Three by Finney

by Jack Finney

  In order to open the drawer, I had to lie on my side on the bed, legs bent back at a right angle, my back to the dresser. Then I had to reach one arm back and up to pull open the top drawer. This was because the top drawer projected over the bed when open, with about a one-foot clearance, nearly touching the wall. The lower drawer opened under the bed and was pretty unhandy.

  Now, lying on the bed underneath the open top drawer, I reached back with one arm, then around the side of the drawer, up, and into it, something like a snake. I fumbled around till I found a pencil and an old envelope, then closed the drawer pretty quickly, drawing a deep breath or two to get rid of the claustrophobia. I rolled onto my back, legs up the wall again, wrote down the familiar figures, stared at them, then went down to the lobby to talk to Jose Mountbatten, perhaps the best budget-shaver in the Y. He claimed to have lived for six months entirely on stolen cough-drop samples, and while I didn’t quite believe that, I didn’t doubt a month or so, and he certainly didn’t have any sign of a cough.

  We sat in the Morris chairs beside the potted ferns, and Jose said, “Breakfast?”

  “Nineteen cents a day,” I answered proudly. “Corn flakes and powdered milk; I keep them under the bed, and mix up the milk in my toothbrush glass.”

  Jose shook his head. “You can’t be using the giant economy-size corn flakes, or it’d be fift—”

  “I tried that: the economy-size won’t fit under the bed when the bottom drawer is open. I had to sleep with the box in bed with me for three weeks till I used it up. Allowing for corn flakes that spilled in bed, I don’t think I saved a cent, and I didn’t sleep so well either.”

  “Okay, okay. Lunch?”

  “Two dollars and two cents a week: six apples, at sixty-nine cents a pound.”

  He considered that, then nodded. “Dinner?”

  “Dollar ninety-nine a day, here at the cafeteria.”

  “You could cut—”

  “I know, I know; it’s just that I always seem to be pretty hungry, come dinnertime.”

  “Okay. Laundry?”

  “Fourteen cents a week. Tide in the big bottle.”

  “Try bath-size Camay: three cents cheaper and your clothes smell nicer. Rent?”

  “Thirteen seventy-five a week,” I said sheepishly. “I know it’s high, but what can you do?”

  “You know damn well what you can do: move to a room without a window. I can’t help if you won’t economize. How much for savings?”

  “Dollar eleven a week.”

  “Don’t change that; got to have something laid up for a rainy day. Recreation?”

  “Seventy-five cents a week.”

  “Eliminate that. After all, a Saturday-night game of pinball goes by pretty fast; you’ll never miss it. That’ll help, but look: here’s my analysis.” He nodded at the figures on my envelope. “You got a take-home pay of $619 a month,” he said shrewdly, “and that’s good; that’s fine. But I think this is the item that’s lousing things up.” He pointed to the $250 a month alimony.

  The cafeteria doors opened then, and we raced for the door, walking, not running, which wasn’t allowed. Jose won, being three feet closer, and I followed him along the line, thanking him for his help, watching him hide three olives in his mashed potatoes.

  After dinner I sat around the lobby talking to the fellows, most of whom were in their thirties and forties and looked like Ernest Borgnine in Marty. Some of the other fellows were discussing the eternal question of how well Jack Dempsey would have done in his prime against “Gentleman Jim” Corbett, and I listened till it was time for the Ping-Pong tournament. I lost to a pretty active bald-headed Hawaiian fellow of around sixty. Then I watched one of the other matches, and it was exciting, reaching 20-up, but was never finished because our ball cracked and there was a big argument about who ought to pay forty-five cents for a new one. I went upstairs then, said my prayers kneeling beside my bed, and hopped in without changing position.

  In the morning I hitchhiked to work, and as soon as I got there, the receptionist said the boss wanted to see me, and I tiptoed into Bert’s office, slowly easing the door shut behind me so that the sound of the latch click wouldn’t startle him. He was standing at the window, his back to me, and for a moment it was odd to see how tall he was again. “Sit down, Ben,” he said, in a voice so friendly I knew it was bad news. I sat down very slowly so that the creak of the leather upholstery wouldn’t frighten him. “Ben,” he said, still staring out the window, “I’ll lay it on the line.” Then he turned to face me, and I wet my lips and sat still farther forward. “I don’t have to tell you that you’ve been fouling up lately.” I told him yes, sir, I was sorry, sir, but that I’d had things on my mind. “Be that as it may,” he began, and in my mind I sprang from the chair and killed him with a lightninglike series of judo chops, “I’m afraid office discipline would suffer if I didn’t lower your salary. Actually, it’s for your own good in the long run, though you may not see it that way now.” I brought out my lunch apple, breathed on it, rubbed it briskly with my tie, and set it shyly on his desk. “ ’Fraid that won’t help, Bennell, though I like your attitude. Your salary’s been reduced to $576.35 a month. That’s retroactive to the first, so you owe us $6.33. Bring it in any time, and forget the thirty-three cents, for crysake.” He reached across his desk to shake hands. “Now, buckle down, Bennell, and do your level best; I still think you’ve got good stuff in you!”

  I thanked him, and walked out to my office. Saf-T Products, I knew, had subtle ways of letting a man know where and how he stood in the organization, and I wasn’t surprised to see that the partition around my office had been cut down to only four-and-a-half feet, the sawdust still on the floor, and my name on the glass had been scraped off, repainted, and misspelled Benel.

  Inside my office—I had to walk with my knees bent so my head wouldn’t show outside—my desk was the same, but my swivel chair was gone and a canvas camp chair substituted. I still had a phone, but no longer on my desk; now it was fastened to the wall, and was a pay phone. Things looked black.

  Yet somehow, for so it is with the human spirit, I felt a little better back at the Y after work. Coming in, I checked the coin-return cup in the lobby phone booth as always, and this time found a quarter, which I blew on dessert at dinner, then went up to the room to wash out my other socks.

  Around eight I went down to the phone booth and tried the coin-return again, but no luck. I dropped in a quarter and dialed Operator. My quarter came back and the Operator came on. I told her I’d dialed Hetty’s number and got no ring, and she dialed it for me free.

  “Hello?”

  “Hi, this is Ben.”

  “Ben who?” Hetty said coldly.

  “Ben so lonesome and blue since I last seen you!”

  She hung up.

  Half an hour later I called again; no answer. Then, until ten-thirty, I tried every half hour, reading a 1951 copy of Life in between. At ten-thirty, desperate, I began calling every fifteen minutes, recklessly using my own quarter, and at eleven forty-five she answered. “ThisisBen! NowHettyyou’vegototalktom—” Dial tone.

  Perhaps I went a little mad. I yanked out my wallet and stared into it. As I’d known perfectly well, there were eleven dollars: my food, clothing, rent, insurance, savings, transportation, recreation, miscellaneous, and charities allowance for the next week. But I didn’t care; I walked out and turned toward Lexington Avenue, running the last two blocks.

  There wasn’t actually too much choice: the florists were all closed, so were the jewelers, a candy store, and a pet shop. Finally I found an All-Nite Sport Shoppe and looked around inside. Hetty wasn’t really too much of an athlete, so I settled on a gift certificate good for a half-hour private jai alai lesson, figuring it was the thought that counts.

  At my—I mean Hetty’s—apartment, I tipped the doorman fifteen cents; by that time of night he wasn’t sure but what I still lived there and was just going out. Then I stood outside, coat collar forlornly turned up,
staring at my old bedroom window to make sure he made the delivery.

  The bedroom light came on; there was an interval long enough for Hetty to walk to and return from the door. Then—she probably guessed I was down here—her hand came out under the open window sash, and a stream of torn paper fluttered prettily off in the moonlight, and her light snapped off.

  Back at the Y, I walked across the lobby, which was tiled with those octagonal white tiles about the size of a quarter that you see in old-fashioned bathrooms. Spelled out in blue tiles, just in front of the desk, it said: GIVE ME OUR YOUNG PEOPLE’S BODIES, AND I’LL LET WHO WILL WRITE THE NATION’S SONGS! ISAAC PEABODY—whoever he was. Most of the lights were out; the desk clerk was asleep, the lobby deserted except for our two “night people” who were playing cribbage.

  Up at my room I unlocked my door. Actually it was a half door, which isn’t as quaint as it may sound because it was a half door lengthwise so that I had to walk in sideways. It was practical, though, because it gave wall space for the dresser, the bottom drawer of which I now opened. Reaching down behind my bed into the drawer, I fumbled around till I found my bankbook, then lay back on the L-shaped bed, feet comfortably flat on the ceiling, and studied the figures. This didn’t take long, and I changed position, knees under chin, and considered my plight.

  I thought about life in the other alternate world. There I had everything a man could ask to be happy. Yet I felt no regrets. Because all I wanted, and now finally I knew it, was Hetty, and I suddenly felt strangely exhilarated.

  I hopped up, and—I can’t say I paced, exactly. But by keeping one foot at the precise center of the floor and pivoting on it—the step used in the army in To-the-rear-march!—I managed an approximation. I was remembering my courtship of Hetty: the delight in her face, eyes, and voice at my barrage of jokes, funny phone calls and telegrams. “I won her before,” I said excitedly, “and I can do it again!” and I began pacing more rapidly till I was twirling as in a fast waltz. I knew it wasn’t going to be so easy winning Hetty this time, when she wouldn’t see or speak to me. But Love, I also knew, would find a way; at least I was pretty sure it would; it was what I’d always heard. Still whirl-pacing, I glanced at my bankbook again; after years of serfdom my entire life savings were something less than two months’ pay, even at the new reduced salary, but I didn’t hesitate. “Darling,” I pledged aloud, “I’ll spend it all to win you back!” Then dizzy, nauseated, and full of hope, I dropped onto my bed, feet on the ceiling, and fell asleep.

  I was up at five-thirty, and after a little initial difficulty managed to straighten up and stand erect. By six I was at the office, strangely empty and silent except for my steps across the brown vinyl tiles. I unplugged the giant duplicating machine, rolled it across to Bert Glahn’s office, and inside. I put it in the center of the room facing the doorway, plugged it in, then sat down at Bert’s desk, drew a sheet of paper toward me, and in mod-style lettering printed You are a Neanderthal jackanapes and I quit, and signed my name. I inserted it into the behemoth, set the dial at 5,000 copies, turned it on, and removed the receiving tray so that the duplicates floated, gliding and swooping, out into the room.

  For a moment or so I stood watching; it was pleasant, very much like a snowstorm with extra-large flakes. Then I started to leave, remembered something, and walked over to Glahn’s desk. In his lower desk drawer I found it—my apple—and walked out through the storm eating it for breakfast, a clear saving of thirty-four cents.

  As soon as they opened, at eight o’clock, I bought a pocket-size Japanese tape recorder at a discount house for $19.95 and took it to my room. With my transistor radio facing the microphone on the dresser top, I recorded a WNEW station announcement, then shut off the tape and sat listening for an hour or so to one commercial after another, switching from station to station to hear as many as I could, sort of getting the tone. I wrote briefly on the back of an envelope, switched on the tape, and read into the microphone in a fine, sonorous voice.

  Skipping occasionally, I walked over to Twenty-eighth Street and, just down the street from my old apartment, phoned Hetty from the corner. No answer, so I walked on down and, evading the doorman, took the elevator to my old apartment and let myself in with my key.

  Hetty’s clock radio was where it always was, on the lower shelf of the end table at her side of the bed, the radio dial set for WNEW, the alarm set for seven. Leaving the alarm alone, I turned off the radio, connected my tape recorder, and set it on the floor out of sight under the end table. Testing, I turned the hands of the clock; when they touched seven, the tiny reels began to revolve, and a voice said clearly, “WNEW, sunny and clear out, in case you’re wondering whether to get up. Hang on now: time for the commercial touch.” Then my own recorded voice, sounding very much the same as his, said, “Today, try the new improved Ben Bennell! With the new miracle ingredient! Pick up your phone right now, call the Y, and a free sample will be delivered to the pillow beside you! He’s amazing! Brighter, smoother, lighter, whiter, longer-lasting, too! Tests PROVE the new Ben Bennell is forty-seven times better, smoother, bigger, less irritating by far than Brand C, AND . . . he is guaranteed for a lifetime. You’ll LOVE the new, improved Ben Bennell! And, believe me, baby . . . he’ll love you. This offer limited to Hetty Bennell.” Wishing, for a variety of reasons, that I could be here tomorrow morning to see it, I pictured Hetty’s face as she listened: the initial astonishment and bewilderment, followed by simple delight, then wide-eyed tenderness as she reached for the telephone. I rewound the tape, reset the alarm, and left.

  Next morning my recorder was delivered to me at the Y in a paper sack, but I couldn’t take it back for a refund, smashed as it was. Reminding myself that, after all, we’d been divorced and that I could hardly expect to win a battle with the opening gun, I returned to Hetty’s apartment to reconnoiter. I didn’t find much: just my own photograph with mustache, glasses, and crossed eyes added, and the head redrawn to a point; and a W-2 form with the name and address of the place Hetty now worked at, which I copied.

  I was there at five o’clock, loitering in a doorway just down the street; Hetty came out a few minutes later, but unfortunately with Custer, who must have been waiting in the lobby. I followed them to a restaurant and, walking slowly past the window, my coat collar turned up, saw them greeted as old friends by the proprietor, and ushered to what was obviously their favorite booth. Gnashing my teeth, I walked slowly back past the window again, a handkerchief at my face, and watched Custer give an order, the proprietor bowing gleefully and scurrying away. They didn’t have menus, so I knew they’d ordered drinks; I also knew that unless Hetty had changed enormously, the drinks would arrive and she’d taste hers, smile, stand up, and go to the ladies’ room to fix her face.

  I scooted into the drugstore next door, dialed the restaurant, and asked if Mr. Huppfelt was there yet. They knew him, called him, and when he came on, I pinched my nose and raised my voice. “Meester Custair Hawpfeelt? Long-deestance, Ambidexter calling from Mehico; hol’ on pleese!” I set the phone down, walked quickly into the restaurant, face averted from the phone booth at the back and the frowning Custer inside it, walked past their empty booth, picking up one of Hetty’s gloves in passing, and sat down in the next booth just long enough to shove a small folded note into the forefinger of the glove. No one had noticed me yet, and I stood immediately and walked quickly out, dropping Hetty’s glove back on the table in passing.

  Three drinks and a long dinner including dessert and two cups of coffee later—I counted them all, occasionally walking past the window at various heights, and in various disguises, such as hat brim up all the way around, turned down all the way around, and up on one side only—they came out, Custer stifling a burp, Hetty pulling on her gloves.

  She felt the note and stiffened. Chattering gaily, she surreptitiously pulled off the glove, allowing it to turn inside out, and unfolded the note at her side with one hand. At a street corner, when Custer turned away to check oncoming traf
fic, Hetty glanced quickly at the note, crumpled and dropped it, and stood waiting for the light to change, blushing very much the same shade of red. The light changed, and as they started to cross, Hetty tossed a quick look behind her. I was waiting, expecting it, and stuck my head out from behind the lamppost. In the instant before she turned away, I blew her a kiss and she stuck out her tongue. Then I turned the other way, resisting an impulse to walk duckfooted like Charlie Chaplin, the forlorn little tramp moving off into the sunset jauntily whirling his cane.

  Later it occurred to me that Hetty might have stuck out her tongue affectionately; there were two ways to interpret it. So I phoned her around ten-thirty. “Darling? This is B—” Dial tone.

  Next morning I dropped in at the studio of a commercial artist friend of mine, with a photograph of myself. He drew on a George Washington wig, added a fancy border, two twenty-two cents in little circles in each lower corner, and in a curved ribbon under the photo lettered, GEORGE WASHINGTON loved Martha like Ben loves Hetty. I took this to one of the Times Square places that duplicate your photograph on a gummed, perforated sheet while you wait, each little picture the size of a stamp, and ordered a sheet. They looked good; exactly like stamps, till you looked close. Then I took a bus to Twenty-eighth Street and stood on a street corner a dozen yards from the entrance to Hetty’s apartment building, pretending to read a newspaper.

  I had it spread open wide, held up before my face, with the uneasy feeling that I’d never in my life actually seen anyone standing on a street corner reading a paper like this; that it was something you read about but never actually saw. Several times middle-aged women passing by looked at me suspiciously, trying to see my face around the edge of the paper. Once one of them ducked down in front of me to look up under the paper, but I drew it to my chest and brought my hands closer to my ears, practically wrapping my head in newsprint. “I only wanted to see what Reagan says!” she said irritatedly.