the salesman next time he comes in. These only work through one or two layers of pretty thin cloth; not much use for anything but tricks, far as I can see. There's a couple of good ones, though. For example, you have someone wrap a coin in a handker—"
"Yeah, yeah; how much?"
"Buck and a quarter plus tax," he said, and I bought them, and walked back to the office—strolled, actually, and it was wonderful. It was absolutely fascinating, in fact, and it seems to me that if girls understood how delicious they look walking along as I saw them now, they'd dress that way all the time, at least in nice weather. It'd be a lot cooler, terrifically healthy, and would bring a great deal of happiness into a drab prosaic world. It might even bring about world peace; it's worth trying anyway.
I sauntered along observing, and grinning so happily—I couldn't help it—that people began staring at me wonder-ingly, girls especially. Once, stopped on a corner waiting for the traffic cop to wave us across, I stood beside a very good-looking girl with a haughty face—the kind that shrivels you with a look if you so much as glance at her. She stood there in—I don't know why, but it's true—a bright blue bra and a pair of vivid orange panties; I noticed that she was slightly knock-kneed. I leaned toward her, and murmured very quietly, "Orange and blue don't go together." She looked at me puzzledly, then her eyes suddenly widened, and she stared at me with her mouth opening. Then she whirled and began looking frantically around her. The light changed, the cop waving us across, and she headed out into the street toward him, and I ran across to the other curb, glancing at my watch so people would think I'd suddenly remembered I was late somewhere. Then I ducked into a building lobby across the street, snatching off the glasses so I'd be harder to identify, and just as I yanked them off I passed a girl who wasn't even wear— but I didn't stop; I hurried on, and came out of the building a block away just across the street from my office.
Upstairs in the office, Zoe was at the switchboard in the lobby as I came in. She was the best-looking girl in the office, resembling Anita Ekberg, only slimmer—more of a fashion-model type. I whipped out my glasses, put them on, said, "Hi," smiling at her as I passed, and—what a disappointment! There under that expensive, smart-looking, narrow-waisted, flounccd-out dress sat a girl only ounces this side of malnutrition. It was the kind of figure that women, in their pitiful ignorance, envy; no hips, no nothing, except prominent ribs. "You don't eat enough, Zoe," I said.
She nodded proudly. "That's what my roommate says."
"Well, he's right."
"Listen, wise guy," she began, and I held up a hand placatingly, ducking behind one shoulder, and she smiled, and I walked on.
I kept the glasses on nearly all afternoon, wandering around the office with a sheaf of papers in my hand, and strangely it was Mrs. Humphrey, our middle-aged overweight bookkeeper, that I stared at longest. Last year, I knew, she'd celebrated the twenty-fifth anniversary of her marriage to her husband, Harvey. But there, unmistakably, tattooed on her left hip, was a four-inch-high red heart inside which, in a slanted blue script, was inscribed Ralph, and I wondered if she'd had the fearsome job of hiding it from Harvey for a quarter of a century.
But the biggest surprise of all came just before quitting time. I was managing to do a little actual work by then, and, when my office door opened and someone came in, I raised my eyes slowly, still reading a last few words of the paper in my hand. And there before me in bra and what I believe are called briefs embroidered with forget-me-nots, and I swore I never would, was—well, there is no describing what I saw, and I'm not going to try. It was nothing more or less than the most magnificently beautiful feminine figure the human race has ever known. It may even have been a mutant figure, the very first example of a new height in beauty to which humanity has never previously soared. I couldn't believe it, I couldn't tear away my eyes and lift my head until, entranced with those flawless beautifully shaped long legs, something vaguely familiar began tapping at the doors of my flabbergasted memory. The ankles, I saw when I reached them, were strangely bowed out, and then my chin shot up and I was staring openmouthed at the face above that incredible figure. "Did I startle you or something, Ted? Sorry," said Frieda, raking back a dank curtain of hair to expose a constellation of half-eyes of various sizes blinking down at me from behind and around those demented glasses.
"That's all right," I managed to say. "I've been concentrating all afternoon on some figures." I yanked off my glasses, and sure enough, there stood Frieda as always—in a shapeless sackcloth, which the dictionary says is made of goat's or camel's hair, and in her case I didn't doubt it.
"Forgot to tell you," she said, "that I found a ladies' pool hall on Sixth Avenue last month," and I thanked her, and she left. I couldn't quite believe what had happened and I clapped my glasses on again and stared after her. But it was true. There, wobbling along on scuffed and run-down heels, went the world's greatest figure, and I pulled off my glasses, and sat there till quitting time rubbing the corners of my eyes between my thumb and forefinger.
I soon quit wearing my glasses regularly though I kept them in the breast pocket of my coat for emergency use. But the novelty of wearing them all the time wore off quickly; it was like walking around on a beach all day, you got used to it. And I never put them on—the contrast between face and figure was just too much—when Frieda dropped into my office as she took to doing. She'd stop in to tell me about some noon-hour discovery, and I told her about the magic shop and about a jail manufacturer on lower Park Avenue. Usually she'd be eating a Love Nest candy bar, not so much because of the taste, she explained, but because she loved to ask for them.
Coming to work on the Forty-ninth Street crosstown bus one morning about a week later, I sat down next to the optometrist in our building; his shop is in the lobby, he usually stands in the doorway between customers, and we generally nod and speak, so I knew him. We spoke now, then each sat reading our papers till the bus stopped for a light. I looked up to see where we were just as a particularly extravagant example of lush American girlhood was crossing the street, and I whipped out my glasses and clapped them on in a blur of movement; I now had, I felt sure, the fastest draw in the East. "Farsighted?" my optometrist friend asked me, and I said no, these lenses were ground so you could see through thin cloth, such as summer dresses
. He chuckled delightedly, and said, "Any lenses that could do that must be magic." I snatched off the glasses, and stared at him.
"You mean you couldn't make lenses like that?" I said finally.
"Of course not," he said with the tolerant little chuckle doctors use for the idiot questions of stupid laymen. The bus was slowing for Park Avenue, and he stood up, asking me if I weren't going to get off, but I shook my head.
"There's something I've got to do near Sixth Avenue; I just realized," I said, and rode on across town.
The guy in the magic shop looked up from his Daily News as I walked in, and shook his head. "That salesman was in again but he doesn't have any stronger glasses; I asked."
"Never mind, that's not why I came," I said. "Tell me; what does this salesman look like? Does he have a thin saturnine face, a little waxed mustache, and strangely hypnotic eyes? Is his hair black and glossy, and high above the temples as though concealing little horns? Does he wear a silk hat and a full dress suit, and is there an odor of brimstone about h—"
"No, you must be thinking of a salesman for some other company. This here salesman is fat. Wears dirty wash pants, a Hawaiian shirt, and a cap. Smokes a cigar that smells a little like brimstone, though."
I nodded, disappointed, then thought of something. "He was here again, did you say? What'd he leave this time?"
"Some lousy jewelry. Cheap plated brass. I wouldn't of took it if he didn't leave it on consignment."
I shrugged. "Might as well look at it, long as I'm here."
"Help yourself." He pulled a cardboard box out of a showcase, shoved it across the counter at me, and went back to the News. Tumbled in the box lay a dozen or so heart-shaped little boxes made of cheap pink plastic. I opened one; a layer of pink imitation felt was glued to a piece of cardboard cut to fit the inside of the box. Lying on the felt was a bracelet of imitation brass chain studded with red glass hearts; it was as gaudy a looking thing as I'd seen in a long time. A badly printed label stuck to the inside of the lid read, GENUINE EGYPTIAN SLAVE BRACELET, and a little gummed tab on the back said 75¢. I paid the guy—he looked at me pityingly as I did—then hurried out and to the office.