Three by Finney

by Jack Finney

  Though the sun had set, daylight still held strong. Harry sat tilted back against the wall in a webbed aluminum chair, legs extended to the railing, ankles crossed, his heavy legs very dark against the white socks. His glass comfortably balanced on the roll of his stomach, he said, “Well, if no one else is going to say it, I’ll have to: this is the life.”

  “You stole that from Jo’s father,” Lew said, and the others smiled. Lew sat on the railings at the corner.

  Beside him in an aluminum chair Jo said, “It is nice. I feel very contented.”

  “Me too,” Shirley murmured. Legs crossed, glass in hand, she sat beside Harry.

  After a moment Harry turned to look at Lew quizzically. “Well? You want to make it unanimous?”

  He smiled. “Sure, why not. Be ungrateful not to. I was just thinking—sitting here all relaxed, glass of wine in hand, music, feeling good—we’re probably all of us part of the one-tenth of one percent of the world’s population both present and past, who may just have the easiest, most comfortable lives anyone ever lived. In spite of all the problems, with new ones coming up, that everyone talks about. So who am I not to love it?”

  “You don’t, though,” Jo murmured.

  “Oh . . .” He grinned at her. “I probably belong in the Middle Ages. In a Walt Disney hovel with a half-door opening onto the street: look in as you walk by, and there I sit in my Robin Hood suit and Chico Marx hat, cobbling shoes. Because that’s what my father did, and his father before him. Never entered their heads or mine that I’d do anything else, so it suits me fine. Couple days a week I work on the cathedral, like everyone else in town. The way we’ve all been doing for four or five hundred years. No hurry; just string enough lives together, and it’ll get done. I’m just one of an endless series of drops dripping on the grinding wheel of life or something. And I never question it because that’s my lot, what God ordained. So I’m happy.”

  “But now?” Jo said.

  “Well, the cards are punched differently now: nobody’s willing to be ordinary any more: it’s how we’re programmed. The guys still in their jeans and leather hats, getting on to forty, the long hair thinning, but still cranking out the talentless paintings, crappy jewelry, blobby candles and piss-poor leatherwork instead of driving a truck, pumping gas, or cobbling shoes as nature clearly intended. Because we’re all unique now, everybody talented, all ‘creative.’ They even have classes in creativity, for godsake. For the backward geniuses who haven’t quite got the hang of it, I guess.” Lew sipped at his wine, then shrugged. “And I’m not one damn bit different than the leather-belt makers in the Munchkin hats. At best I’m an okay lawyer; about what anyone could be who’s able to hang on through law school and get through the bar exams. Not special, it turns out. Not talented or creative. But with the feeling I ought to be—you know? Punched in. And that keeps you a little restless and dissatisfied, is all.”

  He looked over at Harry. “What about you? Are you unique? Like everyone else?”

  Harry sat looking at him, blinking slowly, consideringly. “Well, god damn you,” he said then, “I wasn’t quite ready to say this. In the back of my mind I still thought—maybe justice of an appellate court. Not quite nobody. A little bit special. But shit, I guess not even that. I haven’t really believed it for quite a while now. But I wasn’t quite ready to say it out loud. So okay, you’ve brought me down. Now what?”

  “Drink.” Lew leaned down to pick up the jug from the floor. “What else?”

  Jo sat steadily shaking her head. “I don’t believe that. We’re not all programmed to think we’re so special.”

  “Oh no?” Lew said. “Look: none of us owns much, we’re pared down long since, we travel light. We own very little of our own pasts; there’s no room. But one thing you’ve got and hang onto—is the album; the photo album and scrapbook your folks kept. Pictures and souvenirs of everybody, but especially you. Starting out black and white, from literally the day you were born, then on through the birthdays, changing to color, dozens and dozens of pictures. Plus old report cards, clippings. You were special; programmed from the start to believe it. And we’ve all got something like it, I’ll bet.”

  Shirley said, “Could I see your album, Jo? I’d love to.”

  “Sure. I’ll check the casserole, and bring it out.”

  Harry said, “You know, you’re right. Jeez, the stuff my parents kept: they sent me a cartonful of crap when they moved to Florida. Too bad I’ll never make President; history will lose the best-documented life of all time. There must be ten pounds of photographs, newspaper clippings, a high school year book, stuff I made in first grade. All my Boy Scout merit badges!”

  Lew smiled. “I’ve got a box full of scout stuff my mother saved; it was with some things of hers. It even included my hat badge. I made Star Scout, incidentally.”

  Jo walked out with a large tan-leather gilt-ornamented book. She handed it to Shirley, who nodded and said, “My folks have one something like this. Of me and my sister; I’ll bring it up.” She opened the cover, said, “Oh, these are darling!” and bent close to a page of black-and-white baby pictures.

  “Star?” Harry was saying contemptuously. “That’s nothin’! I made . . . my god, I forget. What is it? I got the badge at home; it’s heart-shaped. Life, I think! I made Life Scout. My father was going to kill himself because I didn’t make Eagle.”

  Lew said, “Can you still tie a sheepshank?”

  They drank more wine, and—no fog rolling in over the hills—had supper on the balcony. As they ate, it grew dark, the street gradually taking on its night-time look, and when the street lights came on, Harry stared out over the railing, nodding, chewing. He’d been working on something, he said, for Monday’s Night People. But, smiling and shaking his head no, he wouldn’t say what. It was a good evening, and after eleven when the Levys left.

  In the kitchen, Lew washing dishes, Jo drying, Jo said, “Shirley doesn’t really look forward to going down the Peninsula.”

  “Oh? Why?”

  “Her parents always have questions. Very casual and subtle. But what they all mean is: when is Harry going to be a partner?”

  “Well, he could be. If he wants.”

  Jo nodded absently, putting dishes away in the small cupboard as she dried them. “You know, you may be right. I had to finish college; my parents insisted. And now I make models for a living, something I could do in high school. That’s fine, they say, as long as I like it. But it isn’t what they expected.”

  “I know. You really screwed up; they even have to smile about me.” He lifted the plug, then moved the swing faucet in an arc, trying to rinse away the artificial suds. He turned from the sink, wiping his hands on the front of his shirt, “Well. Speaking of your father, it’s another day, another dollar. And time to hit the hay. Right?”

  “Right.”

  So the week passed. On Friday, Harry’s trial recessed, he and Lew had lunch, and as they sometimes did in good weather, had a quick sandwich, then walked idly around in the sun. Today they looked at display windows; stopping at Brentano’s, at a stamp and coin shop, at Brooks Cameras. Here Harry inspected everything in both windows, and Lew said, “Harry, the deal is you can have one thing here, anything in the windows. What is it?”

  Harry shook his head. “No: I want it all. One of everything they got in the entire store, doesn’t matter if I can use it or not. I want that enlarger, both the sixteen-millimeter movie cameras, and all the telescopic lenses. I even want the used theater projector; it’s a bargain.”

  “Two hundred and fifty bucks?” Lew looked at the foot-high crackle-finish metal box, from which a lens projected.

  “Sure, the thing’s got a twelve-hundred-watt light, and that’s a tremendous lens; it’ll project stills for a mile. I want the stereo camera too; you ever see what they do?” Lew shook his head. “Incredible 3-D pictures; color transparencies in three dimensions; they look alive. Terrific effect.”

  “Harry, why don’t you be a photogra
pher? It’s the one thing you get excited about.”

  “I might. I just might some day.” He looked at his watch, and they turned back toward the office.

  On Saturday morning, accepting a standing offer from a couple in a neighboring building to lend their bikes, Lew and Jo cycled to Tiburon along the shoreline bike path, watching the sparkling Bay beside them speckled with weekend sails. At Sabella’s, sitting out on the deck with the weekend crowd, they had a gin fizz, then biked home.

  After dinner Lew got out a yellow legal pad and, Jo reading on the chesterfield, worked at his desk on a talk he’d been invited to give next month, along with the other council candidates, by the League of Women Voters. After half an hour he put down his pencil to stretch, and Jo looked up. “How’s it go?”

  He shrugged. “I’d sell my soul for a new idea.” Lew raised a hand to his mouth, and leaned toward the floor. “How about it?” he called. “One slightly used soul for a really new, fresh political talk! That a deal?” He waited, hand at ear, then shook his head. “No dice, I guess. For where is the fearful pink smoke, the dread odor of brimstone?” He sniffed the air. “You smell anything?”

  “Lew, cut it out,” Jo murmured quietly, and he looked over at her, amused and surprised.

  “That bother you?” She didn’t reply, and he said, “Hey, it does, doesn’t it! You’re actually a bit worried: a little primitive fear that there just might be a sudden puff of smoke, an awful stench.” He leaned toward the floor again. “Price not right? Well, how about just one new phony political promise, then? For this used-up, retreaded old soul!”

  “Lew.”

  “Okay,” he shouted to the floor, “I’ll throw in Jo’s!” He waited, hand at ear, then sat up, shaking his head. “Doesn’t look like you’ve got a thing to worry about. But it worries me: look at guys who sell their souls to be President, and I can’t even make city council. What a miserable, shriveled-up little soul I must have.”

  He worked for another ten minutes, then folded the dozen long yellow sheets and tucked them away on the bookshelves.

  On Sunday evening, a few minutes past ten, Shirley phoned Jo. They’d just got home, she’d just walked in the door: Harry had asked her to phone while he emptied the car. On the way home he’d decided he ought to give them an advance briefing on tomorrow’s Night People: could they come over to Jo’s after supper tomorrow?

  They arrived a little past nine, Monday, the doorbell ringing several times exuberantly. Jo, in a yellow jumpsuit, stood closing cupboard doors in the kitchen, giving various surfaces a final wipe with a wrung-out cloth. Lew, who had rinsed and dried the dishes, then wandered out onto the balcony, came trotting in to answer the bell, knowing who it was, glad to see them, shadow-boxing on the way: he wore after-work tan wash pants and a long-sleeved lemon-yellow shirt, knowing his tanned skin, black hair, and mustache showed off well in this outfit.

  Harry stood filling the doorway, grinning so broadly it pulled his mouth slightly open. He wore ragged denim shorts, sandals, a gray sweat shirt; all Lew could see of Shirley in the corridor behind him was a strip of one leg of red velvet pants and the sleeve of a blue denim coat. “Hi, come on in”—he stepped aside—“welcome home” Harry walked past him, grinning euphorically, and Lew lifted his eyebrows questioningly at Shirley, who shrugged. “He’s out of his mind with whatever he’s planned for tonight: chuckling, shaking, twitching all through dinner. Hi, Jo.” She walked into the kitchen area, and Lew led Harry out to the balcony.

  “Sit down.” He nodded at a chair. “And quit grinning, for godsake; makes my face hurt just looking at you.” Under his arm Harry held a large gray manila envelope, their firm’s name printed in a corner, and he sat down, leaning over the chair arm to prop the envelope against the railing beside him. “Jo’s still got coffee hot from dinner, or you want a beer?”

  “Beer,” Harry said, still grinning, and Lew walked to the refrigerator, and opened two cans; Jo stood folding a kitchen towel, Shirley at the little white table filling two coffee cups.

  For a few minutes the four sat on the balcony idly talking about the Levys’ weekend. Then Harry set his beer on the rail, and picked up the manila envelope. Glancing around at the others, pleased with the drama he was creating, he bent up the metal clasps and opened the flap. Lifting the envelope to peer into it, he reached in, simultaneously turning the envelope over, so that as he slid out whatever it was, it emerged blank side up: it appeared to be a sheet of thin, flexible white cardboard.

  Lew sat facing Harry, both directly beside the railing of the narrow balcony. Jo sat near Lew, her back to an end wall; Shirley in the open doorway just inside the living room, on Jo’s wheeled work chair. Leaning toward Lew, Harry extended the letter-size sheet, blank side uppermost, but as Lew reached for it he could see that the bottom side was a glossy color photograph, and he understood what this was: Harry owned an enlarger Shirley had given him for a birthday present.

  Taking the sheet, Lew turned it over, and yes: it was the nude shot, rephotographed and enlarged, that Harry had taken of Lew, Jo, and Shirley. Before rephotographing the original print, Harry had apparently pasted narrow black strips over the girls’ faces, because the strips appeared in the enlargement as part of the print. They made Jo and Shirley only a pair of anonymous bodies, but Lew’s vapidly grinning face showed clear and sharp.

  He sat staring at the enlarged photograph in his hands: Jo and Shirley had gotten up to lean over the back of his chair, looking over his shoulders; he could feel the faint warm breath of one of them on the right side of his neck. Lew shook his head slowly, reluctant to look up: he felt embarrassed, not so much at his photographed nakedness as at this irrefutable evidence that he had once really been this foolish, even semi-drunk.

  Squatting down beside him at his right, Shirley said, “That’s a brave, brave smile, Lew,” and nodded at the photograph.

  “I know. And your hair was lovely.” Leaning forward, he offered the photograph to Harry, who gestured it away.

  “Keep it. I printed up three or four of them.”

  “Oh, thanks,” Lew said sarcastically. “We can all sign it. ‘Fifi Levy, Cuddles Dunne, and Lew, the Stud: in memory of a great gang and a great evening!’ I’ll frame it. How come you blacked out the faces? I’d know them anywhere.”

  Harry smiled mysteriously. “Well, it makes the picture even more salacious, don’t you think?”

  Lew looked. It was true: the black strips across the women’s eyes reminded him of photographs he’d seen outside topless night spots on San Francisco’s Broadway, before they’d stopped troubling to use black strips. “I guess so.” He passed the photo over his shoulder to Jo. “But so what? Why bother?” Lew smiled to conceal his annoyance.

  “I just thought it would be more effective.” Harry sat back, hands clasping behind his big head. “For the poster,” he added, watching Lew’s face.

  “Harry, for crysake! You sound like Abbott and Costello! What poster?”

  “Your campaign poster, Lew. It’s not a bit too early to get started.” Harry picked up the gray envelope from his lap, and began poking through it, saying, “Get the jump on your competition.” Again he slid something out of the envelope face down, and again Lew could more or less see what it was; another copy of the same 8 x 10 print, this one pasted onto a larger sheet of white paper. The top and bottom of the larger sheet were folded over onto the photo, partly covering it.

  Lew took it impatiently, flipped open the two paper flaps, and, the women leaning over the back of his chair again, they all looked at it. It was the same print but on the paper to which it was pasted, in careful felt-pen lettering just over the photograph, was printed, GET YOUR JOLLIES WITH “JOLLY LEW” JOLIFFE! Then came the photograph, Lew stupidly cavorting between two naked girls with blacked-out faces. And below the photo in smaller lettering: A vote for “Jolly Lew” is a vote for Sexual Freedom! Your future Mill Valley Councilman, Lew Joliffe, between four of his consTITuents!

  The crude post
er in his hands was so absurd that when Lew looked up at Harry he was smiling genuinely. Shirley said, “Harry, for godsake, that’s just plain dumb. It’s not worthy of you! That’s high school humor!”

  “Right!” Harry nodded vigorously. “You’ve got the idea: that’s exactly who it’s for.”

  “Who?” Lew shouted. “Who’s on second! No, who’s on first, what’s on second!”

  Voice patient, Harry said, “I was in the Mill Valley library one night last week.” The women sat down again. “And the reference section was crammed with teen-agers, a fairly startling sight. When I checked out my books I asked the woman at the desk how come this burning thirst for knowledge? She said it was term-paper time. At Tamalpais high school. Happens twice a year. Term papers are due this week, so every night last week the reference section was packed with kids, because you can’t take reference books out. Well, the climax is today and tomorrow; all day long from the time the library opens in the morning till it closes at night. Because most of the papers are due Wednesday and Thursday; all of them by Friday.”

  He paused, and Lew nodded. “Well, thanks, Harry, that clears up everything. Who’s not on first, he’s at the library.”

  “I was at the library again tonight,” Harry said. “And just before it closed at nine o’clock, I waited till the last of the kids got out of the reference section. Then I left one of these splendid posters behind. A duplicate of the one you’ve got there, but even more carefully lettered. I tucked it into one of the reference books left on the table.” Harry sat back, thumbs hooking into the band of his shorts, grinning around at the others. “I’d say that the odds that it won’t be found tomorrow are minuscule. It’s just about impossible, in fact, that one of the crowd of kids in that reference section tomorrow won’t open up that particular book. And discover an absolute sensation: Jolly Lew Joliffe, Mill Valley’s very own centerfold! Naturally he or she will show it around to absolutely every other kid in the library. And then—well, god knows where in Mill Valley they’ll stick it up, but you can bet your ass they will. Somewhere. Prominently. Maybe Xerox a batch of them on the library machine, and plaster them all over town.”