The room fell silent. The big man looked thoughtful and startled, as if he had had a sudden pain. Then he stopped moving. He sat without breathing or blinking his eyes. After a moment there was a jerky motion behind him. The girl who was sitting on the arm of the chair got up and moved away. The big man’s dinner jacket split open in the back, and a little man climbed out. He had a perspiring brown face under a shock of black hair. He was a very small man, almost a dwarf, stoop-shouldered and round-backed in a sweaty brown singlet and shorts. He climbed out of the cavity in the big man’s body, and closed the dinner jacket carefully. The big man sat motionless and his face was doughy.
The little man got down, wetting his lips nervously. Hello, Fred, a few people said. “Hello,” Fred called, waving his hand. He was about forty, with a big nose and big soft brown eyes. His voice was cracked and uncertain. “Well, we sure put on a show, didn’t we?”
Sure did, Fred, they said politely. He wiped his brow with the back of his hand. “Hot in there,” he explained, with an apologetic grin. Yes, I guess it must be Fred, they said. People around the outskirts of the crowd were beginning to turn away, form conversational groups; the hum of talk rose higher. “Say, Tim, I wonder if I could have something to drink,” the little man said. “I don’t like to leave him-you know-” He gestured toward the silent big man.
“Sure, Fred, what’ll it be?”
“Oh-you know-a glass of beer?”
Tim brought him a beer in a pilsener glass and he drank it thirstily, his brown eyes darting nervously from side to side. A lot of people were sitting down now; one or two were at the door leaving.
“Well,” the little man said to a passing girl, “Ruthie, that was quite a moment there, when the fishbowl busted, wasn’t it?”
“Huh? Excuse me, honey. I didn’t hear you.” She bent nearer.
“Oh-well, it don’t matter. Nothing.”
She patted him on the shoulder once, and took her hand away. “Well, excuse me, sweetie, I have to catch Robbins before he leaves.” She went on toward the door.
The little man put his beer glass down and sat, twisting his knobby hands together. The bald man and the pop-eyed man were the only ones still sitting near him. An anxious smile flickered on his lips; he glanced at one face, then another. “Well,” he began, “that’s one show under our belts, huh, fellows, but I guess we got to start, you know, thinking about… “
“Listen, Fred,” said the bald man seriously, leaning forward to touch him on the wrist, “why don’t you get back inside?”
The little man looked at him for a moment with sad hound-dog eyes, then ducked his head, embarrassed. He stood up uncertainly, swallowed and said, “Well-” He climbed up on the chair behind the big man, opened the back of the dinner jacket and put his legs in one at a time. A few people were watching him, unsmiling. “Thought I’d take it easy a while,” he said weakly, “but I guess-” He reached in and gripped something with both hands, then swung himself inside. His brown, uncertain face disappeared.
The big man blinked suddenly and stood up. “Well, hey there,” he called, “what’s a matter with this party anyway? Let’s see some life, some action-” Faces were lighting up around him. People began to move in closer. “What I mean, let me hear that beat!”
The big man began clapping his hands rhythmically. The piano took it up. Other people began to clap. “What I mean, are we alive here or just waiting for the wagon to pick us up? How’s that again, can’t hear you!” A roar of pleasure as he cupped his hand to his ear. “Well, come on, let me hear it!” A louder roar. Pete, Pete; a gabble of voices. “I got nothing against Fred,” said the bald man earnestly in the middle of the noise. “I mean for a square he’s a nice guy.” “Know what you mean,” said the pop-eyed man, “I mean like he doesn’t mean it.” “Sure,” said the bald man, “but, Jesus, that sweaty undershirt and all …” Then they both burst out laughing as the big man made a comic face, tongue lolling, eyes crossed. Pete, Pete, Pete; the room was really jumping; it was a great party, and everything was all right far into the night.
THE OTHER WIFE
by Jack Finney
from The Saturday Evening Post
In a recent volume of considerable arrogance, ill-considered opinion, and unconsidering slovenliness of research, a British humorist with pretensions to critical judgment of science fantasy, one Kingsley Amis, refers to the (unnamed) writer of a story entitled “Of Missing Persons” as “an author who has yet to make his name.”
“ ‘Of Missing Persons,’ “ says Mr. Amis, “is one of those things that offer themselves for analysis with an almost suspicious readiness.” I was not able to determine, in the three pages of quotes and comments that followed, just what analysis was being made, or whose readiness for what was under suspicion—but I may have been prejudiced by having read the story, several times, with great enjoyment, when it was included in the first annual volume of SF.
For the benefit of any readers who, like Mr. Amis, are unfamiliar with the author’s work—the name is Finney. Jack Finney. And it has been a familiar one in science-fantasy since Robert Heinlein’s 1951 anthology, “Tomorrow the Stars,” first offered it to the specialty field.
Mr. Finney’s most recent books include The Third level (Rinehart and Dell Book) and The Body Snatchers (Dell First Editions).
“… Will let me know the number of the pattern,” my wife was saying, following me down the hall toward our bedroom, “and I can knit it myself if I get the blocking done.” I think she said blocking, anyway-whatever that means. And I nodded, unbuttoning my shirt as I walked; it had been hot out today, and I was eager to get out of my office clothes. I began thinking about a dark-green eight-thousand-dollar sports car I’d seen during noon hour in that big showroom on Park Avenue.
“… kind of a ribbed pattern with a matching freggel-heggis,” my wife seemed to be saying as I stopped at my dresser. I tossed my shirt on the bed and turned to the mirror, arching my chest.
“… middy collar, batten-barton sleeves with sixteen rows of smeddlycup balderdashes….” Pretty good chest and shoulders, I thought, staring in the mirror; I’m twenty-six years old, kind of thin faced, not bad-looking, not good-looking.
“… dropped hem, doppelganger waist, maroon-green, and a sort of frimble-framble daisystitch….” Probably want two or three thousand bucks down on a car like that, I thought; the payments’d be more than the rent on this whole apartment. I began emptying the change out of my pants pockets, glancing at each of the coins. When I was a kid there used to be an ad in a boys’ magazine; “Coin collecting can be PROFITABLE,” it read, “and FUN too! Why don’t you start TODAY!” It explained that a 1913 Liberty-head nickel-“and many others!”-was worth thousands, and I guess I’m still looking for one.
“So what do you think?” Marion was saying. “You think they’d go well together?”
“Sure.” I nodded at her reflection in my dresser mirror; she stood leaning in the bedroom doorway, arms folded, staring at the back of my head. “They’d look fine.” I brought a dime up to my eyes for a closer look; it was minted in 1958 and had a profile of Woodrow Wilson, and I turned to Marion. “Hey, look,” I said, “here’s a new kind of dime-Woodrow Wilson.” But she wouldn’t look at my hand. She just stood there with her arms folded, glaring at me; and I said, “Now what? What have I done wrong now?” Marion wouldn’t answer, and I walked to my closet and began looking for some wash pants. After a moment I said coaxingly, “Come on, Sweetfeet, what’d I do wrong?”