by Jack Finney
No, he said casually. I didn't call Nancy. He paused for a moment. Well, he continued, I don't want to keep you. I just didn't want you to worry. See you tomorrow. 'By.
Wait, Tim! Tim, you still there?
Yes, he said. What is it?
Well —
Yes?
Nothing, she said. I — I'm — glad you're having fun.
I certainly am, he said, and grinned wickedly. This was a wonderful idea — of yours. Well, I'll see you in the morning. 'By, honey, he said pleasantly, casually.
Goodby, said Eve, and her voice, he thought, seemed a little wistful.
When he returned to their table, Ginnie was waiting.
I was phoning my wife, he told her. My trouble is that my wife understands me.
That's bad, Tim, said Ginnie, and she produced a small mirror from her handbag.
It is, said Tim. I told her I was out with a beautiful woman; thought I'd make her jealous. But I'm afraid, all in all, that she thinks it's just dandy. She trusts me, you see; Old Faithful Tim. Naturally, a man resents that, and it means, of course, that I've got to do something about it. I've got to do my damnedest to seduce you.
Naturally, said Ginnie. With a little finger, she began smoothing the lipstick on her lower lip, held taut against her teeth, and staring intently into her mirror. But I don't think I can be of much assistance, she said abstractedly. She folded her lips inward for a moment, pressing them tightly together, then studied the result in her mirror. Certainly not just to help a man, no matter how attractive, get even with his wife.
You see? said Tim mournfully. It's true; my wife is right. I don't even know how to get into trouble!
Their tone was frivolous, light: Tim was joking, so was Ginnie, and both of them knew it. And yet, Tim realized, he was enjoying it very much and remembering other times, before he was married, when he hadn't been joking at all. And he wondered if he were entirely pretending now. He should, he thought, change the tenor of their conversation, yet he was reluctant to end it. Instead, he looked around for their waiter, saw him making his way to their table, and he waited, leaning back in his chair, his eyes on the man until he arrived. Tim paid the check, left a tip, then turned back to Ginnie. He looked at her for a moment, gravely. To the park? he said, and Ginnie nodded and smiled and got up. …
Outside, it was suddenly very late. It looked late, smelled late, the city asleep now, almost completely, in the one deep hour of the twenty-four in which it nearly achieves a silence. Fifth Avenue was dark and empty; they could hear the sound of their tires on the pavement. They turned, presently, into the park, surrounded by the city, to hear the occasional chirp of a bird. The car moved slowly, almost driving itself over the winding roadway, and they saw a squirrel dart over the road in the dim beam of their headlights.
The radio was on, tuned very low, the air moved softly, coolly, over their faces and through their hair, and overhead in dim circles of lamplight as they passed. It seemed natural that Tim, one hand resting on the wheel of the car, hardly needing to guide it, should have his other arm around Ginnie's shoulders.
They drove for a time in silence, hearing the radio, enjoying the night, following the road where it took them. Sometimes they passed the same spot twice, at other times the car turned into new stretches of roadway, under the trees. They crossed tiny bridges, they passed a lagoon, and presently the road curved, passed through a low stone wall, and the car was in a street, quiet and empty, beside the park. Tim lifted his arm, put the car out of gear, and it coasted slowly and stopped, under a low overhanging tree, beside the stone wall of the park. He shut off the motor, turned to Ginnie, as she turned to him, and he kissed her.
He drew back, then, and looked at her; she was very lovely, her face tender, smiling softly.
Tim looked at her for a moment but said nothing, then he kissed her again, slowly. He liked it; very much; and when he drew back again finally, he looked at her almost fiercely, scowling a little, as he leaned back against the leather of the cushion. He picked up her hand lying on the seat beside him and looked at it, his thumb running gently over her knuckles. You're a very special girl, Ginnie. he said, and she looked at him, smiling, but didn't answer. Let's drive for a minute, Tim said, and he turned on the key and started the car.
They moved ahead, westward, very slowly, Tim's foot not touching the accelerator. He turned for a moment and looked at Ginnie. I don't know where this car thinks it's going, he said. Shall I give it its head?
Might try it, said Ginnie. It's a very smart car.
But eccentric, said Tim. It does the damnedest things.
They stopped at a lonely traffic light and Tim spoke again, staring ahead through the windshield. Are you tired?
No, said Ginnie, I should be but I'm not.
The light changed but Tim didn't move. You can sleep in the afternoon, can't you? He glanced up at the sky, already graying. It's going to be a nice morning; no time for sleeping.
That's right, said Ginnie, it isn't.
Then look. Tim turned to face her. I don't know how you'll feel about this. He hesitated and looked away toward the floor.
What is it? she said gently. I have a feeling I know and that I'm going to say yes, but I want to be sure.
Please tell me, if you aren't interested, but — he turned and looked at Ginnie again — I'd like to go and pick up Eve: drive straight on to Philadelphia. There's time before her train leaves. He smiled at her now, and raised his brows appealingly. And I'd like you to come along.
Ginnie smiled hack. Long-distance call, she murmured, in more ways than one. That's what I thought you had in mind — she looked at him, amused — and I think I knew it before you did. Let's do, she said. I'd like to.
Good, said Tim, and started the car up, driving through the light westward toward the Hudson.
And that morning, on the road to New York, a filling-station attendant, a Good Humor man and the waitress at a roadside restaurant each wondered for the rest of the day about the car driven by the man wearing a tuxedo and accompanied by two girls, a brunette in a striking evening dress and a petite blonde in a tweed traveling suit, all of them laughing, very hilarious, all of them having a very good time.
Collier's, November 6, 1948, 122(19):14-15, 70-73
Something in a Cloud
You'd never have looked twice at Charley if you'd seen him there, moving along through the crowds in Penn Station — neither did anyone else. No one looked even once, except a tiny girl who was holding her mother's hand and who smiled up at Charley in instant friendship and love as he passed. No one else even glanced at the little sailor, for he was small, undersized even, altogether insignificant.
But Charley didn't know that, and he moved along confidently, briskly, through the crowds in the winter gloom of the station. His white hat, held by hope or magic to the back of his head, was only five feet, five inches above the floor. Though Charley was aware of his height statistically, he felt somehow taller. He weighed three pounds less than Anita Eckberg, but in his mind he was stalwart. Only a happy little smile saved his thin, sharp face from downright homeliness, but he had never heard of an inferiority complex, and, most of the time, was unaware of the concept.
His experiences in the past nineteen years almost invariably contradicted this habitual optimism; Charley glimpsed briefly the facts of life as they applied to small and insignificant men. But only briefly, temporarily, for Charley knew, from the far wider experience of life supplied by the movies, that romance was waiting for him, as for everyone else, just around the corner.
He turned this corner now, into a station passageway, and headed for a row of phone booths. He glanced at a slip of paper he held on which a name and phone number were written. In the booth he dialed carefully, his eyes on the paper lying on the shelf under the phone. Then his expression and posture altered. His thin body tensed and he leaned forward, shoving his cap to the front of his head at a cocky angle. His smile vanished, his eyes narrowed, one brow lifted jaunt
ily, and these tiny muscle movements transmitted themselves to his brain as a picture. His face felt, somehow, that it looked very like a younger Ronald Colman playing Rudolf in “The Prisoner of Zenda.” As he cleared his throat, ready to speak, the sound was surprisingly deep, resonant and confident.
The phone rang in a bedroom twenty-four blocks south of Penn station and four stories up. A girl, lying on the bed, jumped to answer the phone. She tossed aside her magazine, the cover of which pictured a disheveled young woman struggling with an ape, and her plain little face smiled eagerly. She moved rapidly, the tight little spikes of her hair, clenched in the teeth of aluminum jaws, vibrating like antennae as she moved. She was thin and small, very little over five feet high, weighing less than ninety-five pounds. The big, old bed sagged in the middle, and she had to struggle up the sides of its concave surface, and before she succeeded, the phone rang again.
Charley saw none of these things, of course. He heard only the ringing sound of the phone, and he wet his lips and smiled hopefully.
The girl stood now, tightening the cord of her old brown bathrobe. As she walked toward the phone she moved slowly, allowing it to ring once again, and her negligible hips swayed slightly. She surveyed the room haughtily, her eyes passing over, though not really seeing, the battered wooden dresser, tiny wash-basin, dust-colored rug, or the wallpaper designed by a manic-depressive. Then she lifted the phone and spoke, and the voice that came from this plain and diminutive girl would have surprised — even astonished — Charley if he had been there to see her.
But he didn't see her and and was not astonished; only delighted. Kim Novak might have answered the phone in just that way, or Katherine Hepburn, or Greta Garbo. This was, in fact, a blend of the better qualities of all three of these voices. All she said was Hello, but it was a low and vibrant liquid sound, the practiced essence of a thousand movies, rich, lovely and thrilling. This wonderful sound traveled uptown with the speed of light, emerging from the receiver at Charley's ear, and instantly a curious thing happened.
Above Charley's phone booth in Pennsylvania Station, a small gray cloud formed. It was a little vague in outline, its edges wispy, fleecy. From the bottom of this cloud a tail protruded, like a curved sword, a scimitar, down into the phone booth, ending in a sharp point just over Charley's head. As it formed, the interior of the cloud was illuminated by a soft pink light.
Strangely, no one in the station noticed this cloud; but then most of these hurrying people frowned down at the floor, and none of them lifted their eyes.
Inside this cloud, in full, rich color over Charley's head, a girl lay on a chaise lounge. She wore a flame-colored evening dress and was very beautiful. Her hair, as soft as cobwebs, was canary gold; her eyes were blue and long-lashed; her lips a moist and living red; somehow her face was indistinct. Her figure was magnificent, straining in places at her brilliant gown, and she lay, one long leg outstretched, the other raised to reveal, through a slit in the skirt, a perfect halfsphere of nylon-skinned knee. She lay there in languorous grace, her lovely face tilted up to the white-enameled phone that she held casually, her loose sleeve trailing down her slim white arm.
Hello? said the astonishing voice in the receiver at Charley's ear, and the red lips of the girl in the cloud over his head formed the same word.
Charley replied, and if the girl's voice was astonishing, his was astounding. It was neither high-pitched nor did it squeak; it bore no relation, in fact, to the little sailor in the phone booth who used it. Ronald Coleman says hello in a very similar way; a nearly identical way, in fact, for Charley had practiced.
Hello, Charley's wonderful voice replied in the receiver in the bedroom twenty-four blocks downtown, and instantly another cloud, very like his, formed in the air above the girl's head. It was a shade more shallow, however, a little more cramped, for the bedroom ceiling was rather low. In fact, as she stood there holding the phone, the girl's head nearly touched the bottom of the cloud, and the tallest spike of her hair protruded into its lower edge. From the side of the cloud a long tail shot out, curving back into a point aimed at the girl's left ear.
Within the cloud's luminous interior, a man appeared, cut off at the waist by the lower edge of the cloud, but seeming to be, in relation to the room in which he stood, just under six feet six inches tall. He might have used a yardstick as a hanger for his jacket, which fitted his shoulders to perfection. It was dark in color and seemed to be a dinner jacket, for the young man stood in profile, revealing a black bow tie and the front of an immaculate, starched white shirt. His nose was very straight, his chin strong and full, and his black hair, glossy at the sides, broke on top into crisp little waves. The young man in the fleecy cloud was leaning casually, negligently, on the white mantel of a great, open fireplace.
This is Charles Blaine, said Charley's amazing voice from the phone in the girl's hand, and the lips of the man in the cloud over her head formed the same words, smiling a little, his white teeth flashing in the firelight. A lighted cigarette in a long ivory holder appeared suddenly in the left hand; he flicked the ashes delicately, gracefully, toward the open flames. Is this, the resonant, cultured voice from the telephone continued, and then dropped, softly, caressingly, Annie Beasely?
Yes, Annie replied with a Hepburn-Novak-Garbolike sigh, and with exquisite grammar, this is she.
Well, said the phone at her ear, you don't know me, but — then intimately, softly — you will soon, I hope, and over her head, in the cramped cloud in Annie's little bedroom, a butler wearing a vest, striped horizontally in contrasting shades of green, crossed the book-lined wall at the back of the huge room in which the young man seemed to stand, and the young man turned his broad back nearly filling the cloud, in order to watch him.
My ship just got in tonight, Charley's voice continued from the phone. I'm in the Navy. The young man in the cloud over Annie's head turned lazily to face front. His bow tie had become a long, black, beautifully tied cravat, and his jacket was now dark blue. Over the left breast pocket was a double row of ribbons; his cigarette holder had become a pipe, and on each sleeve of his coat was a triple band of gold. His face was darker, tropically tanned, and he smiled intimately. One of the men — the voice in the phone subtly emphasized this last word — one of the men suggested I call you. Do you remember Benny? Benny Aicher.
Oh, said Annie, and she laughed, pleasantly, liquidly. Dear Ben. How is Ben? I haven't heard from him in quite a long time.
He's fine, just fine, Charley's wonderfully modulated voice replied, and the young officer overhead smiled with Annie in tolerant remembrance of dear Ben. He's not with us this trip, but he thought maybe — perhaps, that is — you'd come to dinner with me; I'm a stranger in New York.
Annie smiled eagerly, excitedly, and shuffled her feet nervously, stepping closer to the phone. But when she spoke, her voice seemed doubtful. Well-l she said slowly, I don't know.
This lovely sound, with its doubt and hesitation, sped through the wires to Pennsylvania Station, was reproduced in the receiver at Charley's ear, and in the pink mist over his phone booth the gorgeous girl in red frowned slightly, thoughtfully. Then her lips, moved as Annie's voice continued, I'm not dressed.
Instantly, delightfully, the red gown disappeared from the cloud over Charley's phone booth, and the stunning girl lay there, one slim leg still outstretched on the chaise lounge, one lovely knee raised; she wore only a pink bra, incredibly sheer silk stockings, and a really enchanting, lace-edged half-slip. She was a beautiful creature.
He smiled happily, and for a moment his voice lost its Colmanesque quality and climbed one full and excited octave. Well, he squeaked, maybe I'd better come d—
But I think I can make it, said Annie hastily. Now, let me see. The voice in Charley's ear paused for a moment, and the girl over his head leaned forward, riffled the pages of a leather-bound notebook on the table beside her, studied a page for a moment, then leaned back again and smiled sweetly. Yes, said Annie, I'm free tonight.
Good, said Charley, wonderful! His voice in the phone at Annie's ear was again deep, rich, suave and gentle. Should I — shall I — come down and pick you up?
No-o, she said thoughtfully, and glanced round her room. It's too long a trip, and we'd just have to go uptown again. I'll meet you. Where are you, at your hotel? In the soft pink mist over her head, a door opened and a waiter appeared carrying a large silver bucket from which the neck of a tall green bottle protruded. The young Commander at the phone gestured suavely, indicating a place on the floor, and the waiter put down the bucket and quietly left the hotel room.
No, said Charley, I'm in a phone booth. At Penn Station. I called the minute I got in. For a moment the cloud over Annie's head went dim, then it brightened and the young Commander sat in a phone booth, wearing, rakishly, a gold-braided cap.
Well, said Annie, I'll meet you there, at the station. Did you say Penn Station? I could meet you at the foot of the escalators.
Fine, he said. 'Bout a quarter to eight?
I'll try to make it, she said graciously; then suddenly her eyes widened and the antennalike spikes of bound-up hair stood even more rigidly erect. Her mouth opened slowly, and when she spoke again, all traces of Hepburn, Novak and Garbo were gone, replaced by the voice of stark reality. But how will you know me? she wailed.
The six-foot-six voice from the movies laughed gently, deliciously amused. Oh, it said, don't worry; I'll know you all right. See you soon. And then the voice ended in a caressing tone. 'Bye.
Well, said Annie doubtfully, and for a moment the naked facts of life stood staring her in the face; then they were smothered and lost in a fog of pink mist. All right, said Katherine, Kim and Greta, and then, lingeringly, 'Bye, now.
The young, handsome naval officer in the cloud over her head picked up his bag and strode jauntily off, returning the salute of an enlisted man, and disappeared in the dissolving mist.
In Penn Station, Charley stepped from the phone booth, hitched up his pants, adjusted his hat, tilting it sharply over one eye, and walked off, smiling blissfully while the girl in the cloud over the phone booth selected a bonbon from a box on the table, and stood, hands on her hips, surveying her figure approvingly; and then, swaying gracefully, walked away and faded out, humming “Toujours L'Amour.”