by Jack Finney
“Well, of course! They wanted to get rid of them, said buses were cheaper, but the public wouldn’t stand for that, naturally.”
“They wouldn’t? Amazing.”
“Amazing? Mister, I don’t know where you come from, but in New York we don’t believe in getting rid of everything the minute it gets a little old. People like to have streetcars around.”
“Oh, me, too! Me, too. Tell me—does Pennsylvania Station still stand? Firm, true, and pigeon-fouled?”
“Yeah, why not?”
“And where’s Madison Square Garden?”
“Right where it’s always been, buddy; some things never change.” He slowed, and stopped for a light.
“This Madison Avenue?”
“Yep.”
I sat far forward, looking up Madison to Forty-sixth Street, and there it stood, snow-white and pretty as a wedding cake, looking just as I remembered it the day my father took me to lunch there when I was six years old, and I shook my head in happy astonishment. “The old Ritz Hotel,” I murmured. “Don’t tell me the Brevoort is—”
“Still there, Mac,” he said, starting up across Madison, “and always will be. Can’t tear them down; they been classified as municipal monuments the way they been doin’ in Europe for years.”
I said, “Well, friend, this is a nice place to visit, but I’d sure like to live here. Wow, would you look at those skirts!”
“Last year’s, last year’s; way out of style. Look, mister, I don’t care myself, you understand, but you going anywhere in particular?”
I didn’t answer; I was on the very edge of the seat, staring straight ahead, mouth open with astonishment. “Yeah,” I said then, “let me out ahead. On the other side of Fifth. I be Billy-be-damned if I don’t ride one of those,” and I nodded at the fine old double-decker Fifth Avenue bus with the open seats on top, that at this moment was trundling across the intersection of Forty-second and Fifth.
On the west corner of Fifth I stood waiting for the next bus, glancing all around; this was fun. Things looked about the same, yet just a little different; the street signs, for example, fastened overhead to the lamppost beside me were white numerals and letters on a bright red background. The cars moving past were Buicks, Chevrolets, Fords, Oldsmobiles, all looking familiar—though not quite. But I also saw a Winton, a Reo, and a Braden. Although I watched carefully, I saw no Hondas, Toyotas, Subarus, none at all. I happened to glance west on Forty-second, and way up, near Broadway, I saw a big movie marquee. Squinting, I could just make out what it said: ELVIS PRESLEY in GOOD-BYE, MR. CHIPS, and I was more pleased than I’d have imagined that in this alternate world old Elvis was still around.
The bus came, I stepped on, paid my fare, and as it started up I climbed the winding stairs to the top. I got a seat near the front, and it was great, riding along up above Fifth on an open-top bus the way I’d done when I was a kid, and I wondered why the New York I knew had ever allowed them to be discarded. It occurred to me that no sensible individual among us would ever run his own life in always the cheapest possible way. As individuals, all of us keep at least some old things for the sheer love of them. Instead of invariably acting in the cheapest possible way, we permit ourselves a few luxuries at least. So why should a city, which is only the sum of us, act as no one of us, even the poorest, ever would? Why should the pleasure of riding an open-topped bus on a fine day be denied us just to save a few lousy dollars? Who saved them, I wondered for the first time, and what did they do with them, that I should have had to give up this? Why, in my New York, shouldn’t these buses have been saved as San Francisco had saved at least some of its cable cars, to the joy of all but the unbleeding hearts who cared for no one and nothing but money and themselves? There were alternate worlds in more senses than one, and it occurred to me that my New York needn’t have been so damned destructive of the little things that make life worth living.
The ride was fun. Most of the street looked as I’d last known it: the main Public Library was there; Lord & Taylor’s; nearly all the buildings I passed were familiar to me. But here and there were some new ones, or at least new to me; one of them, just past Thirty-ninth Street, I knew I’d never seen before in my life although it was obviously at least thirty years old. At Thirty-fourth the Empire State Building stood where it belonged, on the southwest corner, and it looked the same as ever—or did it? I stared up at it, trying to decide; was it maybe half a dozen stories shorter?
At Twenty-eighth I got off, walked east, crossed Madison, and I had actually turned in a step or two toward the door of my apartment building near the middle of the block before I glanced up and saw that it wasn’t there. There was an apartment building, all right; an ordinary-looking building of brick with steel-casement windows, double glass doors opening into a lobby in which I could see a bank of potted plants. And the number in gold leaf on the glass above the doors was mine—mine in the other alternate world, at least. But in this world it wasn’t the same building, and I stood gaping at it. The glass doors pushed open, a uniformed doorman walked out, frowned at me, and came over. “Looking for someone?”
I nodded doubtfully. “How long has this been here?”
“The building?”
“Yeah.”
He shrugged. “It was here when I came, and I’ve worked here six years. Who you looking for?”
“Bennell. Benjamin Bennell.”
The doorman shook his head.
“You sure? I could have sworn he lived at this address.”
“Sure I’m sure. I know every tenant in the building; no one here by that name.”
“Then I don’t know where to go,” I said wonderingly, and pronouncing the words made the truth of them sweep over me. “My god, I don’t know where to go.” For a moment or so I just looked at him blinking; then I was able to think again. “Do you have a phone book?”
He nodded, and I followed him into the building lobby. From the shelf under his little wall desk he brought out a Manhattan phone book, and—my hand trembled as I turned the pages—I looked up Bennell. There were half a dozen of them, and after Alfred N, Andrew W, Ann, and Barney, I found Bennell Benj 560 E 62 539-0090.
“Find him?”
I looked up at the doorman, a little dazed. “Yeah. Looks like he lives on Sixty-second Street. And you know something? I’m beginning to remember the building.” I stood frowning, concentrating on this, the memory coming clearer. Slowly I said, “It’s new. Only a year or so old . . . set well back from the sidewalk . . . lots of glass and aluminum . . . little spindly trees at the entrance.” Then I realized. “Hell, I ought to remember it!” I said, slapping my forehead, laughing at myself. “I go there every night!”
I didn’t even bother trying to explain that. I just yanked a bill from my wallet, slapped it into the doorman’s hand, and was out of there running down the street toward Lexington Avenue before he could say anything; if, indeed, he had anything particular in mind. I got a cab at the corner, we tore up Lexington at just under takeoff speed, east on Sixty-second Street; then I got out at a corner, walked half a dozen steps, and there it was, all right, directly beside the East River: 560, glass-and-aluminum front, set well back from the walk, a beautifully clipped little tree on each side of enormous double glass doors.
I stood and looked at it; I lifted my head and looked up the front to the roof; then I closed my eyes, tapped my forehead gently with my fingertips, and opened my eyes again. The building was still there, and I walked on to the glass doors, pushed through, and stopped in the lobby, which I vaguely remembered.
Ahead, across the gray carpet, the elevator doors stood open and—frightened, wary—I walked over to them, hesitated, then stepped in. My hand went out to press the button; then it stopped in midair while I stood trying to think. Nothing came to mind, and I stepped out, walked back across the lobby to the bank of mailboxes, and among the other printed cards found Benjamin Bennell, 14A. Back in the elevator my finger touched button 14, hesitated, then jabbed, and the door
s began sliding shut. At the last instant I tried to stop them, but it was too late. They closed, and the elevator rose, carrying me toward—I glanced upward because I could almost, but not quite, remember.
The door to 14A stood slightly ajar, and I stopped in the hall and looked at it. With the tip of my forefinger I pushed it open a little wider and peeked in. I saw a magnificent living room, furnished in what I thought was French Provincial, though I’m not too sure about terms like that. It seemed absolutely new and strange to me, but then, after I had peered in a moment or so, my head began to nod; it was all beginning to seem familiar. It was the feeling, upon coming into a place you know you’re entering for the first time, of nevertheless having been here before, and I pushed the door open a little more and stepped in.
It was a beautiful room with a tremendous view of the river, and it was empty; I searched it quickly with my eyes, then eased the door closed behind me. Then I actually stood watching my own hands in astonishment. One of them reached across my chest, pulled the newspaper out from under my arm, and tossed it over onto the top of a white Steinway grand piano with the ease of old habit. The other hand reached up, took off my hat, and scaled it expertly onto a table in the hall at the front door. Then a woman’s voice called from the kitchen. “That you, dear?” she said.
•
CHAPTER FIVE
•
I couldn’t answer; my throat closed, and I ran back to the front door. There I stopped, my hand on the knob; I didn’t know what to do or say, and I turned to look back at the kitchen door. “Ben,” the voice repeated, “is that you?” and my head nodded, my lungs inhaled, and my voice spoke.
“Yes, darling, it’s me; I’m home,” I heard myself say. A refrigerator door slammed in the kitchen, a spoon clattered on the enamel top of a stove, and high heels crossed linoleum toward the closed kitchen door—and me.
I stood like a hypnotized bird; I forgot to breathe. Who in the world was coming through that door? Who in this world? It swung open toward me; I saw fingers on its edge, a flash of green skirt, then a woman was crossing the living room toward me: a tall young woman, wide-hipped but thin, lean-faced, very, very good-looking, and with dark-red hair. “Tessie!” I yelled, and she stopped abruptly.
“Well, who in the fat hell else were you expecting? Or should I say hoping to see?”
I stood waggling a hand in protest until I was able to speak. “Believe me, there’s nobody I’d rather see,” I said then. Looking her over, head to foot then back again, enjoying the trip a little more each time, I suddenly grinned. “My god, what a preposterously good-looking female you are!” I said, and she walked up to me, stood very close, lifted her lovely freckled face to mine, and as my eyes began closing in swooning anticipation she sniffed my breath.
“No,” she said, shrugging thoughtfully, “you’re sober,” and started to turn away.
“Hey! You didn’t kiss me hello.”
“Oh. Yeah. How could I possibly have forgotten that?” She gave me a dismal peck on the cheek, turning away in almost the same motion, and my arms reached out and grabbed her. Then, that long lush length of scenic womanhood in my arms, I gave her a kiss that would have been censored from a porn movie. It lasted, I estimate, an hour and forty-five minutes during the last half of which she sighed a little, squirmed a little, then responded deliriously; air tanks finally exhausted, we rose to the surface just in time to escape the bends. Tess stood blinking at me then, her hands rising to push a few pounds of hair out of her eyes, and eventually she recalled how to formulate words. “Good god almighty!” she said. “What the hell has got into you!”
“Nothing that hasn’t been there since I was thirteen years old. Why? What’s wrong? Guy comes home to something as fantastically assembled as you, my good, good friend, and what’s he supposed to do? Sit down and read the paper or something?”
“Well, that’s exactly what you’ve been doing, kiddo, every night starting a month after our honeymoon a hundred and five years ago!” Then she smiled. “But don’t think I’m complaining,” she murmured, stepping close, and poured herself against me from shoulder to ankle like a giant pitcherful of hot fudge.
As though by magic we found ourselves wafted effortlessly to the davenport, and there we kissed without breathing, absorbing air through vestigial gills. The legerdemain continued; having done nothing I could recall to bring this about, we found ourselves comfortably lying at full length. “Ben, darling,” she said presently, her lashes sweeping her cheeks as her eyes fluttered, “I left dinner on the stove.”
“Let it burn, too,” I said. “Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy, oh boy!” My eyes blinked lazily, and I found myself staring at Tessie’s entrancingly freckled shoulder off which her blouse seemed somehow to have slipped. “Hey,” I said, “the Big Dipper!”
“What, darling?”
“Half a dozen of your freckles—they form the Big Dipper.”
“Oh, yes. Look a little lower, and you can see Orion.”
“I will, I will! Then on to other galaxies!” I studied the Big Dipper, Orion, then Gemini, Sagittarius, Leo, and was looking for the Southern Cross when my eyes blurred. Blinking to clear them, I glanced up—I was lying on the inside of the davenport as it happened—and there standing on the rug, transparent, furious, arms folded in rage, foot tapping, eyes flashing ghostly sparks, stood Hetty.
It was a figment of conscience, of course, and instantly disappeared as I jerked with a shock equivalent to six thousand volts applied to a shaved scalp and wet soles, spilling Tessie, a veritable Niagara of goodies, over the edge of the davenport. I grabbed instinctively, yanking her back before she could actually drop, and by sheer strength held her there on the knife edge of balance. She took this for passion, responding with girlish abandon by pulling me toward her, and the davenport slowly tipped up onto its front legs, then dumped us onto the floor and rolled over us like a tent. “How perfectly disgusting!” it seemed to me I could hear Hetty saying. I yelled, “Something’s burning!” and Tessie rolled right on out from under the overturned davenport, landing on her feet and running toward the kitchen.
She was gone, I would say, just under three seconds, during which I gestured apologetically and helplessly at the indignant, transparent Hetty. Tessie, sprinting, came back even faster than she’d left, yelling, “I turned everything off; we’ll have dinner later! When it’s cooler!” But in those two and six-tenths seconds I had moved even faster, heaving the davenport upright, running across the room, snatching the evening paper from the piano, then hurtling back through the air in a sitting position to land on the davenport apparently reading just as Tess skidded into sight around the corner from the kitchen.
She sat down next to me, fitting herself to my right side like spray paint. I felt the column of her breath, essence of a thousand springs, press my cheek, and Hades—not hot and sulphurous but cozy and perfumed—yawned at my feet. My fists up at ear level, I had the evening paper clutched in both hands, almost wrapped around my head. “Good god, they’ve torn down Brooklyn Bridge!” I babbled.
Zephyr-borne words floated erotically into my ear. “So you like coming home to me? You haven’t said so in years . . .”
“Central Park invaded by giant ants! Macy’s blown up!”
“Preposterously good-looking, am I? Darling, look: here’s Scorpio! And Sirius!”
“Library sold to Burger King!”
I heard the click of metal on the wood surface of the end table beside us, the preliminary snick-snick of a pair of scissors; then a horizontal slit appeared in my newspaper, was immediately enlarged by two hooked fingers, then filled by an enormous jewellike brown eye which stared into mine, then slowly winked.
I surrendered. I plumped for the life of sin, heigh-ho, turned and gathered up that big bundle of joy, mentally screaming to Hetty for forgiveness, when all of a sudden it really dawned on me: for the first time I understood that it was actually true in this world, and I yelled it aloud. “Hey, we’re MARRIED, aren’t we?�
� and Tessie drew back to stare at me. “As a matter of fact,” I said wonderingly, “not only are you and I married in this world, long since, but I’ve never even met Het—”
“Never met who?”
“Never met anyone, Taffyapple, as packed with enriched goodness as you. Imagine us married! Holy cow, it means this is okay! For a moment there, I almost forgot.”
“Well, forget again, handsome,” she murmured, closing her eyes, I closed mine, and what then transpired was so good it would require not only new words to describe, but eleven new letters in the alphabet.
We had dinner on the balcony overlooking the river. Tonight Tess had candles on the table, the living-room lights off. There was wine, it was balmy outside, and a long block away we could hear a vague murmur, the sound of the Second Avenue el, and I said, “Hear that, ma petite? It is the whisper of the Seine,” and when she looked at me to smile, her eyes were awash with love.
“Tonight it doesn’t seem that we’ve been married for years,” Tess said. “It’s like a honeymoon. Remember the darling way you proposed?”
“Good lord! Don’t tell me it was . . . ?”
“And I’ve still got it.” She stood, walked to a closet beside the front door, fumbled on the top shelf, and—I’d known she would, of course—came back opening a familiar green box: in this world I’d still been going with Tessie when I’d wandered through Macy’s and seen the stationery display. “Such a charming idea,” she said, sitting down and opening the lid. “My name as it would be if I married you.” She sat brushing her fingertips over the engraving. “The very moment I saw it, I knew I was going to accept.”
I reached over and put my hand on hers, lying on the tabletop, the way they do in the brandy ads. I said, “Terrible price to pay just to make your name match ten bucks’ worth of stationery.”
She turned her hand over and squeezed mine. “I’m so happy tonight I don’t know what to say. Imagine feeling the way we do, four years, five months, and twenty-two days after we were married.”