by Rod Serling
Lane stepped back and sent his foot in a swinging arc to smash against the wooden slats. One of them cracked. Another flew off one of its nails. He yanked at it furiously, pulled it aside, kicked again at the one remaining, and then smashed the full weight of his body against sagging door and entered Tim Riley's bar.
Just for a moment . . . just for a single moment . . . he saw a banner stretched across the room which read, "Welcome Home, Randy." And in that moment the voices were loud and the faces recognizable. His father. Tim Riley. Even McDonough was there—a very young cop. And something surged inside Randy Lane. A joy . . . an excitement . . . a sense of satisfaction, being where he belonged. But as he turned toward his father, the room went dark and empty. Cobwebs and wires from dismantled fixtures and a cracked mirror were all he could make out in the darkness. He sturnbled over a broken, overturned chair as he turned and moved back toward the front door. Before leaving he turned once again to survey the room. His loneliness had been a dull, formless thing, and he'd learned to carry it with him. But now he felt the sudden sharp, jabbing pain of something beyond loneliness; some overwhelming anguish almost impossible to bear. He suddenly felt lost and bewildered, as if something . . . something important and integral—had just eluded him.
He walked very slowly out of Tim Riley's bar, hesitated for a moment, then headed for the cocktail lounge down the street on the next block. He'd sit at the bar, trying to ignore the nuzzling kids and the blaring rock and the late-night bimbos who would inventory him then move away to a richer pasture. A richer-looking guy and a younger one. And he'd drink just enough to dull the pain and forget the air pocket. And maybe . . . just maybe . . . by the dawn's early light he could forget Tim Riley's bar and all the love that went with it.
Shortly after 9:00 A.M. the following day, Miss Alcott stood in front of Mr. Blodgett, personnel director of Pritikin's Plastic Products.
He was a short, fastidious, fussy little man who seemed always to be behind time and rushing to catch up.
He looked up as she arrived at his desk, briefly checked her, then sorted out some papers on his desk. "You have a change in assignment," he announced.
Miss Alcott caught her breath. "A change in assignment?''
"Correct. We're moving you."
"From where to where?" she asked.
Blodgett managed a smile. "Relax, Miss Alcott. We're not sending you to a frontier outpost. Just about eight feet to your left. You'll join Mr. Doane as of next Monday morning."
He reshuffled the papers, looked at her briefly, gave her a nod of dismissal, then started to jot down notes on a pad. He tried to ignore the fact that she remained there. He looked up again. "Something else?" Then he frowned. She looked white-faced, ill. "Are you all right, Miss Alcott?"
"Did you say Doane?" she asked.
Blodgett nodded. "His secretary—Miss Trevor—has turned in her notice. She's getting married, I believe. Anyway, she'll be leaving us. So you'll assume her duties." Why, he thought, did the woman just stand there? She was supposed to be such a good secretary—didn't she understand this altogether simple and quite irrevocable move? He looked up at her impatiently. "Was there something else, Miss Alcott?"
"Mr. Blodgett," Jane Alcott said, "what about Mr. Lane?"
Blodgett looked at her blankly. "Mr. Lane?"
She nodded. "I've been with him for over a year."
Blodgett put the pencil in his mouth. "I'm not sure what the arrangement will be. You'll have a replacement, of course, but for the moment I'm told that Mr. Doane will need you as of Monday morning. Requested you personally, as a matter of fact."
"What if I don't want to work for Mr. Doane?"
Blodgett blinked, surprised. "And what's that supposed to mean?"
"It's supposed to mean that he does everything but wear track shoes. He's got five sets of hands. He pinches fannies, and he doesn't happen to be fit to shine Mr. Lane's shoes!"
Blodgett threw the pencil down on his desk. "Regrettably,'' he said, "in my capacity as personnel director I've neither the time nor the inclination to listen to your personal assessments of the executives of this organization. I'll have to put it to you bluntly, Miss Alcott. You'll either report for work with Mr. Doane on Monday morning—or you'll report to the cashier this afternoon to pick up your severance pay. Now, which will it be, please? I'm very busy."
She looked at that moment no longer angry, and incredibly young. "Does . . . Mr. Lane know?" she half-whispered.
"I'm sure someone has seen fit to tell him," Blodgett said, again turning to the papers on his desk. And when he looked up moments later, Miss Alcott had left.
She got on the elevator and went back to her floor. As she moved down the corridor of desks, she saw a group of giggling girls surrounding Doane's secretary. There were gift wrappings thrown about and "oohs" and "aahs" of delight as silver things shown on her desk. One or two of the girls looked at Jane Alcott sideways as she moved past, and there was some whispering.
Miss Alcott went past her desk and into Lane's office.
He was in his usual position, his chair swiveled around, facing the window. Without looking at her, he held up his hand and wiggled his fingers. "Close the door," he said.
She did so after taking a step into the room.
Still he didn't turn. "If it makes it go down any easier, Jane I feel a whole lot worse about this than you do."
She felt a catch in her throat. "I seriously doubt that," she said.
Lane very slowly turned around in the chair. "Look," he said, "you've got no choice." There was no self-pity in the voice just a kind of resigned awareness. "You tie yourself to a rocket or to a groundhog. There's so much handwriting on the walls around here, the whole Goddamned place looks like a gigantic men's room."
"I don't want to work for Doane. It's as simple as that."
Lane studied her. "So give it a shot. If there's anybody on this earth who can put him down and keep him in line—it's you."
She waited for a moment, hoping there would be something else said. When he remained silent, she knew that this was it. "Is that it?" she asked.
Lane smiled at her. "Oh, there's a great deal more
to say. A couple of items having to do with how gratefull I am for all you've done for me. But unfortunately, I'm cold stone sober now and not given to loquaciousness." Then his smile faded, and his voice sounded
intense. "But you know that, don't you, Jane? You know how grateful I am to you."
They looked at one another and they both smiled—the kind of smile friends exchange when one is on the train leaving and the other stands on the platform waving good bye.
Jane Alcott turned and left the office, wondering why the decent guys—the nice guys—the sensitive, gentle, caring guys—were either married or inaccessible. When she got to her desk she started to clear away the drawers. One thing was certain—she'd never work for Harvey Doane.
From the opposite end of the corridor she was vaguely conscious of the secretaries breaking up with parting congratulations to the bride-to-be, Miss Trevor.
One of the girls was humming "For He's a Jolly Good Fellow," and as she passed Jane Alcott's desk, her voice carried through to the interior of Lane's office.
He was sitting at his desk and looked up, listening to the passing melody. It reminded him of the previous night. And he sat there pondering. He was not an imaginative man—at least not one given to fantasies around the clock. And it was very odd, he thought—those hallucinations. And it was odder yet that he had felt no fear at all. He supposed that it was because
they were hallucinations. Not phantoms. Hallucinations made up of wishful thinking and probably his gin-and-vermouth ration. He smiled a little wanly, listening to the tune as it floated by, and when he turned around to face his desk, the hallucinations had returned. It was the old war-surplus roller-top that Pritikin had given him the first week he'd worked there. And the room was bare, and much smaller. And the sound of singing was louder now and came from many vo
ices from outside.
Like a captivated kid moving after the Pied Piper, he rose, crossed the room, and opened the door. What he saw was Pritikin's Plastic Products of twenty-five years ago. There were just two desks outside, and two secretaries, both older women in long skirts. One doubled as a switchboard operator. He remembered her. Harris or Harrison or something like that. He blinked at her, then turned to see Mr. Pritikin come out of his office. Pritikin's hair was black, and he wore a moustache.
He walked directly over to Lane, smiled, patted him on the arm. "Well, sir, what's the first day been like, Randy?" Pritikin asked him.
Lane stared at him and then looked over his shoulder at a calendar on the desk. It read "May, 1945."
Still no fear, but now confusion . . . . "The first
day?" he asked.
Pritikin chuckled. "Just wanted you to know I'm going to keep my eye on you, Randy. You're going to become our number-one salesman. Numero uno! Plastics are going to make it, my boy. Plastics are going to kill them. And we're right there on the ground floor!"
Lane became conscious of a phone ringing, and one of the women looked up at him after answering it. "Mr. Lane," she said, "phone call for you. It's your wife. Want to get it on your own phone?"
"My wife," Lane whispered. "My wife."
"Yes, sir," the secretary said, smiling.
"My wife," Lane said, much louder as he ran back to his own office. He grabbed the phone as if wanting to devour it. "Honey. Honey, it's Randy," he said, his heart pounding. His wife, Katie. Katie on the other end of the line. Katie back, and a part of his life. Katie—
There was no sound on the other end, and when Lane looked up, the fantasy, or whatever it was, had ended.
Miss Alcott stood at the open door. "Did you call me, Mr. Lane?"
"Call you?" Lane said in a hollow, empty voice.
"I thought I heard you call me."
Lane shook his head, looked briefly at the phone in his hand, then put it back on its cradle.
"Is there anything wrong?" Miss Alcott asked him.
Lane looked at the framed picture of his wife. He touched it tenderly. "No," he said. "No, there's nothing wrong." And as he said it, he knew there was something very wrong. Something infinitely wrong. Something uncorrectable. He was like a man falling down a hillside, scrabbling for a rock or an outgrowth or something to grab onto and stop his fall. And it was too late. Much too late. Katie, he thought, Katie, why in God's name after twenty years . . . why can't I stop mourning?
That night Randy Lane went back to Tim Riley's Bar. Very methodically he pulled off the wooden slats that had been replaced across the front door and moved into its interior. He carded with him a beer glass cadged from one of four bars he'd visited that night, and he stood in the middle of the room singing "For He's a Jolly Good Fellow" and waiting . . . waiting for it to happen again.
A car pulled up outside. Two policemen got out and carried flashlights into the bar. They played them on Randy Lane, who blinked and smiled, then bowed.
"Good evening, gentlemen," he said happily.
The cops looked at one another. "You better be the night watchman, buddy, or the equivalent," the first cop said to him.
Lane laughed. "Night watchman. Hell, I outrank all the night watchmen in the world. I am late a Sergeant, First Platoon, 'A' Company, 505th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 82nd Airborne Division. That's what I am. And I've just recently returned, V.E. Day now being behind us—"
The two cops looked at one another and grinned. Nothing insurmountable here. Just a happy drunk.
The first cop moved over to Lane and took him by the arm. "Why don't you come with us," the cop said, "and we'll celebrate the event? It isn't every day a war ends."
Lane smiled but stood his ground. "I'd like to accommodate you, officer. I really would. But the festivities take place here. Very shortly Tim Riley will accompany my old man on the piano while my old man sings 'It's a Long Way to Tipperary.' They will do it in unharmonious harmony . . . but what they lack in symmetry—they make up with gusto."
The cop increased the pressure on Lane's arm, and his voice took on a brittle don't-give-me-any-crap quality. "You better come with us, buddy, or—"
At this point McDonough walked into the bar. The second cop shone his flashlight on him, then lowered it when he saw the uniform.
"I'll take care of him," McDonough said. "I know him."
"You know him well enough to explain to him that he can get thirty days apiece for trespassing and being under the influence plus tack on ninety more for breaking and entering?" the first cop asked.
"I said I'd take care of him," McDonough said.
The two cops looked at one another, then moved out of the bar.
McDonough walked over to Lane, who chuckled and did a little jig, then winked at McDonough and threw his arm around him.
"McDonough, my lad—you're just in time."
McDonough gently removed Lane's arm. "I'm just in time to ride you home, Randy. I'm just goin' off duty, and I got my car parked less than a block away."'
Lane frowned. "Not gonna stay for the party?" He made a gesture encompassing the dark, empty room.
McDonough's voice was very gentle. "The party's over, Randy."
Lane stared at him. "Over?" He looked around the room again. "Where's everybody gone? Huh? Where's everybody gone?"
McDonough exhaled. "To their respective rewards," he said. "The party's been over for twenty-five years, Randy." He took his arm. "Come on. Let's go home."
Lane looked down at McDonough's hand, then carefully removed it. "Officer McDonough," he said, "this is where it is—right here."
"This is where what it?" McDonough asked.
Lane walked over to the long bar. "The best years of my life," he said over his shoulder." He put his glass down on the bar. "You may want to phone downtown for a psycho squad—or put out a call for reinforcements—but something's happening to me." He turned and peered through the darkness at McDonough. "I keep getting beckoned to by ghosts, Mr. McDonough. Every now and then it's 1945." He grinned. "How do you like them apples?" Then he held up his hand, shutting off McDonough's response. "And if you think that sounds nuts—try this one. I wish to God those ghosts would stick around. They're the best friends I've got. I feel a whole helluva lot more comfortable with them—than I do with all those warm, living flesh-and-blood bodies I ride up and down the elevators with!"
"Randy," McDonough said, "why don't you tell me about it in the car—"
Lane cut him off. "I'll tell you about it right here!" He took a step away from the bar. "I rate something better than I've got. Honest to God I do. Where does it say that every morning of a man's life he's got to Indian-wrestle with every young contender off the sidewalk who's got an itch to climb up a rung?"
He moved over to McDonough and cupped his hands around the policeman's face. "Hey, McDonough . . . McDonough," he whispered, "I've put in my time. Understand? I've paid my dues. I shouldn't have to get hustled to death in the daytime . . . and die of loneliness every night. That's not the dream. That's not what it's all about."
His voice broke, and his hands fell to his sides, and as he turned away, McDonough noticed that his cheeks were wet.
"Come on, Randy," he said, "I'll drive you home."
Lane nodded. "Sixty-seven Bennett Avenue."
McDonough shook his head. "That's not where 'you live."
"The hell it isn't."
"That's where you lived. Now you live in that highrise on Norton."
Lane turned to him. "The hell I do. I don't live there. I just wash my socks there. I just eat my TV dinners there. That's where I watch Clark Gable and Myrna Loy at midnight. And if I phone Bigelow 666432, I can get waterless cookery, my carpets cleaned or a digital-computerized date whose personality is identical to my own! My God," he said softly, "I live at 67 Bennett Avenue. Two-story white frame. Katie and I bought it six months after we were married."
McDonough studied him, and his voic
e carried with it an infinite gentleness. "It's empty now, Randy. They're tearing down all the houses on the block. Gonna be an apartment complex."
Lane moved towards the door. "So humor me, McDonough. Drive me there anyway."
McDonough nodded and followed him out onto the sidewalk.
Bennett Avenue was dark, the houses empty and boarded up. A big sign on the edge of the block announced that a construction company was going to turn it into some kind of a garden—a mecca for Senior Citizens.
McDonough parked his car in front of a faded white two-story house with a sagging porch and a yard covered with crab grass, flanked by a broken picket fence.
Lane put down the window and looked out at the "67" still visible over the front door.
"Well?" McDonough asked a little impatiently.
Lane grinned. "Don't build 'em like they used to." He opened up the car door and got out. "I'll walk from here."
McDonough looked nonplussed. "Walk? Look, Randy, I can—"
Lane turned to him. "I can walk from here, McDonough. I'm sober now."
McDonough studied him for another moment. "Okay. But don't go knockin' any doors down. You get a collar on you the next time—I won't be around to help." He put the car in low gear. "Good night, Randy. Get some sleep."
Lane nodded, shut the car door, and threw him a salute.
The police car pulled away from the curb, down the street, and disappeared around a corner.
Lane stood there for a moment, then turned and looked at the house. His eyes moved from window to window, and he heard the sound of voices—Katie's voice—his own—and laughter—and hellos and goodbyes—and all the jumbled language of the past—so sweet, so unbearably sweet.
He took a step over to the broken front gate, and Katie's voice hung over the still night air. "Supper's ready, Randy . . . Randy, will you wipe your shoes off? You're tracking mud all over the hall carpet . . . .