Uncommon Type

by Tom Hanks

  “You’re the boss?” Virginia asked. “Of what?”

  “Of all the people I get to boss around.”

  “Since you are now in the presence of a couple of VIPs,” Carmen said with a laugh, “may I treat you to some pie?”

  “I happen to love pie.”

  “Let’s go to Borden’s!” Virginia piped. “We can see Elsie the Cow.”

  The three of them sat together with ten-cents-a-slice pie, cut into perfectly measured wedges. Carmen and Bert had nickel-a-cup coffees. Virginia had a glass of milk and talked about what marvels the year 1960 would bring, according to Futurama’s predictions.

  “I hope I don’t still live in the Bronx in 1960,” she said. Virginia’s family lived in an apartment on the Parkway with her mother (Carmen’s sister) and father, who was a butcher. She was in the fifth grade, belonged to the Radio Club, and wanted to be a teacher when she grew up, if she could afford college. Carmen shared a fourth-floor walk-up on East Thirty-Eighth Street with two roommates who worked as secretaries at an insurance company. She was the bookkeeper in a handbag factory downtown. All of them agreed that the World’s Fair of 1939 was even better in real life than in the newsreels.

  “Is your wife in New York, Mr. Allenberry?” Bert wondered how Carmen knew he was married, then realized he was wearing the wedding ring provided by Chronometric Adventures. He’d put it on by habit.

  “Ah, no,” he said. “Cindee is with friends. In Cuba.”

  “That’s where Mom and Dad went on their honeymoon,” Virginia said. “I came along not long after!”

  “Virginia!” Carmen could not believe her niece. “Be proper!”

  “It’s true!” Virginia said. She had eaten all her pie filling, saving the crust for last.

  “Are you married, Carmen?” Bert asked. “I’m sorry, I don’t even know your last name.”

  “Perry,” she said. “Carmen Perry. So rude of me. And, no. I’m not married.”

  Bert knew that already, as no ring rode her left hand.

  “Mama says if you don’t find a man soon, there’ll be none left for you!” Virginia said. “You’re almost twenty-seven!”

  “You hush,” Carmen hissed, reaching over with her fork to stab the best piece of crust, then popping it into her mouth.

  “You dirty rat!” Virginia laughed.

  Dabbing her lips with a napkin, Carmen smiled at Bert. “It’s true. I’m the last hen in the barnyard.”

  Carmen was only twenty-six? Bert could have sworn she was older.

  After the pie, they looked at Elsie the Cow, then toured the Academy of Sports. After watching films of trick water-skiers, Bert looked at his vintage wristwatch. It was almost 6:00 p.m.

  “I really do have to leave now.”

  “It’s a shame you can’t stay to see the fountains in the light show,” Carmen said. “It’s so lovely, they say.”

  “And there’s fireworks every single night,” Virginia piped up. “Like it’s the Fourth of July all summer long.”

  “Virginia and I have a spot picked out to watch.” Carmen’s eyes were on Bert. “Are you sure you can’t stay?”

  “I wish I could.” Bert truly wished he could. Carmen was as lovely a woman as he had ever seen. Her lips were not too thin, her smile was firm and mischievous, and her eyes were hazel, emerald green, and tinted brown.

  “Thank you for a great time!” Virginia said. “We were VIPs!”

  “Yes, thank you, Mr. Allenberry.” Carmen offered her hand. “You’ve been very kind and a lot of fun.”

  Bert took Carmen’s hand, her left hand, the hand with no wedding ring. “I’ve had a grand day.”

  In the cab on the drive back into Manhattan, Bert could almost smell Carmen’s perfume—vanilla-scented lilac.

  —

  After one too many encores by the holographic Rolling Stones, Kick Adler-Johnson’s birthday party had gone until four in the morning. Cindee was now asleep in bed, with the door closed and the blackout shades tightened down. Bert, though, was up at eight, showered and dressed, with a coffee in his hand. He had a breakfast of Mixed-Juice and an In-One protein roll, then ordered a SoloCar as he rode the elevator down to the street level.

  A moment after confirming his destination as Chronometric Adventures, the car began to drive itself down Fifth Avenue at an algorithmically safe seventeen miles per hour. It crossed town on Fifty-Second, bypassing the Times Square Dome, then made three left turns before stopping on Eighth Avenue between West Forty-Fourth and West Forty-Fifth Streets.

  Bert exited the car at the building that had been, in reverse order, the Milford Plaza, the Royal Manhattan Hotel, and, in 1939, the Hotel Lincoln. Most of the structure was now a service area for the Dome, which it bordered, as well as offices related to the Times Square Authority.

  Chronometric Adventures was located on floors 9 through 13 of the building, not by choice or convenience, but because of historical flukes and miracles of science. Enough of the building retained the exact architectural lines of its hotel days, and one room in particular, 1114, had miraculously escaped every remodel and renovation since the place opened in 1928. With its dimensions unchanged, the room possessed the Volume Authenticity needed to echo—with pinpoint accuracy—a ripple in the Time-Space Continuum, an arc intersecting with June 8, 1939. The massive pipes, cables, and Plasma-Grids needed for Time Travel had been retrofitted to the exterior of what had been the Hotel Lincoln, above, below, and leading into room 1114; the equipment was filled with about a million of the Shuffle-Access Digital Valve-Relays invented by Bert Allenberry.

  He took the lift up to the ninth floor, hearing a feminine voice announce “Chronometric Adventures” just before the door opened. The company’s motto—The Past Is Important to Us—was inscribed on the wall, and, under it, Howard Frye was waiting.

  “Mr. Allenberry. Good to see you again.” Howard had been the facilitator of every one of Bert’s adventures. “I trust you are well?”

  “Dandy. You?”

  “Just over a cold. My son brought it home from school.”

  “One advantage of not having kids,” Bert said. Cindee had not once said anything about wanting a child, L’Audrey before her would have made as horrible a mother as she did a mate, Mary-Lynn very much wanted to conceive but when a doctor told her that Bert’s low sperm count made the biology highly unlikely, she looked to other men for satisfaction. She had remarried and quickly popped out two girls and a boy. His first marriage, to Barb, produced a baby girl. But the divorce was so filled with rancor and enmity that the only contacts Bert had with his daughter—once she turned eighteen—were occasional dinners in London, where she lived far too comfortably thanks to his support checks.

  “Shall we get you to Pre-Ad?” Howard asked.

  “Time’s a-wasting.”

  “Funny, but time is actually a-plenty.” Howard chuckled.

  In the Pre-Adventure room, Bert was rechecked by the Medical Team. His fluids were sampled and scanned, his heart registered, and the twelve other physical properties that are affected by Progression/Reprogression were tested. He was given the five injections that would bolster his body on the molecular level and the antinausea meds to ease those initial moments of 1939. He removed his clothes as well as his rings, watch, and the thin gold chain he wore around his neck. No items from today could survive the trip to yesterday, as their molecules could irreconcilably screw up the process. Once naked, he put on a robe with the Chronometric Adventures logo and sat through the pro-forma legal warnings.

  First there was the video—slick and snappy—warning of dangers and explaining the protocols. Then came the reading material, which repeated—word for word—what had just been said. Bert already knew a person could die during Reprogression, though no one ever had; an adventurer had options for experiences—one could spend the day doing anything he or she wished—but none when it came to certain key procedures. With his thumbprint, Bert acknowledged—once again—that he understood and agreed to it all. Th
en Howard came into the Pre-Ad room with the large shake-like drink that would protect his digestive tract from pesky germs, circa 1939.

  “Bring on the shoe leather, Howard,” Bert said, toasting his glass at him.

  “By now you should be able to recite this to me,” said Howard, clearing his throat. As Bert sipped the blueberry-flavored liquid, Howard put into simple terms the conditions Bert had already agreed to. “You have voluntarily chosen to have Chronometric Adventures provide physical time Reprogression to this very location on June 8, 1939, for a period of no more and no less than twenty-two hours as measured by standard recognized time. From the same Volume, at 7:00 p.m. of June 8, 1939, you progress back to this place on this very day. You understand that, don’t you?”

  Bert nodded. “Yep.”

  “Chronometric Adventures in no way claims your holiday in the past is free of risk. Your adventure is governed by the same laws of physics, rules, and behavior as we know to be common.”

  “I fall down, I break a leg. I get punched in the nose, it’s broken.”

  “Indeed. You will be unsupervised during those twenty-two hours. We suggest you adhere to the Agenda we have prepared with you. Another day at the World’s Fair, yes?”

  “You should go yourself, Howard.”

  Howard laughed. “Being African American, 1939 New York doesn’t hold the same wonder for me.”

  “I get that,” Bert said. On his trips back in time almost every black face he saw belonged to a porter or a janitor. Though there were black families at the Fair, taking in the same exhibits, dressed for the occasion, they were looking for promises of a future different from his.

  “Should you change plans—like seeing a show or loafing in the park—there is no risk as long as you adhere to the protocols for Progression.”

  “I’m going back to Flushing Meadows. Maybe next time I’ll loaf in the park.” Bert thought of spending a day with Carmen in Central Park and wondered how he could pull that off. Virginia could ride the carousel! They could take in the zoo as it originally looked!

  “Ah, yes. Next time.” Howard called up Bert’s file on his pad. “Mr. Allenberry, I’m afraid you have reached your limit for Reprogression at this C.A. franchise.”

  “What?” Bert still had a third of his shake to finish.

  “Your numbers from the Pre-Ad exam were a bit off from your last trip with us,” Howard said. “You are showing elevated levels of Trillium in your blood and lowered measurements of cellular fluidity.”

  Bert didn’t like the sound of that.

  “Everyone’s constitution is different, Mr. Allenberry. In fact, some of our clients have been allowed only two or three of our packages. Six is going to max you out.”

  “Why?”

  “Molecular dynamics, Mr. Allenberry. The round trip to 1939 is a very long haul for your tissues, your body proteins, your marrow density, and your nerve endings. We can’t run the risk of wearing you out. It’s hypothetically possible a seventh, or even an eighth adventure to the World’s Fair would be safe for you, but our insurance model disallows that. That’s the bad news.”

  Bert was thinking of Carmen, of Virginia, of the three of them eating pie and visiting Elsie the Cow. He would do those things with them just one more time. Bad news, indeed.

  “The good news,” Howard chirped, “is that your Chronometric Adventures don’t have to end in 1939 New York. There’s Nashville in 1961. You could go to the Grand Ole Opry. We have a franchise opening in Gunnison, Colorado—a beautiful cabin in 1979. Not much goes on there, but the views are terrific.”

  Bert had stopped drinking. He was thinking of Carmen, of her vanilla-lilac scent and her hazel eyes.

  “I am sorry, Mr. Allenberry, that’s the way it is. The past is important to us, but your long life is more so.”

  “In that case, I’m going to need something else to take back with me,” Bert said.

  —

  Bert felt the compression suit tighten as all the atoms of room 1114, including his, were jigged up by the mechanics of Chronometric Adventures. He had learned not to panic during Reprogression but still was not used to how cold it got, so cold that he lost all focus, all equilibrium. He knew he was lying on what would become a bed in 1939, but everything was tumbling. He fought to stay awake, alert, to see the actual process of the room reverting in time, but, as before, he passed right out.

  When he felt a pounding headache, he knew he was in 1939 once again. The headaches were brutal but mercifully brief. Bert fought his way out of his compression suit—like a scuba diver’s, one size too small—and sat naked on the edge of the bed, biding his time until his cranium no longer felt the crash of ball-peen hammers.

  As before, the double-breasted suit was hanging in the open closet with shoes and socks on the floor. On a thin wire hanger was a button shirt and tie. Undergarments were in a basket on a chair. On the nightstand were the watch, a wedding band, a signet ring, and the wallet that contained his ID and other items that were accurate for the period and made out of pre–World War II materials. There was cash, a total of fifty dollars in the funny-looking paper currency that was once legal tender. There were heavy coins as well—a half dollar imprinted with a lady holding wheat looking toward the setting sun and ten-cent pieces, called dimes, with the head of the god Mercury. Nickels were worth five cents, and single pennies had real value in 1939.

  He collected the compression suit and locked it in the vintage suitcase on the luggage stand, hiding it until he’d put it back on for Progression. Then he slipped on the vintage watch, already keeping time at three minutes after 9:00 p.m. He put the signet ring on his right hand, but remembered to leave the gold wedding band where it lay.

  He saw the envelope on the desk, which would have his VIP passes for the Fair—he had ordered three for this, his last trip to 1939.

  The window onto Eighth Avenue was open just a crack, allowing evening air to come into a room that had yet to know air-conditioning along with the sounds of traffic from Times Square. Bert wanted to get up, to get dressed and go out into the night, to walk down to East Thirty-Eighth Street, where Carmen lived in an apartment, but his body ached so. Damn the physics! He felt tired, just as before. He lay back on the bed and fell back to sleep, just as before.

  He woke up when dim light was coming through the window and the city was quiet. He felt normal, like he’d taken a Green Tab and slept a healthy ten hours. His watch read ten minutes to seven. It was the morning of June 8, 1939, and he had all of twelve hours to find Carmen and Virginia. He lifted the heavy telephone receiver, pressed the only button on the phone, and was connected to the hotel operator. Once more, he asked for room service. After the same five minutes, a uniformed waiter named Percy was at his door with a tray holding a silver pot of coffee, a pitcher of real cream, cubes of sugar, a glass of water, and the morning edition of the New York Daily Mirror. On five previous mornings, Bert had tipped the waiter a dime, prompting a polite response of “I thank you, Mr. Allenby.” This morning, Bert palmed Percy the half-dollar coin, and the man’s eyed went wide. “Oh, Mr. Allenby, ain’t you flush!”

  Real cream makes coffee a thick, heavenly pleasure. Bert enjoyed the second cup as the water for his shower heated up—with the plumbing of 1939, this took a few minutes. After his scrub, he dressed. He had been taught how to knot his tie, which he thought was a silly thing to wear, but he loved the double-breasted suit that had been tailored for him nearly a century later. The fabrics were from the period, the socks did not have much elastic in them, and the shoes were like gunboats, wide and heavy, but comfortable.

  Riding down in the elevator, Bert again smelled the operator’s hair tonic. He didn’t think it was all that stinky.

  “Lobby, sir,” the elevator operator said as he opened the meshed grate.

  Bert was now familiar with all the smells of the Hotel Lincoln, and he liked them—the cigar smoke mixing with the wool carpets, the flowers being arranged by the black housekeepers, the florid perfume
of the well-dressed ladies heading out for their day in Manhattan. Outside on Eighth Avenue, taxis idled and buses headed uptown, spewing fumes of combusted gasoline.

  On foot, Bert turned right out of the lobby and right again on West Forty-Fifth Street, inhaling the scent of roasted coffee, wafting on a breeze from the Hudson River, from the Maxwell House Coffee factory in New Jersey, coffee that was good to the last drop.

  This morning of June 8, 1939, he’d not take breakfast at the Hotel Astor, with its famous clock and its opulent décor. Instead Bert was going to poke his head into as many nearby coffee shops and cafes as time allowed. Carmen lived only seven blocks away. What if she was nearby, grabbing a quick breakfast before taking the subway to the Bronx to pick up Virginia? Maybe she was sitting in a Broadway diner right now, having coffee and donuts. He could meet her right then and not have to wait all day for that moment on the bench by the Four Freedoms.

  He covered Times Square and the side streets, ducking in and out of cafes and peering through the windows of diners, but there was no sign of her. Reluctantly, he gave up, taking a seat at the counter of a place on Seventh, paying twenty-five cents for a breakfast of eggs, sausage, pancakes, juice, and coffee.

  Bert was leaving a Mercury dime as a tip. “Ma’am,” he said to the uniformed waitress with overpainted lips, “is it possible for me take the subway to the World’s Fair?”

  “Honey,” the waitress said, “it’s the best way to go.” She swept the dime into her apron pocket and gave Bert directions to the IRT line.

  His first ever trip on the subway cost only an Indian head nickel. The car was a jumble of people, who all smelled of something, if only the laundry starch of their freshly pressed clothes. No one was staring at a phone or tablet. Most of the riders read the morning papers—some oversize rectangles of newsprint and ink, others the smaller-formatted tabloids. And there were magazines with pages that held more text than pictures. Many people were smoking, even a few men with cigars and two puffing on pipes. Judging from all the guidebooks and flyers, many passengers were, like Bert, making for the World’s Fair.