by Jack Finney
“I thought maybe wrapped around the pillars in Grand Central Sta—” I was shaking my head no, and he stopped. “What about the kiosks in Paris?”
“I’ll give you my share of the French rights.” I walked around to the back of my own giant cylindrical portrait and pulled its two edges apart. “Might sell them for sandwich-board men,” I said, and stepped inside the big cylinder, allowing it to curl around me. It concealed me almost to the eyes, and I lifted it from the inside, hiding my head completely and revealing my feet and ankles. “If you cut holes for the eyes,” I added, and began walking around. “How’s it look?” I called out to Nate, my voice sounding kind of muffled.
“Something wrong with the way you’re walking; your knees bump.” He pulled the other cylinder open and got inside, then lifted it to expose his feet, his head disappearing from view; I’d lowered mine and stood watching him. Nate began walking around the room in very short, rapid steps. “It doesn’t work, walking,” he called then.
“I know.” We stood looking at each other across the top edges of the two huge photos. “Try hopping,” I said then, and we lifted the cylinders, our heads disappearing, and—our feet and ankles right together, springing from our toes—we began hopping around the room. The floor shook, and dishes rattled in the kitchen as the two giant cylindrical portraits leaped around the living room; we were both howling with laughter. We bumped into my swivel chair, into the davenport, then into each other, and Nate shrieked, “Fresh!” and we were howling so loud now, our feet thumping the floor, the leaps higher and higher, that there wasn’t a chance of hearing the front door open.
It did, though, and I don’t know how long Hetty stood staring, frozen in astonishment. She said, “Ben,” but very faintly, and with no effect on the hopping or howling. She yelled then, “Ben!” and the two cylinders stopped and stood motionless.
I said, “Hetty?”
“Yes, for heaven sakes! Will you take that damn thing—which one are you!”
I lowered my cylinder to the floor and looked across the top of it at Hetty. “Hi,” I said; then Nate lowered his.
He said, “Hi, Hetty,” and she stood for a moment longer, then said, “Oh, my god,” in a kind of hopeless voice, and turned and walked off toward the bedroom.
Nate and I got out of our cylinders. “I guess I better go,” he said, and I didn’t argue. “I guess this didn’t work out,” he said, and I still saw nothing to dispute. He stuck the two big cylinders under his arm, picked up his camera, and walked to the door, which was still open. “There’s something else I’ve been thinking about, though,” he said, but I held up a hand.
“Save it, Nate,” I said. “I’ll call you. Sometime after the first of the century.”
•
CHAPTER FOUR
•
After that my mirror didn’t volunteer anything any more, and I didn’t ask. I didn’t have to; all I had to do was look, then nod in agreement. Nor was anything stamped on my forehead again; there was no need. FAILURE was permanently impressed there now, invisible to anyone else but I could sense it; I could feel it with my fingers, lips moving as I read it letter by letter like Braille. Walking to work Monday, it was blue skies and bright sun for everyone but me; I alone walked, coat collar turned up, in a little circle of rain.
In Grand Central Station I sat down in the TELL ME YOUR TROUBLES! booth, drew the curtains, dropped in my quarter, and began, and the machine listened for a while, the tape reels slowly revolving; then it said, “So what do you expect, a slob like you? Take your quarter and get the hell out of here!”
The coin rattled down into the coin-return cup, and I picked it up and looked at it. “It’s Canadian,” I said.
“Take the hint: go to Canada! As far north as you can.”
I nodded, and left, feeling that it wasn’t the worst idea I’d ever heard.
At work, I printed You are a Failure down the center of a page in thin, droopy-looking letters, walked out to the big shiny machine, spun the Dil-A-Copy dial to 25, and fed it the sheet. You are a Failure. . . . You are a Failure. . . . You are a Failure, the duplicate sheets began informing me, and I stood nodding each time one dropped into the tray. About the tenth or eleventh sheet, one came out that said, Damn right!, and I nodded twice.
The day passed like a life sentence. I rode downstairs in an express elevator, my eyes closed; at the main floor it slowed, leveling itself, and I held my breath. But once again the doors slid open, and I opened my eyes and stepped out into the Chrysler Building lobby, still a temporary winner at elevator roulette. As I passed the lobby door of the building drugstore, I glanced in, but doubted that Hetty wanted another pillbox, and walked on.
Out on Lex, walking south toward Herman’s newsstand, I took my bankbook from my inside coat pocket and stopped at the curb to look at the balance. Then I looked up at Herman’s funny straw hat. “The fine for yanking that hat down around his neck,” I said thoughtfully, “would be about $150.” I glanced again at my bankbook balance of $153.12. “Leaving $3.12 of my life savings.” Again I stared thoughtfully at the hat. “It would be worth it,” I said. “It would even be worth a few days in jail besides. But I need a new suit, soon as there’s a sale,” and I put the bankbook away reluctantly, walked up to the stand, and meekly laid a dime on the counter.
Herman was waiting on another customer, grinning servilely, and I glanced down to look at my dime; it was the Woodrow Wilson I’d found a night or so before. Then Herman turned, grabbed up a paper, this time folding it lengthwise as he shoved it under my arm, so that it stuck out half a yard front and back, making me look like a fool. I returned Herman’s smile of contempt with an appreciative grin, and turned away refolding my paper.
Stopping for the light at the corner, I watched a tiny car pull to the curb across the street; it was a new foreign make, I thought, although the headlights flowed up out of the tops of the front fenders in a way that was dimly familiar. The sign jumped to WALK, changing to RUN almost immediately, and as I hurried across the street, the door of the little car opened on the curb side and a man began heaving and hauling himself out. Cars interest me, and on the other side I stopped to look at this one: the man, yanking at the skirt of his off-white raincoat, feet braced on the curb, trying to break loose from the suction of the tiny car, glared up at me as though his troubles were my fault, and I had to say something to justify my staring. “What kind of car is that?” I said pleasantly.
“A Pierce-Arrow, what else?” he said with the courtliness for which New Yorkers are famous.
“A Pierce-Arrow?” I lifted a corner of my lip and dropped a sneer into my voice to reveal my opinion of this pitiful joke. “They haven’t made Pierce-Arrows for years.”
“They haven’t?” He broke loose from the car, struggled to his feet, and leered with pleasure at this opportunity to demonstrate his contempt for a brother New Yorker. “Then a hell of a lot of people who’ve just bought new ones are going to be pretty damn surprised.” Sneakily he turned and walked quickly away before I could think of a return insult. Then I saw passing in the street another little car just like this, and as it moved on I read Pierce-Arrow in chrome script on the trunk lid. Just behind it came a Ford sedan looking a lot like, but not quite like, any other Ford I’d ever seen; and behind the Ford a low, sleek, baby-blue Hupmobile convertible.
At the extreme out-of-focus edge of my vision far to the left, a cop was strolling toward me, and I realized how strange I must look standing at the curb gaping at passing cars. I turned toward him smiling reassuringly; he was young, thin-faced, and wore glasses, looking more like a student than a cop. I opened my mouth to say something that would let him know I was a respectable Times-reading citizen, but I never said it, though my mouth kept on opening. Because I’d seen, first, his dark-blue uniform pants walking toward me; then his familiar brass-buttoned cop’s coat; his pale scholarly face; and now, finally—his hat. It was a low-crowned derby with slanting sides, and made of what looked like stiff tan
felt; there were little metal-rimmed air holes in the sides, and running clear around it was a turned-down brim of dull black leather; his shield was fastened to the front of the hat. Of its own accord my mouth, already open, said, “Where did you get that hat?” and his face tensed for trouble.
“Somethin’ the matter, mister?” he said, stopping before me, planting his feet well apart; they must teach things like that at cop school. “You sober?” Then his face cleared. “Or from out of town?”
I nodded and said, “Yeah, something like that,” but I couldn’t stop glancing up at his hat. “It’s just that I’ve never seen a hat like that before.”
He shrugged tolerantly. “Must be from a long way out of town, then; we’ve always worn them in New York.” His eyes narrowed again. “Mister, you sure you’re all right?”
I couldn’t answer. I’d been standing at the curb, half facing the street, when—dragging my eyes from the cop’s brown derby—I glanced back across the street, and . . . the Chrysler Building was gone. It was impossible, of course. I’d gone to work there every weekday for nearly three years now; I’d just walked out of it! But there, where the tall, needle-spired, gray old Chrysler Building belonged, stood a ten- or twelve-story building of yellow brick and white stone. The blood left my skin, and I actually cried out in fright. “Where’s the Chrysler Building!” I yelled, and grabbed the cop’s upper arms, shaking him as though I could make him put it back.
He yanked free, hand moving to his nightstick. “The what?” His eyes searched mine, alert for anything.
All I could do was point for several seconds, and I saw that my arm and hand were shaking. “The Chrysler Building. Isn’t it . . . ? It’s supposed to be. . . . I thought it was . . .” I couldn’t finish a sentence or a thought.
The cop was slowly shaking his head, watching me carefully. “There’s no such building,” he said warily. “Not in New York, anyway.” He risked turning his head for a moment to nod at the yellow-and-white soot-marked building that stood, incredibly, on the northeast corner of Forty-second and Lex. “That’s the old Doc Pepper Building, and always has been,” he said, and even while he was speaking I knew what had happened.
“I’m in an alternate world,” I murmured to myself, “I really am,” and when the cop frowned I tried to explain. “There’s an article in this month’s Scientific American. That’s a magazine that—”
“I know it’s a magazine,” he said, offended. “I subscribe, and have for years.”
“Excuse me. Then maybe you read an article in the current issue, about an infinite number of alternate worlds, each differing slightly from the others, and how they may actually exist, and how—”
“Yeah, I read it. But it wasn’t this last issue; must have been six months ago, at least.”
“Oh. Well, in my world it didn’t appear till this month, and—”
He grinned at me, suddenly delighted, and reached out to give me a good-fellow clap on the shoulder. “I see; you just stepped out of one of those alternate worlds and into this one. Is that it? Everything here a little strange and funny?”
“Well, yeah; I guess that’s what happened, anyway. I was walking along, bought a paper, and—”
“And where the Doc Pepper building stands”—he nodded at it—“is what, in your world? The Cresswell Building?”
“Chrysler Building. And the cops wear different hats; caps, actually. And they don’t make Pierce-Arrows any more, and—”
“Wonderful, wonderful.” The cop was shaking his head with pleasure. “Boy, you advertising guys kill me. Best kidders I know, bar none. No birking, you really had me farreled for a minute there. Where you work? Kenyon and Sample?”
“Yeah, that’s right,” I said. “In the Doc Pepper Building. Well—” I glanced at my watch, smiling with regret that the fun was over.
“Yeah, take it easy.” The cop in the derby grinned at me, then turned away, and I started to walk on. “Hey,” he called, and I looked back. “Who won the pennant last year in the other alternate world? The Mets?” He slapped his knee, mouth wide with laughter.
“Well, as a matter of fact . . .” but then I just grinned, he laughed, and I walked on.
I walked briskly, purposefully, in case he turned to watch, but what I wanted to do was stagger. Just a moment before, a car slowing then stopping at the curb beside me for the traffic light, I’d seen my reflection in its side window. I looked just the same except—my hair wasn’t red any more. Here in this alternate world, I realized, I wasn’t quite the same. The genes I’d inherited were just a bit different here, and now, in this world, my hair was dark brown. I wanted to reel and stumble over to the curb, and sit down with my head in my hands and rock back and forth. I couldn’t really think; I couldn’t get hold of what seemed to have happened. Then, after half a block, I stopped and looked over one shoulder. The cop was nowhere in sight, and I walked back in the direction I’d come from, crossed at the corner again, stopped at the newsstand, and ducked my head to look in under the little projecting eave.
He was wearing an old Mickey Mouse cap with ears, but it was Herman, all right, and I nodded at him. “Yeah,” I said slowly, “you’re in both worlds, aren’t you? In a few places the alternate worlds intersect; and this newsstand is one of them.”
“What’re you, mister, some kind of wise guy?”
“No. Don’t you know me?”
He shook his head contemptuously.
“Sure you do. I buy my paper here every night.”
“I know all my regulars, and you ain’t one of ’em. Sumpin’ you want, mister?” he said belligerently.
“Well, as a matter of fact, I’m sort of a coin collector. And the other night I found a very unusual dime. I think I must have used it to buy this paper, and I wondered if I could get it back. Exchanging another dime for it, of course.”
His eyes were slitted in suspicion. “What kind of dime?”
“A Woodrow Wilson. It had a profile of Woodrow Wilson on it.”
He smiled cynically. “Why, sure! Here!” He shoved a worn lidless cigar box at me. “Just pick yours out, buddy, and it’s all yours!”
I looked down into the box; among the pennies, nickels, and quarters there must have been a couple hundred dimes, and every one that I could see face up bore the sharp profile of the late President Wilson. I stared, then snapped my fingers in amused rebuke at my own stupidity. “Did I say Wilson? I meant Roosevelt!”
“Who?”
I grinned; it was kind of fun baiting the humorist. “Roosevelt. A Franklin D. Roosevelt dime; you ever see one?” He shook his head, watching me intently, and I said, “I thought so. They’re from another alternate world. And Woodrow Wilson dimes are from this one. Somehow, a Woodrow Wilson dime strayed into the other world, and I found it. When I planked it down on your counter for a Post, here at the intersection of two alternate worlds, it was like a ticket of admission to this world. And I stepped into it.”
“Boy, you’re full of it, aren’t you, mister? A what kind of paper?”
“New York Pos—” I stopped, stared at the pile of papers on his counter, then yanked mine out from under my arm and opened it. The date was today’s, all right, but at the very top of the page was a little drawing of the world, the sun shining down on it; The New York Sun, it said underneath it. I glanced quickly over the front page, but there was nothing unusual: a couple stabbings and a shooting; a tenement fire; a head-on collision between two stolen cars, each of them, by an amusing coincidence, driven by a nine-year-old girl drugged to the ears; the headline read PRESIDENT MONTIZAMBERT VETOES TAX CUT.
My mind had accepted it, now. There were other alternate worlds, and this was one in which the New York Sun hadn’t gone out of business years ago; it was still being published. And Pierce-Arrow cars were still being made. I existed in this world, too, but things weren’t quite the same; I was maybe an inch taller here; my hair was dark brown, and this other me had lived here, of course, all his life. I was beginning to vaguely r
emember that life now, and I realized I was one of the few people, perhaps the only one, who was conscious of both alternate worlds, and with memories of each one of them.
I looked up. Herman was staring past my shoulder, and I turned; the same young cop was crossing the street toward us, pretending to stroll but moving pretty fast, and I knew Herman had beckoned him over. Just as casually but just as fast, I strolled to a cab parked on Forty-second Street a dozen yards from the corner. It was headed west, and I got in saying, “Straight ahead, and in a hurry,” and as the meter went down and the cab pulled away from the curb I looked out the back window. The cop and Herman, leaning far out over his counter, were staring after me, and I put both fingers in my mouth, stretching the sides far out, crossing my eyes, and stuck out my tongue at them.
We went barreling along the street at just about ninety-five miles an hour, the lights changed, we stopped in six feet, and I sat back, relieved that this New York wasn’t basically different from the other. “You still have Central Park?” I said, and the driver looked at his mirror.
“What’re you, mister, some kind of wise guy?”
“No, not at all; I’m from out of town. Haven’t been here for years, is all.”
“Well, we still got it; wha’d’ you think?”
“My god, look!” I pointed; half a dozen young women had come out of an office building and were crossing in front of the cab.
“At what?”
“Their skirts! Oh, boy, I thought miniskirts were short, but look at that!”
He shrugged. “So they lowered their skirts this year; so what?”
“Lowered!?”
“Yeah. How far out of town you come from, New Zealand?”
“I don’t know,” I said happily, my head out the window to stare back at the ladies, “but believe me, it’s good to be back!”
The light changed, we started up, and I sat watching the automobiles and streetcars flow past. “Hey! You’ve still got streetcars!”
