Three by Finney Page 3

  In the living room, coldly ignored by what had once been my radiant laughing bride, I set the drinks on the end table, walked behind the davenport, and gripped Hetty’s chin between thumb and forefinger. Her magazine dropped, and I instantly inserted the tip of the screwdriver between her clenched indignant teeth, pried open her mouth, picked up a glass, and tried to pour in some booze. She started to laugh, spilling some down her front, and I grinned, handing her the glass, and picked up mine. Sitting down beside her, I saluted Hetty with my glass, then took a delightful sip, and as it hurried to my sluggish bloodstream I could feel the happy corpuscles dive in, laughing and shouting, and once again the Bennell household was about as happy as it ever got lately. But you see what I mean: these days the journey through life was like walking a greased tightrope.

  We had dinner, and Hetty asked me what had happened at the office that day. I told her, and her brows rose frequently in interest, lips forming occasional moues of surprise and delight, ears hearing not a damned word. I asked about her day, turning the little volume control in my brain so that her voice, describing her adventures in the supermarket and her phone conversation with Jenny, receded to a murmur. For dessert we had more of the custard we’d had last night; it had shrunk a little so that the surface was now cracked like a drying mud flat, and the level had fractionally dropped leaving a tiny high-tide mark of darkening custard skin.

  While Hetty did the dishes, I went down the hall to Nate Rockoski’s apartment for about half an hour, came back, sat down before the television, and slowly, at intervals of from one to three seconds, clicked the remote past one channel after another. On the first, two cars, one chasing the other, sailed over the crest of a steep city street, soaring fourteen feet into the air, and I clicked on before the first hit the pavement. A cowboy in a 1931 black-and-white movie with funny sound, whose two-tone shirt complete with pearl buttons had been cunningly painted on his bare torso, said, “Here in Dodge—” Joan Rivers said, “Shit,” getting a huge laugh followed by a standing ovation. Forty zebras stood grazing in the high grass of PBS. A pair of cars, one chasing the other, came sailing over the crest— A giant athlete took a sip of beer, then smiled adoringly at his upraised glass. A beautiful child holding her teddy bear and smiling charmingly, told me how much nicer “Mummy” was now that she’d switched hemorrhoid remedies. A plateful of something looking hot, steaming, and revolting, enlarged to fill the screen, and I clicked, and watched the world of television shrink to a blazing atom, and I wondered as always what made it do that.

  Hetty said, “Ben, we’ve got to decide which bills to pay this month. I can’t get your other suit cleaned till we pay the cleaner’s, and we need a new—”

  “I know, I know,” I said, “but not now. Let’s keep tonight gay and carefree, our troubles forgotten: Okay?”

  So we did: Hetty got out her book from the rental library, reading fast and skipping a lot, because it cost twenty-five cents a day; and I lay down on the davenport to look through a magazine that had come in the mail that morning: the Scientific American, which I like even though I don’t understand a word of it. Time passed, during which we occasionally glanced up while turning a page to smile at one another. After an interval which I could have predicted within seven seconds, Hetty said, “Anything interesting?” nodding at my magazine, showing an interest in her husband’s hobbies.

  I said, “Yeah,” and turned back a couple pages. “They now think the universe is neither expanding nor contracting, but stretching sideways so that we’re all a lot wider than we used to be. We don’t notice because everything else has stretched in proportion. It’s called ‘The Funhouse-Mirror Theory of the Universe,’ and recent observations of distant galax—”

  “Fascinating.” Hetty turned her book to glance at the back of the book jacket and the photo of the bearded author who was looking thoughtful, angry and intelligent all at the same time. “Anything else?”

  “Scientists think homing pigeons navigate from a set of rough calculations based on a birdlike table of logarithms. They’re very simple, of course, carried to only three decimal places, and that funny way they keep ducking their heads when they walk means they’re counting. There’s an interesting set of graphs—”

  “Amazing, absolutely amazing, the way they train animals.” She held up her book. “Have you read this?”

  “No. There’s another article says all the infinite number of other possible worlds may actually exist; the world as it would be if Napoleon had won at Waterloo exists somewhere or other right along with this one. Or if old Dad Hitler, walking along the street kicking a tin can, had turned left instead of right, he’d never have met Moms, and little Adolf wouldn’t have been born. That world exists, too; an infinite number of alternate worlds, some different in enormous ways, some in only the most trivial. You exist in those just as you do in this one, except that maybe the drugstore you go to is painted green instead of brown, or—”

  “Darling, since you aren’t reading, could you get me a Coke?”

  “Sure,” I said, tossing my magazine high in the air; and smiling charmingly, I went out to the kitchen, finished off Hetty with a few fast chops, then came back to the living room with a cool refreshing drink for each of us, mine of a slightly different color.

  Then it was bedtime, and the day ended as it had begun, with automation taking over, the dial set at X-3. Lift the lid of our tiny apartment, and watch us trundle along the slotted pathways into the bedroom, like windup toys. The concealed gears revolving, tiny motor humming, I hang tie in closet, turn jerkily to dresser, bring out wallet, lay it on dresser top. Hetty’s tiny metal palm pats mouth as hinged lower jaw opens in yawn, other hand moving to zipper in skirt. I take soiled handkerchief from pocket, drop it without looking into wicker clothes hamper by door, little painted face expressionless. Hand takes change from pants pocket, lays it on dresser beside wallet.

  Suddenly the slotted pathways disappeared and the little figures turned real. Because, poking at the coins, examining them as I did every night, I said, “Hey, look! Here’s a Woodrow Wilson dime!” I picked it up for a closer look; it had a profile of Wilson, and was minted in 1958.

  “Why must you look at every last coin in your pocket? Every single night?”

  I glanced in the mirror; I knew exactly where Hetty would be in the room, and precisely what she’d be doing: sitting on the edge of the bed in bra and panties, peeling her stockings off. “Just habit,” I answered, shrugging. “Started when I was a kid. There was an ad used to run in American Boy magazine that said, ‘Coin Collecting can be FUN! Why don’t you start, too? Tonight!’ It said 1913 Liberty-head nickels were worth thousands; I used to watch for them, and I guess I’m still looking.”

  “Well, you never used to,” Hetty said irritably. “Not when we were first married.” For a moment, motionless, we looked at each other in the mirror, our eyes meeting. Then I looked away. I wondered what was going to happen to us, knowing that something had to give, and soon; that you don’t reach your golden wedding anniversary on sheer willpower alone.

  •

  CHAPTER THREE

  •

  “You!” said the mirror the moment I closed the bathroom door next morning, which was Saturday.

  “I didn’t ask!” I yelled, and tried to duck, but the big Hand caught me smack on the forehead, knocking me back against a towel rack. I saw in the mirror that this time the word stamped on my forehead was a screeching fluorescent red. But it still said FAILURE, and that morning, with the help of Nate Rockoski, I proved it was as true of me creatively as I’d demonstrated maritally and businesswise.

  Nate and I had met while waiting for the building elevator in the morning; we lived on the same floor. And sometimes we were on the same bus coming home at night and we talked. He was a short, dark, skinny, round-shouldered, homely, nearsighted, untidy man in his late twenties, with big round black eyes behind round black glasses. Consult your copy of Who’s Who, and on page 1800, between Rockefeller
, Nelson, and Rockwell, Norman, you will not find Rockoski, Nathan. If you did, the entry would read, or ought to: Born 1958, unwillingly and of reluctant parents, on West 41 Street, NYC. Clubs: none. Accomplishments: trivial. Outstanding characteristic: greed.

  Nate and I shared this last trait, we’d discovered early in our acquaintance, along with semipoverty and a desperate feeling that there must be more to life than this. As Nate walked to work to save bus fare, the knots in his shoelaces cleverly hidden under the lacing-flaps of his shoes, where they pressed on his insteps, his mind was filled with stories he’d read in Reader’s Digest, and Popular Mechanics. These were of men home with a cold, for example, who’d sat watching a wife hang up clothes to dry, then whittled out a new kind of clothespin, patented it, and retired at the age of thirty. Just open your eyes and look around you, these articles preached; a little effort, a little ingenuity, was all it took! And Nate had convinced himself, half convinced me, and fractionally convinced our wives—by a figure so small that eleven zeroes followed the decimal before the first actual digit—that we could do it, too.

  So far, working on weekends to the encouraging jeers of our wives, we’d produced several marvels. One was what would apparently be a framed color photograph hanging on a living-room wall—Nate was an inept camera bug—and which actually moved; a pleasant view of a lake, for example, in which waves flowed and trees stirred in the breeze, to the amazement of guests. But since this required a super 8 projector, concealed in the wall and plastered over, continually projecting a looped film onto a mirror also hidden in the wall and which would right-angle the beam onto the back of a ground-glass pane set in the living-room wall and edged with picture-frame molding, we had certain reservations about its practicality. As Nate put it, there were “a few bugs to work out.”

  But we did produce—using thin nylon balloon-cloth, epoxy glue, and part of the works from a rechargeable seltzer bottle—an inflatable umbrella. It looked a lot, too much, like a lopsided mushroom; our best customers, Hetty said, would be elves. But it compressed as planned into a fist-sized wad of light cloth wrapped around a CO2 cartridge in the plastic handle; milady to carry it in a corner of her purse, all set for a rainy day. Nate’s wife Miriam carried it, ready for trial by genuine rain, and on the first day—bright, clear and sunny—as she was being shoved and jostled in a crowded Madison Avenue bus, the cartridge went off and the cloth handle, inflating steadily, forced its way out of her purse like a snake from a Hindu basket, the cartridge hissing ominously: a pale-white snake with rigor mortis, perfectly straight and upright. A couple women screamed, there was a considerable scramble, the bus driver set his hand brake and sat with arms folded, and Mrs. Rockoski walked home and didn’t eat much for several days. But Nate, the fanatic gleam of failure blazing in his eyes, carried on, dragging me with him.

  Now, at nine sharp, Saturday, Nate rang our bell, and I answered it, still chewing a piece of breakfast toast; Hetty was out doing the weekly food-shopping. Balanced on Nate’s head and held there with one arm were two large semicircular frameworks of light wood, and under his other arm was a box of varnished wood with brass fittings, which Nate had found in a pawnshop and bought for six bucks. We’d worked in his living room last night; now it was my turn; I’d already rolled back the rug. I said, “What happened to last night’s? They turn out?”

  “Yeah, they’re drying; I’ll get them soon as we’re through. My god, they’re big; I had to project them fifteen feet. Will you get these damn things off my head?”

  I stepped out into the hall and lifted the two curved wooden frames from Nate’s head. First tilting them sideways to work them through the door, I carried them to the center of the living room and set them on their edges. Then I pushed them together to form an open cylinder four feet high and seven feet across. Tacked onto the upper rim of this cylinder was a wide-gauge toy railroad track, and Nate fitted the track joints together to complete the circle. Then he fastened two hook-and-eye door catches, which kept the two halves of the big circle from moving apart.

  Working like circus roustabouts setting up Ring 2 under the Big Top for the eleven-hundredth time, I carried my swivel chair from the bedroom and set it inside the raised circle of track, while Nate took down from the hall-closet shelf a toy locomotive I’d had as a kid. This had been mailed to me by my mother, along with the track and some cars, because she thought Hetty would like to have it: a thought only a mother could have. I plugged in the transformer cord; Nate fitted the locomotive wheels to the track. Then he unhooked the hinged front of the varnished box and pulled out the red-leather accordion bellows and the brass-mounted lens of an ancient camera. Three of my toy flatcars hooked together were tightly fastened to the underside of the camera with tape that ran up and over the camera’s top. On our knees, we fitted the wheels of the little cars to the track, and I hooked the head car to the locomotive; now the camera lens pointed to the center of the raised circle of track. Nate adjusted the lens, setting it as though he knew what he was doing, while I watched closely as though I did, too.

  “Okay, all set,” Nate said, and I climbed into the wooden enclosure and sat down in the swivel chair. As I sat, my head was exactly in line with the camera lens. Nate pushed the transformer lever, and the little train strained, trying to move, making an electric groan of protest. Nate gave it an assisting push, and it slowly began moving. He eased the control lever all the way open and began trotting around the wooden trestle, keeping pace with the train as it gathered speed, bent forward at the waist, hands ready to catch the camera if it toppled.

  He made two full circuits of the track, while I turned in my chair, watching. He yelled, “Okay! Full speed! Hold your breath!” and I braked the chair to a stop, drew a deep breath, then sat motionless, absolutely rigid and unblinking. Still trotting beside the camera, Nate pushed a control and the camera began the slow buzzing of a time exposure. As it buzzed, Nate ran with it around the track, and a long rectangular metal film-holder moved slowly through the camera from left to right, while I sat motionless and staring, holding my breath.

  The circuit completed, the buzzing stopped; Nate shoved the transformer lever, and the little train with its giant camera stopped dead. “Okay, now method two,” Nate said. “I’d do this one myself,” he added apologetically, “but we built the track for your height. Start shoving.”

  Pushing against the floor with one leg, I began revolving my chair. I shoved again, slightly increasing the speed, and—keeping my face and upper body rigid—I maintained the speed with regular rhythmic thrusts against the floor. After a couple revolutions, I said, “How’s the speed?”

  Nate was bent over the camera, fitting in a new film holder, and he looked up to watch me turn in my chair through another full revolution. “Seemed a little slow,” he said. “Let me time it.” I speeded up a little, and Nate, eyes moving between watch and me, timed a turn. “Still slow. Just a tiny bit faster.” I pushed against the floor a little impatiently. Nate timed me through another turn, then said, “A shade too fast now. Slow it just a—”

  “Damn it, Nate, I’ll throw up again!”

  “Well, that’s close enough,” he said quickly. “Maintain speed!” The little train remaining motionless this time, Nate started the camera, the buzzing began again, and I revolved before the camera, one leg surreptitiously pushing against the floor, eyes half closed, face stiff.

  The buzzing stopped just about as I completed the circle, and Nate said, “Nearly perfect! Step it up just a tiny bit next shot.” He began changing plates, then looked up at me. “You can stop while I’m changing film.”

  I kept on pushing against the floor, slowly turning, my eyes squeezed shut. “No, it gets worse if I stop.”

  Nate finished changing plates. “Okay!” He started the camera, the buzzing began, and I revolved, my eyes held open, wide and staring. “Fine, great,” Nate said as the buzzing stopped, and I snapped my eyes shut. “Now just one more for safety.”

  “Nate, I can’t! I get
dizzy dialing a phone!”

  “Okay, just sit there and rest; I’ll go get yesterday’s.” Nate lifted off camera and train, yanked the transformer cord, unhooked the two raised half-circles of track, and carried them out and down the hall to his apartment.

  I stood up, and—a hand over my eyes, looking through my fingers at the floor—took two steps toward the davenport to lie down, stood swaying for a second or two, then whirled around and made it back to my chair. I dropped onto it to sit motionless, elbows on my knees, a hand over my eyes, the other across my mouth.

  I opened my eyes for a moment when Nate came back; he was carrying an enormous roll of paper, a glossy photograph as tall as he was. He hooked a curled end of the huge print around a chair, and as I closed my eyes again he was walking backward across the room, unrolling the rest of it. Then, very gently as though I were asleep or something, he called, “Ben? What do you think?” and I opened my eyes.

  “Oh, god,” I said, and closed them again, “it looks as though my whole head had been scalped!”

  “I know,” Nate said mournfully. “You ought to see Miriam’s.” He let go the edge of the big print, and the natural springy curl of the paper caused it to skid upright across the wood floor, revolving itself into a standing cylinder, and revealing behind it a second giant print of Nate’s wife, stretched between his hands and the chair. Again I looked.

  “Will you cut it out, Nate!? I’ll be sick!”

  He let go, and the enormous photograph revolved across the floor, curling itself into a cylinder, stopping beside the first one. I got up, and we walked over and stood looking at them. I said, “Let’s quit kidding ourselves, Nate; they’re terrible, and the new ones won’t be any better. It’s a lousy idea, and no advertiser is ever going to pay us a dime for it.”