I glanced through the newspaper. The front page headlines were nothing remarkable I must admit, just the same old New York Times stuff that you get any day when there hasn’t been some event of cosmic importance. NIXON, WITH WIFE, TO VISIT 3 CHINESE CITIES IN 7 DAYS. Yes. 10 HURT AS GUNMEN SHOOT WAY INTO AND OUT OF BANK. All right. GROUP OF 10, IN ROME, BEGINS NEGOTIATING REALIGNMENT OF CURRENCIES. Okay. The same old New York Times stuff and no surprises. But the paper was dated Wednesday December 1 and that was a surprise of sorts I guess.
This is only a joke I told my wife.
Who would do such a thing for a joke? To print up a whole newspaper? It’s impossible Bill.
It’s also impossible to get next week’s newspaper delivered this week you know or hadn’t you considered what I said?
She shrugged and I picked up the second section. I opened to page fifty which contained the obituary section and I admit I felt quite queasy for a moment since after all this might not be any joke and what would it be like to find my own name there? To my relief the people whose obituaries I saw were Harry Rogoff Terry Turner Dr. M. A. Feinstein and John Millis. I will not say that the deaths of these people gave me any pleasure but better them than me of course. I even looked at the death notices in small type but there was no listing for me. Next I turned to the sports section and saw KNICKS’ STREAK ENDED, 110-109. We had been talking about going to get tickets for that game at the office and my first thought now was that it isn’t worth bothering to see it. Then I remembered you can bet on basketball games and I knew who was going to win and that made me feel very strange. So also I felt odd to look at the bottom of page sixty-four where they had the results of the racing at Yonkers Raceway and then quickly flip flip flip I was on page sixty-nine and the financial section lay before my eyes. DOW INDEX RISES BY 1.61 TO 831.34 the headline said. National Cash Register was the most active stock closing at 273⁄8 off 1⁄4. Then Eastman Kodak 887⁄8 down 11⁄8. By this time I was starting to sweat very hard and I gave my wife the paper and took off my jacket and tie.
I said how many people have their newspaper?
Everybody on Redbud Crescent she said that’s eleven houses altogether.
And nowhere beyond our street?
No the others got the ordinary paper today we’ve been checking on that.
Who’s we I asked?
Marie and Cindy and I she said. Cindy was the one who noticed about the paper first and called me and then we all got together and talked about it. Bill what are we going to do? We have the stock market prices and everything Bill.
If it isn’t a joke I told her.
It looks like the real paper doesn’t it Bill?
I think I want a drink I said. My hands were shaking all of a sudden and the sweat was still coming. I had to laugh because it was just the other Saturday night some of us were talking about the utter predictable regularity of life out here in the suburbs the dull smooth sameness of it all. And now this. The newspaper from the middle of next week. It’s like God was listening to us and laughed up His sleeve and said to Gabriel or whoever it’s time to send those stuffed shirts on Redbud Crescent a little excitement.
2.
After dinner Jerry Wesley called and said we’re having a meeting at our place tonight Bill can you and your lady come?
I asked him what the meeting was about and he said it’s about the newspaper.
Oh yes I said. The newspaper. What about the newspaper?
Come to the meeting he said I really don’t want to talk about this on the phone.
Of course we’ll have to arrange a sitter Jerry.
No you won’t we’ve already arranged it he told me. The three Fischer girls are going to look after all the kids on the block. So just come over around quarter to nine.
Jerry is an insurance broker very successful at that he has the best house on the Crescent, two-story Tudor style with almost an acre of land and a big paneled rumpus room in the basement. That’s where the meeting took place. We were the seventh couple to arrive and soon after us the Maxwells the Bruces and the Thomasons came in. Folding chairs were set out and Cindy Wesley had done her usual great trays of canapés and such and there was a lot of liquor, self- service at the bar. Jerry stood up in front of everybody and grinned and said I guess you’ve all been wondering why I called you together this evening. He held up his copy of the newspaper. From where I was sitting I could make out only one headline clearly it was 10 HURT AS GUNMEN SHOOT WAY INTO AND OUT OF BANK but that was enough to enable me to recognize it as the newspaper.
Jerry said did all of you get a copy of this paper today?
Everybody nodded.
You know Jerry said that this paper gives us some extraordinary opportunities to improve our situation in life. I mean if we can accept it as the real December 1 edition and not some kind of fantastic hoax then I don’t need to tell you what sort of benefits we can get from it, right?
Sure Bob Thomason said but what makes anybody think it isn’t a hoax? I mean next week’s newspaper who could believe that?
Jerry looked at Mike Nesbit. Mike teaches at Columbia Law and is more of an intellectual than most of us.
Mike said well of course the obvious conclusion is that somebody’s playing a joke on us. But have you looked at the newspaper closely? Every one of those stories has been written in a perfectly legitimate way. There aren’t any details that ring false. It isn’t like one of those papers where the headlines have been cooked up but the body of the text is an old edition. So we have to consider the probabilities. Which sounds more fantastic? That someone would take the trouble of composing an entire fictional edition of the Times setting it in type printing it and having it delivered or that through some sort of fluke of the fourth dimension we’ve been allowed a peek at next week’s newspaper? Personally I don’t find either notion easy to believe but I can accept fourth-dimensional hocus-pocus more readily than I can the idea of a hoax. For one thing unless you’ve had a team the size of the Times’ own staff working on this newspaper it would take months and months to prepare it and there’s no way that anybody could have begun work on the paper more than a few days in advance because there are things in it that nobody could have possibly known as recently as a week ago. Like the Phase Two stuff and the fighting between India and Pakistan.
But how could we get next week’s newspaper Bob Thomason still wanted to know?
I can’t answer that said Mike Nesbit. I can only reply that I am willing to accept it as genuine. A miracle if you like.
So am I said Tim McDermott and a few others said the same.
We can make a pile of money out of this thing said Dave Bruce.
Everybody began to smile in a strange strained way. Obviously everybody had looked at the stock market stuff and the racetrack stuff and had come to the same conclusions.
Jerry said there’s one important thing we ought to find out first. Has anybody here spoken about this newspaper to anybody who isn’t currently in this room?
People said nope and uh-uh and not me.
Good said Jerry. I propose we keep it that way. We don’t notify the Times and we don’t tell Walter Cronkite and we don’t even let our brother-in-law on Dogwood Lane know, right? We just put our newspapers away in a safe place and quietly do whatever we want to do about the information we’ve got. Okay? Let’s put that to a vote. All in favor of stamping this newspaper top secret raise your right hand.
Twenty-two hands went up.
Good said Jerry. That includes the kids you realize. If you let the kids know anything they’ll want to bring the paper to school for show and tell for Christ’s sake. So cool it you hear?
Sid Fischer said are we going to work together on exploiting this thing or do we each act independently?
Independently said Dave Bruce.
Right independently said Bud Maxwell.
It went all around the room that way. The only one who wanted some sort of committee system was Charlie Harris. Charlie has bad luck in the stock m
arket and I guess he was afraid to take any risks even with a sure thing like next week’s paper. Jerry called for a vote and it came out ten to one in favor of individual enterprise. Of course if anybody wants to team up with anybody else I said there’s nothing stopping anybody.
As we started to adjourn for refreshments Jerry said remember you only have a week to make use of what you’ve been handed. By the first of December this is going to be just another newspaper and a million other people will have copies of it. So move fast while you’ve got an advantage.
3.
The trouble is when they give you only next week’s paper you don’t ordinarily have a chance to make a big killing in the market. I mean stocks don’t generally go up fifty per cent or eighty per cent in just a few trading sessions. The really broad swings take weeks or months to develop. Still and all I figured I could make out all right with the data I had. For one thing there evidently was going to be a pretty healthy rally over the next few days. According to the afternoon edition of the Post that I brought home with me the market had been off seven on the 22nd, closing with the Dow at 803.15, the lowest all year. But the December 1 Times mentioned “`a stunning two-day advance” and the average finished at 831.34 on the 30th. Not bad. Then too I could work on margin and other kinds of leverage to boost my return. We’re going to make a pile out of this I told my wife.
If you can trust that newspaper she said.
I told her not to worry. When we got home from Jerry’s I spread out the Post and the Times in the den and started hunting for stocks that moved up at least ten percent between November 22 and November 30. This is the chart I made up:
Stock Nov 22 close Nov 30 high
Levitz Furniture 891⁄2 1033⁄4
Bausch & Lomb 133 149
Natomas 451⁄4 57
Disney 99 1163⁄4
EG&G 191⁄4 233⁄4
Spread your risk Bill I told myself. Don’t put all your eggs in one basket. Even if the newspaper was phony I couldn’t get hurt too badly if I bought all five. So at half past nine the next morning I phoned my broker and told him I wanted to do some buying in the margin account at the opening. He said don’t be in a hurry Bill the market’s in lousy shape. Look at yesterday there were 201 new lows this market’s going to be under 750 by Christmas. You can see from this that he’s an unusual kind of broker since most of them will never try to discourage you from placing an order that’ll bring them a commission. But I said no I’m playing a hunch I want to go all out on this and I put in buys on Levitz Bausch Natomas Disney and EG&G. I used the margin right up to the hilt and then some. Okay I told myself if this works out the way you hope it will you’ve just bought yourself a vacation in Europe and a new Chrysler and a mink for the wife and a lot of other goodies. And if not? If not you just lost yourself a hell of a lot of money Billy boy.
4.
Also I made some use out of the sports pages.
At the office I looked around for bets on the Knicks vs. the SuperSonics next Tuesday at the Garden. A couple of guys wondered why I was interested in action so far ahead but I didn’t bother to answer and finally I got Eddie Martin to take the Knicks by eleven points. Also I got Marty Felks to take Milwaukee by eight over the Warriors that same night. Felks thinks Abdul-Jabbar is the best center the game ever had and he’ll always bet the Bucks but my paper had it that the Warriors would cop it, 106-103. At lunch with the boys from Leclair & Anderson I put down $250 with Butch Hunter on St Louis over the Giants on Sunday. Next I stopped off at the friendly neighborhood Off-track Betting Office and entered a few wagers on the races at Aqueduct. My handy guide to the future told me that the Double paid $52.40 and the third Exacta paid $62.20, so I spread a little cash on each. Too bad there were no $2,500 payoffs that day but you can’t be picky about your miracles can you?
5.
Tuesday night when I got home I had a drink and asked my wife what’s new and she said everybody on the block had been talking about the newspaper all day and some of the girls had been placing bets and phoning their brokers. A lot of the women here play the market and even the horses though my wife is not like that, she leaves the male stuff strictly to me.
What stocks were they buying I asked?
Well she didn’t know the names. But a little while later Joni Bruce called up for a recipe and my wife asked her about the market and Joni said she had bought Winnebago Xerox and Transamerica. I was relieved at that because I figured it might look really suspicious if everybody on Redbud Crescent suddenly phoned in orders the same day for Levitz Bausch Disney Natomas and EG&G. On the other hand what was I worrying about nobody would draw any conclusions and if anybody did we could always say we had organized a neighborhood investment club. In any case I don’t think there’s any law against people making stock market decisions on the basis of a peek at next week’s newspaper. Still and all who needs publicity and I was glad we were all buying different stocks.
I got the paper out after dinner to check out Joni’s stocks. Sure enough Winnebago moved up from 331⁄4 to 381⁄8, Xerox from 1053⁄4 to 1117⁄8, and Transamerica from 147⁄8 to 17. I thought it was dumb of Joni to bother with Xerox getting only a six percent rise since it’s the percentages where you pay off but Winnebago was up better than ten percent and Transamerica close to twenty percent. I wished I had noticed Transamerica at least although no sense being greedy, my own choices would make out all right.
Something about the paper puzzled me. The print looked a little blurry in places and on some pages I could hardly read the words. I didn’t remember any blurry pages. Also the paper it’s printed on seemed a different color, darker grey, older-looking. I compared it with the newspaper that came this morning and the December I issue was definitely darker. A paper shouldn’t get old-looking that fast, not in two days.
I wonder if something’s happening to the paper I said to my wife.
What do you mean?
Like it’s deteriorating or anyway starting to change.
Anything can happen said my wife. It’s like a dream you know and in dreams things change all the time without warning.
6.
Wednesday November 24. I guess we just have to sweat this thing out so far the market in general isn’t doing much one way or the other. This afternoon’s Post gives the closing prices there was a rally in the morning but it all faded by the close and the Dow is down to 798.63. However my own five stocks all have had decent upward moves Tues and Wed so maybe I shouldn’t worry. I have four points profit in Bausch already two in Natomas five in Levitz two in Disney three-quarters in EG&G and even though that’s a long way from the quotations in the Dec 1 newspaper it’s better than having losses, also there’s still that “stunning two- day advance” due at the end of the month. Maybe I’m going to make out all right. Winnebago Transamerica and Xerox are also up a little bit. Market’s closed tomorrow on account of Thanksgiving.
7.
Thanksgiving Day. We went to the Nesbits in the afternoon. It used to be that people spent Thanksgiving with their own kin their aunts uncles grandparents cousins et cetera but you can’t do that out here in a new suburb where everybody comes from someplace far away so we eat the turkey with neighbors instead. The Nesbits invited the Fischers the Harrises the Thomasons and us with all the kids of course too. A big noisy gathering. The Fischers came very late so late that we were worried and thinking of sending someone over to find out what was the matter. It was practically time for the turkey when they showed up and Edith Fischer’s eyes were red and puffy from crying.
My God my God she said I just found out my older sister is dead.
We started to ask the usual meaningless consoling questions like was she a sick woman and where did she live and what did she die of? And Edith sobbed and said I don’t mean she’s dead yet I mean she’s going to die next Tuesday.
Next Tuesday Tammy Nesbit asked? What do you mean I don’t understand how you can know that now. And then she thought a moment and she did understand and so did al
l the rest of us. Oh Tammy said the newspaper.
The newspaper yes Edith said. Sobbing harder.
Edith was reading the death notices Sid Fischer explained God knows why she was bothering to look at them just curiosity I guess and all of a sudden she lets out this terrible cry and says she sees her sister’s name. Sudden passing, a heart attack.
Her heart is weak Edith told us. She’s had two or three bad attacks this year.
Lois Thomason went to Edith and put her arms around her the way Lois does so well and said there there Edith it’s a terrible shock to you naturally but you know it must have been inevitable sooner or later and at least the poor woman isn’t suffering any more.
But don’t you see Edith cried. She’s still alive right now maybe if I phone and say go to the hospital right away they can save her? They might put her under intensive care and get ready for the attack before it even comes. Only I can’t say that can I? Because what can I tell her? That I read about her death in next week’s newspaper? She’ll think I’m crazy and she’ll laugh and she won’t pay any attention to me. Or maybe she’ll get very upset and drop dead right on the spot all on account of me. What can I do oh God what can I do?
You could say it was a premonition my wife suggested. A very vivid dream that had the ring of truth to you. If your sister puts any faith at all in things like that maybe she’ll decide it can’t hurt to see her doctor and then—
No Mike Nesbit broke in you mustn’t do any such thing Edith. Because they can’t save her. No way. They didn’t save her when the time came.
The time hasn’t come yet said Edith.
So far as we’re concerned said Mike the time has already come because we have the newspapers that describe the events of November 30 in the past tense. So we know your sister is going to die and to all intents and purposes is already dead. It’s absolutely certain because it’s in the newspaper and if we accept the newspaper as authentic then it’s a record of actual events beyond any hope of changing.
Something Wild is Loose: The Collected Stories of Robert Silverberg, Volume Three Page 41
