The Jack Finney Reader

by Jack Finney

  No one answered. The men sat staring at their plates, restlessly tapping their cigarettes. Then Ray said, We'll do what my father did. They looked up, and Ray said, He was a doctor, and not long before he was married — he'd been practicing about a year — he was offered a chance to go down the Amazon River as part of an expedition, exploring and mapping; to be the doctor for the party. It would mean giving up his practice, and starting all over again after a year, but he wanted to do it, and he thought about it, and agonized over it, and finally made up his mind.

  Ray waited till Phil said, Well? What did he do?

  Ray smiled slightly and tilted back on the rear legs of his chair. He did what we're going to do, Phil. He talked and thought about it. And finally, for a long, long list of very excellent and sound, sensible and practical considerations, he decided against it. Ray dropped his chair to its four legs, leaning forward across the table to look the others in the eye. And then — not always, by any means, but just every now and then, every once in a while during all the long and successful years that followed — he regretted it for the rest of his life.

  Playboy, October 1963, 10(10):101, 156, 168-172

  Double Take

  When Jessica walked into the club car, everyone knew with one startled glance that this was somebody special, someone important, and I sat watching their eyes and mouths pop open. Out of the world's three billion people there can't be more than, say, a hundred women like Jessica Maxwell. Her red-brown hair was thick and shining with health, her brown eyes magnificent, her complexion so flawless your fingers ached to touch it, her figure marvelous. But that doesn't tell you how beautiful she was; I can only say that if you were staggering toward a hospital with three bullets in your chest, you'd stop and turn to stare after Jessica if she walked past.

  She said, Hi, Jake, smiled so that an actual chill ran up my spine, and sat down beside me. People sat sipping drinks, glancing out windows, turning pages and sneaking looks, but I was pretty sure no one actually recognized her. She'd been in only two pictures, in small parts; on the screen less than a minute in one of them. But of course they knew she almost had to be in pictures; we were out of Los Angeles station only 20 minutes, and with looks like hers what else could she be?

  We talked, I made a joke or so, she laughed delightedly, and every man in the car sat sizing me up, eyes narrowed, resentful, wondering who the hell I was to be with a girl like Jess. Well, I wondered, too. I work for the same studio, and was in love with Jessie or close to it, but who wasn't? I didn't even know her well — just through this one picture — and I'm only a dialog director. Eventually I'll be a director, maybe a very damn good one, but no one else knows that, and right now I'm not much in job or looks, either. I'm only average height, skinny, 26, name of Jake Pelman, and slightly homely. I freely admit I'd rather be handsome, taller, heavier, the world's finest rumba dancer, and a master with foil and épée. But as things stood, I had to wonder why a girl like Jess had asked me, even urged me, to take the train with her. We were going to New York on location to make a few last scenes for the picture, most of which had already been filmed at the studio, and everyone else in the unit was flying, of course; it's a long trip. So with Jess and me alone, and nothing else to do but get better acquainted, my hopes were high.

  Jake, would you like to come back to my bedroom? Jessie said after ten minutes or so, and I allowed as how I would, and stood up. A minute later she was unfastening her bag, handing me a script and explaining that three uninterrupted days on the train were a wonderful chance to get her New York scenes to perfection. Would I mind helping? Read through the scenes with her, and coach her? It was why she'd wanted me to come along, she explained innocently; at least I think it was innocently.

  After a few stunned seconds in which I stood hooting with inaudible invisible jeering laughter at myself and my hopes, I said I'd be glad to, and we settled down to work on Jessie's scenes for most of the next three days. I didn't blame her; these final few scenes were the biggest of the picture for Jessie. One in particular — we worked on it through Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and almost to Grand Central Station — was her chance to be noticed, and she knew it. Maybe every actor or actress has a part like this early in his or her career; the big one, the one that counts if only you recognize it. Jessie did; she understood instinctively that this particular scene in this particular picture was her first step, and one she had to take, toward stardom or oblivion.

  We worked. We also had an occasional drink in the club car, ate our meals together, sat and talked or read, even played a little gin, and got to know each other. But mostly we worked on that scene. In the picture Jess was the daughter of a woman speak-easy owner in New York, played by the star; like most other studios these days, we were making a picture set in the 1920s. In her big scene, Jess was in love with a much older man, and was heartbroken when he left her. An hour and a half out of New York, Jessie laid her script on the seat beside her and said, I'm not getting it, am I, Jake? I'm no closer than the day we started, and the truth was no; she wasn't getting it at all.

  But I wasn't that truthful. I shrugged, looked thoughtful, then said, It still needs work, Jess, but it'll come. Right now, though, let it alone; drop it. Forget it till you work out in New York with the actor. Ernie'll be there; he'll help. Ernie Wyke was the director, a good one; I'd learned from him and would learn more. But I knew he wasn't going to be able to help Jessie.

  I knew it because now I knew something else; that she didn't give a damn about me. She was a beautiful girl, and a nice one; I'd have liked Jess if she'd been homely. She had none of the arrogant defensiveness of so many very good-looking women. But now I knew she was selfish. Not in an unpleasant way; she liked me, she liked most of the people around her, out of her own naturally cheerful nature. But all she was really interested in was her own ambition and self. And why not? She was only 20; plenty of child in her yet. When she'd lived longer I was certain she'd change; she was warmhearted and there were reserves of sympathy and understanding still untouched in her. But before she changed, her career could be finished. Sometime tomorrow she'd have to seem before the camera what she might need years to become, and I knew she couldn't do it.

  She wasn't getting this part because she didn't understand it. She couldn't feel what the character she was playing felt, which was love. She could play young love. On the screen with a young handsome man, all Jessie had to do was say she loved him and the audience believed her; they did her work for her. But now she had to show them that she was in love with a man more than old enough to be her father, be heartbroken when he left her, and make the audience believe every word and moment. And because this career-anxious girl had never let herself know what love was, she couldn't imagine or feel it now. Riding along beside the Hudson talking with Jessie, pretty sure I was in love with her now, I knew she was going to flop and that there was nothing to do about it. She didn't know, though; Ernie was going to show her how.

  • • •

  In New York, Al Berg, the unit manager, had booked Jessie for the Plaza, and had me miles away, at the Gramercy Park. Al had also found an empty two-story brownstone house just off lower Fifth Avenue, the street on which all our shooting would take place. He'd rented the house as a unit headquarters for our day of filming, so after I checked into the hotel and changed into wash slacks and a checked shirt, I walked over.

  It was a fine spring night, temperature about 70. Passing Gramercy Park on the way to Fifth, I could smell cut grass and see the new green of the tree leaves in the light from the street lamps. Then, walking down the east side of Fifth toward Washington Square, I saw why we were filming down here. This part of Fifth Avenue hadn't really changed too much since the Twenties. Some of it had changed, of course; there were big new apartment buildings. But the location department had found stretches of several blocks that still looked, so they said, very much as they had in the middle Twenties. It's a nice part of town, usually quiet and it's always seemed to me little se
parate from the noisy, always-changing rest of New York.

  Our headquarters, I saw when I got to the old house, would do very well for a short scene we had: Jessie walking down the front steps pulling on a pair of gloves. And I knew Al probably had a use for every room inside. In the living room he had some rented furniture, and four members of the unit were sitting around talking; the front door and all windows were wide open and, because there were no screens, the lights were out, though there was a fair amount of light from a street lamp just outside. Sitting there drinking coffee or soft drinks were Alice Weeks, Oscar Jorgensen, a girl I didn't know and a young guy in a T-shirt who was a camera assistant. I nodded at him and spoke to Alice, who was in charge of our costumes — a tall thin woman in her 40s wearing a summer dress. Oscar, who was in shirt sleeves, was our property man — thin, middle-aged, bald and permanently worried. He introduced me to the girl, who was sitting sideways on a window ledge, one of her feet up on the sill. She was wearing black stretch pants and a very loose hip-length blouse with big wide horizontal stripes. As I thought, she was an actress, an extra hired here in New York for a walk-on part.

  I sat down, and took some kidding about having come to New York by train; this was mostly speculation over whether my reason was cowardice about flying, lechery for Jessie Maxwell, or both. This was the lull before the storm, and I sat enjoying having nothing to do. The following morning the rest of the unit would arrive and the work and confusion would begin. Some 30 to 40 people would be here: carpenters, electricians, grips and gaffers, a cameraman who did not operate the camera, camera operators and assistants who did, a sound mixer, boom man, recorder and cableman, make-up men, hairdressers, special-effects man, a check woman, script girl, and a dozen others including a couple of whistlemen and wigwags, who are the guys who blow whistles and wave flags to keep people from walking onto sets after shooting starts. All these people with all their equipment, including a few hundred miles of cable, would begin getting in one another's way, apparently. Actually they'd be working together in that amazing cooperation of a hundred disparate skills that gets the little tiny pictures onto the little squares of film.

  Oscar Jorgensen hadn't said much, and pretty soon he walked to one of the open windows and stood there, hands in pockets, staring out. The camera assistant, whose name, I remembered now, was Joe Lani, said, Don't worry, Oscar; if we have to, we'll push it for you.

  Oscar just said, Yeah, without turning around.

  I said, What's the trouble?

  He's worried about the bus.

  Didn't it get here? For a moment I was panicky; we had to use this bus in our two biggest scenes.

  Oh, it got here all right, Oscar said.

  Is it OK?

  Sure. We lashed it to a flatcar with cable, covered it with plastic sheeting and put a waterproof tarp over that. I saw to it myself; it got here OK.

  I smiled, thinking about the bus. This was one of the old, blunt-nosed, green-and-cream Fifth Avenue buses with open-air seats up on a top deck that you reached by climbing a winding staircase at the back. For all I knew, this was the only one left in the world; they'd last used them in New York years ago. The studio had bought it then, directly from the bus company; it still had its original 1926 license plates. They'd shipped it 3000 miles to Hollywood and used it on an indoor street-set in a picture about New York of the time. Now, 30-odd years later, for a picture about that same but now-vanished New York, they shipped the bus back to be filmed on the streets. Hollywood has changed a lot, but in some ways it never disappoints you. I said, Where is it now?

  Half a block from here. There's a new apartment building near University Place, not quite finished, no tenants in yet. Al rented the garage in the basement, and it's in there. We trucked it over covered with the tarp, so we wouldn't get a crowd.

  Then what's the trouble?

  It came a day late; less than two hours ago. I wanted to drive it, test it out in the railroad yard. It's got to work tomorrow morning for absolute sure. He shrugged, worriedly. It's probably all right. I had it in perfect shape when we left; no reason it shouldn't be now.

  Couldn't you drive it now, Oscar? Around the block a couple times just to be, certain?

  Alice said, The cops, Jake, boy. They'd yak if it drew a crowd, and hand us a ticket for expired license plates.

  I nodded. In most cities the police will let a movie company do almost anything: block off streets all day and paint the city hall in stripes. But movie companies are no novelty or joy to the New York cops, and if you mess up traffic by not following their orders, they'll throw you out. I said, What about later tonight? There wouldn't be enough people out to get a crowd.

  I'd like to, Oscar said, turning around. Hell, I've got to. You think it's OK, Jake?

  Sure, if you wait till after midnight. I smiled with sudden pleasure. And when you do, I want to ride along. That'll be a sight, an old double-decker trundling down Fifth again. You won't get a crowd, but a few people will see us and think they're out of their minds.

  Everybody smiled, and Joe Lani said, Hey, Alice; you brought uniforms, didn't you? Bus driver and conductor?

  Of course.

  Well, if a couple of us put them on, that'd really be a sight!

  Even Oscar grinned, against his will, and the girl on the window sill said, If my costume's here, too, can I come along?

  And that set us off. Everybody in the room was putting down his cup or pop bottle, then we all piled upstairs. Alice had her costumes in an empty bedroom, locked in their stenciled, olive-drab, heavy plywood shipping cases. Then, cautioning us, warning us what she'd do if we damaged or lost a thread of her costumes, cursing us out in advance, she handed them out: conductor's uniform and fare collector for Joe; a suit, white shirt, bow tie and black shoes for me; a pair of dresses, hats and purses of the Twenties for herself and the girl; and of course Oscar took the bus driver's uniform for himself; no one else was going to drive that bus. During this — I heard the cab door slam downstairs — Jessie arrived, heard us, came up, and we briefed her on what was going on, and of course she wanted to go, too.

  Alice gave her, along with the full set of warnings she'd given us, one of the three costumes Jessie would wear during filming; then we all went to the dressing rooms — two bedrooms fitted out with portable make-up tables and lighted mirrors. My outfit was too big, and Joe's uniform too small, so we traded and I became the bus conductor. I was just as glad. The 1926 suit was authentic but not much different from Ivy League suits of today, and I thought I cut a more interesting figure as the conductor.

  Downstairs we looked one another over. The women looked great. They wore the kind of costumes we've all become pretty familiar with lately: the short skirts, oddly placed hiplines, the tight-fitting felt hats. Jessie looked terrific; it's hard to believe that a fallible, mortal human being could be so beautiful. She has spectacularly handsome legs, and of course this outfit showed them off; I think that's one reason she got the part. Her dress and hat, which were powder blue, had been made especially for her, and in some way I don't understand they'd been subtly modernized. They were like the others, yet not quite, so that Jess didn't really look strange or old-fashioned, but just magnificently beautiful. The other two — the girl in a peach-colored dress and Alice in tan — looked OK, and so did Joe. Oscar and I didn't look like much of anything in a couple of worn-looking blue uniforms and caps with shiny black peaks.

  We had to wait for over an hour; Oscar wouldn't start till 12:30. So we sat around downstairs talking, excited, laughing a lot. Alice wouldn't let us smoke for fear of burning a hole in one of her costumes, and whenever one of us went to the kitchen and came back with coffee, she made him drink standing up and leaning forward so as not to spill a drop on her outfits.

  At half past 12 we all walked half a block east and across the street to the new apartment building, then down a ramp of new white concrete, and through the entrance to the basement garage; it was high-ceilinged just here, designed so that a moving
van could back right in and up to the doors of a service elevator. Oscar snapped on a light switch, and there she stood like a great square elephant covered by a big brown-canvas tarpaulin. Joe and I helped Oscar drag it off, then I stood smiling with pleasure. I'd been a little kid when I'd last seen one of these, but I remembered everything I saw now: the boxlike metal hood over the motor, surmounted by a radiator cap; the green metal-spoked wheels and hard-rubber tires; the upward-slanting sides, the rattly wood-framed windows; and way up on top, the metal-grilled wooden-railed fence enclosing the outdoor seats of varnished wood. They were fine old buses, a joy to ride, even if a shade less profitable than the miserable monsters they have now, and I was glad to see one again.

  She started up quickly enough, Joe cranking the engine after Oscar showed him how. For maybe a minute Oscar idled the motor, then he smiled and beckoned us in. I told Joe to turn off the garage lights; he obeyed automatically, and while he was doing that I got into the bus and sat down next to Jessie. We smiled at each other, the garage lights went off and Oscar turned on his headlights. He shifted gears, Joe hopped on and Oscar pulled up the ramp in low. We drove west three quarters of a block to Fifth, Oscar listening to the engine with his head cocked. It sounded fine, the chain drive grinding away smoothly just as I remembered.

  At Fifth Oscar stopped, and a very nice coincidence happened, one that pleased us all. A car drove past the front of the bus, and it was one of those magnificently restored old cars, a handsome square-topped sedan looking as good as the day it was new, which was probably when this bus last rolled along Fifth, and we all smiled with pleasure. Then Oscar snapped on the inside lights and we all looked around: at the wooden seats, at one another in this strange environment, at the old advertisements above the windows. One was for Fels-Naptha, but it was for yellow bars of soap, not granules in a package; another showed a drawing of a handsome young dimple-chinned man wearing a high stiff Arrow collar.