It was a sickening thought. Maggie harbored it for two minutes, and then resolutely dismissed it from mind.
“Fiddlesticks! He wasn’t that stupid. In fact, he was a damn smart-aleck. So he liked Gomez. So what? Maybe he’s a woman-hater.”
She settled back against her pillow and opened the bird book:
Remember, birds can’t count. When you build your blind, let two people enter it. Let one person go away, and the birds will return without fear, thinking they are safe. In this way, you will get good, natural pictures of our friends eating, fighting, and mating. . .
Mark opened the bedroom door and walked in. “Maggie?”
“Hmm?” Maggie went on reading.
“I couldn’t polish the car....”, Mark grinned at her.
“Why not?” Maggie dropped the dull book with alacrity. She knew that grin.
“I kept thinking about that new game you were playing. . . Some type of photography, did you say? Then I know the perfect name for it.”
“What?
“It’s called see-the-birdie, and it isn’t a new game at all—it’s just part of an old one.”
Maggie stretched luxuriously and made an apparently irrelevant remark: “So long, hangover.”
OF MISSING PERSONS
by Jack Finney
Here, more than in any other story in this book (though “Bulkhead,” and “Home There’s No Returning” come close), is pure fable in the form of science-fantasy. And this time there is even a moral, clearly— if sadly—stated.
The conflict in this story is not, as in most of the others, generated by the prospect of problems we may have to face tomorrow or next year. It is the immediate and all-too-familiar problem of a normal, nice guy caught in the trap of steel and concrete, of wheels, fumes, and strangers that we call The City.
There were two other stories published this past year that handled the same theme, either of which might have been included here instead: Abernathy’s “Single Combat,” and “The Vanishing American,” by Charles Beaumont. I chose the Finney, both for its compassionate treatment and for its evocative prose.
Walk in as though it were an ordinary travel bureau, the stranger I’d met at a bar had told me. Ask a few ordinary questions—about a trip you’re planning, a vacation, anything like that. Then hint about The Folder a little, but whatever you do, don’t mention it directly; wait till he brings it up himself. And if he doesn’t, you might as well forget it. If you can. Because you’ll never see it; you’re not the type, that’s all. And if you ask about it, he’ll just look at you as though he doesn’t know what you’re talking about.
I rehearsed it all in my mind, over and over, but what seems possible at night over a beer isn’t easy to believe on a raw, rainy day, and I felt like a fool, searching the store fronts for the street number I’d memorized. It was noon hour, West 42nd Street, New York, rainy and windy; and like half the men around me, I walked with a hand on my hatbrim, wearing an old trench coat, head bent into the slanting rain, and the world was real and drab, and this was hopeless.
Anyway, I couldn’t help thinking, who am I to see The Folder, even if there is one? Name? I said to myself, as though I were already being asked. It’s Charley Ewell, and I’m a young guy who works in a bank; a teller. I don’t like the job; I don’t make much money, and I never will. I’ve lived in New York for over three years and haven’t many friends. What the heck, there’s really nothing to say—I see more movies than I want to, read too many books, and I’m sick of meals alone in restaurants. I have ordinary abilities, looks, and thoughts. Does that suit you; do I qualify?
Now I spotted it, the address in the 200 block, an old, pseudo-modernized office building, tired, outdated, refusing to admit it but unable to hide it. New York is full of them, west of Fifth.
I pushed through the brass-framed glass doors into the tiny lobby, paved with freshly mopped, permanently dirty tile. The green-painted walls were lumpy from old plaster repairs; in a chrome frame hung a little wall directory—white-celluloid, easily changed letters on a black-felt background. There were some twenty-odd names, and I found “Acme Travel Bureau” second on the list, between “A-l Mimeo” and “Ajax Magic Supplies.” I pressed the bell beside the old-style, open-grille elevator door; it rang high up in the shaft. There was a long pause, then a thump, and the heavy chains began rattling slowly down toward me, and I almost turned and left—this was insane.
But upstairs the Acme office had divorced itself from the atmosphere of the building. I pushed open the pebble-glass door, walked in, and the big square room was bright and clean, fluorescent-lighted. Beside the wide double windows, behind a counter, stood a tall gray-haired, grave-looking man, a telephone at his ear. He glanced up, nodded to beckon me in, and I felt my heart pumping—he fitted the description exactly. “Yes, United Air Lines,” he was saying into the phone. “Flight”—he glanced at a paper on the glass-topped counter—”seven-oh-three, and I suggest you check in forty minutes early.”
Standing before him now, I waited, leaning on the counter, glancing around; he was the man, all right, and yet this was just an ordinary travel agency: big bright posters on the walls, metal floor racks full of folders, printed schedules under the glass on the counter. This is just what it looks like and nothing else, I thought, and again I felt like a fool.
“Can I help you?” Behind the counter the tall gray-haired man was smiling at me, replacing the phone, and suddenly I was terribly nervous.
“Yes.” I stalled for time, unbuttoning my raincoat. Then I looked up at him again and said, “I’d like to—get away.” You fool, that’s too fast! I told myself. Don’t rush it! I watched in a kind of panic to see what effect my answer had had, but he didn’t flick an eyelash.
“Well, there are a lot of places to go,” he said politely. From under the counter he brought out a long, slim folder and laid it on the glass, turning it right side up for me. “Fly to Buenos Aires—Another World!” it said in a double row of pale-green letters across the top.
I looked at it long enough to be polite. It showed a big silvery plane banking over a harbor at night, a moon shining on the water, mountains in the background. Then I just shook my head; I was afraid to talk, afraid I’d say the wrong thing.
“Something quieter, maybe?” He brought out another folder: thick old tree trunks, rising way up out of sight, sunbeams slanting down through them—”The Virgin Forests of Maine, via Boston and Maine Railroad.” “Or”—he laid a third folder on the glass—”Bermuda is nice just now.” This one said, “Bermuda, Old World in the New.”
I decided to risk it. “No,” I said, and shook my head. “What I’m really looking for is a permanent place. A new place to live and settle down in.” I stared directly into his eyes. “For the rest of my life.” Then my nerve failed me, and I tried to think of a way to backtrack.
But he only smiled pleasantly and said, “I don’t know why we can’t advise you on that.” He leaned forward on the counter, resting on his forearms, hands clasped; he had all the time in the world for me, his posture conveyed. “What are you looking for; what do you want?”
I held my breath, then said it. “Escape.”
“From what?”
“Well—” Now I hesitated; I’d never put it into words before. “From New York, I’d say. And cities in general. From worry. And fear. And the things I read in my newspapers. From loneliness.” And then I couldn’t stop, though I knew I was talking too much, the words spilling out. “From never doing what I really want to do or having much fun. From selling my days just to stay alive. From life itself—the way it is today, at least.” I looked straight at him and said softly, “From the world.”