“Oh!”-she let out a little shriek, and as she ran to the kitchen I actually closed my eyes and sighed with a terrible relief. I didn’t know how I’d walked into this other alternate world, or how I could leave it; but Marion was alive in my mind, while the world around me seemed unreal. In the kitchen I heard the oven door open, heard water run in the sink, then the momentary sizzle of cooking meat; and I walked quickly to the davenport and snatched up my copy of the Sun.
As I raised it to my face, the tap of high heels sounded on thai wood floor just outside the kitchen door. There was silence as they crossed the rug toward me, then the davenport cushion beside me sank; I felt a deliciously warm breath on my cheek, and I had to lower my trembling, rattling newspaper, turn and manage to smile into the sloe eyes of the creature beside me.
Once again-my head slowly shaking in involuntary approval-I had to admire my own good taste; this was not a homely woman. “I turned the oven down,” she murmured. “It might be better to have dinner a little later. When it gets cooler,” she added softly.
I nodded quickly. “Good idea. Paper says it’s the hottest day in five hundred years,” I babbled. “Doctors advise complete immobility.”
But the long-legged beauty beside me wasn’t listening. “So I’m the reason you like to come home, am I?” she breathed into my ear. “It’s been a long time, darling, since you said anything like that.”
“H’mm,” I murmured and nodded frantically at the paper in my hands. “I see they’re going to tear down City Hall,” I muttered wildly, but she was blowing gently in my ear now; then she pulled the Sun from my paralyzed fingers, tossed it over her shoulder and leaned toward me. Marion! I was shrieking silently. Help! Then the raven-haired girl beside me had her arms around my neck, and I simply did not know what to do; I thought of pretending to faint, claiming sunstroke.
Then with the blinding force of a revelation it came to me. Through no fault of my own, I was in another world, another life. The girl in my arms-somehow that’s where she was now-was singing softly, almost inaudibly. It took me a moment to recognize the tune; then finally I knew, finally I recognized this magnificent girl. “Just a Japanese Sand-man,” she was singing softly through her lovely nose, and now I remembered fully everything about the alternate world I was in. I hadn’t broken off with this girl at all-not in this particular world! Matter of fact, I suddenly realized, I’d never even met Marion in this world. It was even possible, it occurred to me now, that she’d never been born. In any case, this was the girl I’d married in this world. No denying it, this was my wife here beside me with her arms around my neck; we’d been married three years, in fact. And now I knew what to do-perfectly well. Oh, boy! What a wonderful time Vera and I had in the months that followed. My work at the office was easy-no strain at all. I seemed to have an aptitude for it and, just as I’d always suspected, I made rather more money at Enterprises, Incorporated, than that Serv-Eez outfit ever paid in their lives. More than once, too, I left the office early, since no one seemed to mind, just to hurry back home -leaping up the stairs three at a time-to that lovely big old Vera again. And at least once every week I’d bring home a load of books under my arm, because she loved to read, just like me; and I’d made a wonderful discovery about this alternate world.
Life, you understand, was different in its details. The San Francisco Giants had won the ‘Fifty-eight Series, for example; the Second Avenue El was still up; Yucatan gum was the big favorite; television was good; and several extremely prominent people whose names would astound you were in jail. But basically the two worlds were much the same. Drugstores, for example, looked and smelled just about the same; and one night on the way home from work I stopped in at a big drugstore to look over the racks of paper-back books and made a marvelous discovery.
There on the revolving metal racks were the familiar rows of glossy little books, every one of which, judging from the covers, seemed to be about an abnormally well-developed girl. Turning the rack slowly I saw books by William Faulkner, Bernard Glemser, Agatha Christie, and Charles Einstein, which I’d read and liked. Then, down near the bottom of the rack my eye was caught by the words, “By Mark Twain.” The cover showed an old side-wheeler steamboat, and the title was South From Cairo. A reprint fitted out with a new title, I thought, feeling annoyed; and I picked up the book to see just which of Mark Twain’s it really was. I’ve read every book he wrote- Huckleberry Finn at least a dozen times since I discovered it when I was eleven years old.
But the text of this book was new to me. It seemed to be an account, told in the first person by a young man of twenty, of his application for a job on a Mississippi steamboat. And then, from the bottom of a page, a name leaped out at me. ” ‘Finn, sir,’ I answered the captain,” the text read, ” ‘but mostly they call me Huckleberry.’”
For a moment I just stood there in the drugstore with my mouth hanging open; then I turned the little book in my hands. On the back cover was a photograph of Mark Twain; the familiar shock of white hair, the mustache, that wise old face. But underneath this the brief familiar account of his life ended with saying that he had died in 1918 in Mill Valley, California. Mark Twain had lived eight years longer in this alternate world, and had written-well, I didn’t yet know how many more books he had written in this wonderful world, but I knew I was going to find out. And my hand was trembling as I walked up to the cashier and gave her two bits for my priceless copy of South From Cairo.
I love reading in bed, and that night I read a good half of my new Mark Twain in bed with Vera, and then afterward-well, afterward she fixed me a nice cool Tom Collins. And oh, boy, this was the life all right.
In the weeks that followed-that lanky length of violet-eyed womanhood cuddled up beside me, singing softly through her nose-I read a new novel by Ernest Hemingway; the best yet, I think. I read a serious, wonderfully good novel by James Thurber, and something else I’d been hoping to find for years-the sequel to a marvelous book called Delilah, by Marcus Goodrich. In fact, I read some of the best reading since Gutenberg kicked things off-a good deal of it aloud to Vera, who enjoyed it as much as I did. I read Mistress Murder, a hilarious detective story by George S. Kaufman; The Queen Is Dead, by George Bernard Shaw; The Third Level, a collection of short stories by someone or other I never heard of, but not too bad; a wonderful novel by Alien Marple; a group of fine stories about the advertising business by Alfred Eichler; a terrific play by Orson Welles; and a whole new volume of Sherlock Holmes stories by A. Conan Doyle.
For four or five months, as Vera rather aptly remarked, I thought, it was like a second honeymoon. I did all the wonderful little things, she said, that I used to do on our honeymoon and before we were married; I even thought up some new ones. And then-all of a sudden one night- I wanted to go to a nightclub.
All of a sudden I wanted to get out of the house in the evening, and do something else for a change. Vera was astonished-wanted to know what was the matter with me, which is typical of a woman. If you don’t react precisely the same way day after day after endless day, they think something must be wrong with you. They’ll even insist on it. I didn’t want any black-cherry ice cream for desert, I told Vera one night at dinner. Why not, she wanted to know- which is idiotic if you stop to think about it. I didn’t want any because I didn’t want any, that’s all! But being a woman she had to have a reason; so I said, “Because I don’t like it.”