The Best of Nancy Kress (37 page)

For the next hour, people walked past. Harry studied them carefully. When it got too dark to see, he walked back to the warehouse, on the way buying an apple kuchen at a bakery with a curtain behind the counter looped back to reveal a man in his shirt sleeves eating a plate of stew at a table bathed in soft yellow lamplight. The kuchen cost thirty-two cents.

At the warehouse, Harry let himself in with his key, slipped past Rudy nodding over
Paris
Nights
, and walked to his cobwebby corner. He emerged from his third-floor closet into his room. Beyond the window, sirens wailed and wailed and would not stop.

“So how’s it going?” Manny asked. He dripped kuchen crumbs on the chessboard; Harry brushed them away. Manny had him down a knight.

“It’s going to take some time to find somebody that’s right,” Harry said. “I’d like to have someone by next Tuesday when I meet Jackie for dinner, but I don’t know. It’s not easy. There are requirements. He has to be young enough to be attractive, but old enough to understand Jackie. He has to be sweet-natured enough to do her some good, but strong enough not to panic at jumping over fifty-two years. Somebody educated. An educated man—he might be more curious than upset by my closet. Don’t you think?”

“Better watch your queen,” Manny said, moving his rook. “So how are you going to find him?”

“It takes time,” Harry said. “I’m working on it.” Manny shook his head. “You have to get somebody here, you have to convince him he
is
here, you have to keep him from turning right around and running back in time through your shirts…I don’t know, Harry. I don’t know. I’ve been thinking. This thing is not simple. What if you did something wrong? Took somebody important out of 1937?”

“I won’t pick anybody important.”

“What if you made a mistake and brought your own grandfather? And something happened to him here?”

“My grandfather was already dead in 1937.”

“What if you brought me? I’m already here.”

“You didn’t live here in 1937.”

“What if you brought you?”

“I didn’t live here either.”

“What if you…”

“Manny,” Harry said, ‘I’m not bringing somebody important. I’m not bringing somebody we know. I’m not bringing somebody for permanent. I’m just bringing a nice guy for Jackie to meet, go dancing, see a different kind of nature. A different view of what’s possible. An innocence. I’m sure there are fellows here that would do it, but I don’t know any, and I don’t know how to bring any to her. From there I know. Is this so complicated? Is this so unpredictable?”

“Yes,” Manny said. He had on his stubborn look again. How could somebody so skimpy look so stubborn? Harry sighed and moved his lone knight.

“I brought you some whole socks.”

“Thank you. That knight, it’s not going to help you much.”

“Lectures. That’s what there was there that there isn’t here. Everybody went to lectures. No TV, movies cost money, they went to free lectures.”

“I remember,” Manny said. “I was a young man myself. Harry, this thing is not simple.”

“Yes, it is,” Harry said stubbornly.

“1937 was not simple.”

“It will work, Manny.”

“Check,” Manny said.

That evening, Harry went back. This time it was the afternoon of September 16. On newsstands the
New York Times
announced that President Roosevelt and John L. Lewis had talked pleasantly at the White House. Cigarettes cost thirteen cents a pack. Women wore cotton stockings and clunky, high-heeled shoes. Schrafft’s best chocolates were sixty cents a pound. Small boys addressed Harry as “sir.”

He attended six lectures in two days. A Madame Trefania lectured on theosophy to a hall full of badly dressed women with thin, pursed lips. A union organizer roused an audience to a pitch that made Harry leave after the first thirty minutes. A skinny, nervous missionary showed slides of religious outposts in China. An archaeologist back from a Mexican dig gave a dry, impatient talk about temples to an audience of three people. A New Deal Democrat spoke passionately about aiding the poor, but afterwards addressed all the women present as “Sister.” Finally, just when Harry was starting to feel discouraged, he found it.

A museum offered a series of lectures on “Science of Today—and Tomorrow.” Harry heard a slim young man with a reddish beard speak with idealistic passion about travel to the moon, the planets, the stars. It seemed to Harry that compared to stars, 1989 might seem reasonably close. The young man had warm hazel eyes and a sense of humor. When he spoke about life in a spaceship, he mentioned in passing that women would be freed from much domestic drudgery they now endured. Throughout the lecture, he smoked, lighting cigarettes with a masculine squinting of eyes and cupping of hands. He said that imagination was the human quality that would most help people adjust to the future. His shoes were polished.

But most of all, Harry thought, he had a glow. A fine golden Boy Scout glow that made Harry think of old covers for the
Saturday Evening Post
. Which here cost five cents.

After the lecture, Harry stayed in his chair in the front row, outwaiting even the girl with bright red lipstick who lingered around the lecturer, this Robert Gernshon. From time to time, Gernshon glanced over at Harry with quizzical interest. Finally the girl, red lips pouting, sashayed out of the hall.

“Hello,” Harry said. “I’m Harry Kramer. I enjoyed your talk. I have something to show you that you would be very interested in.”

The hazel eyes turned wary. “Oh, no, no,” Harry said. “Something
scientific
. Here, look at this.” He handed Gernshon a filtered Vantage Light.

“How long it is,” Gernshon said. “What’s this made of?”

“The filter? It’s made of…a new filter material. Tastes milder and cuts down on the nicotine. Much better for you. Look at this.” He gave Gernshon a styrofoam cup from McDonald’s. “It’s made of a new material, too. Very cheap. Disposable.”

Gernshon fingered the cup. “Who are you?” he said quietly.

“A scientist. I’m interested in the science of tomorrow, too. Like you. I’d like to invite you to see my laboratory, which is in my home.”

“In your home?”

“Yes. In a small way. Just dabbling, you know.” Harry could feel himself getting rattled; the young hazel eyes stared at him so steadily.
Jackie
, he thought. Dead earths. Maggots and carrion. Contempt for mothers. What would Gernshon say? When would Gernshon say
anything
?

“Thank you,” Gernshon finally said. “When would be convenient?”

“Now?” Harry said. He tried to remember what time of day it was now. All he could picture was lecture halls.

Gernshon came. It was nine-thirty in the evening of Friday, September 17. Harry walked Gernshon through the streets, trying to talk animatedly, trying to distract. He said that he himself was very interested in travel to the stars. He said it had always been his dream to stand on another planet and take in great gulps of completely unpolluted air. He said his great heroes were those biologists who made that twisty model of DNA. He said science had been his life. Gernshon walked more and more silently.

“Of course,” Harry said hastily, “like most scientists, I’m mostly familiar with my own field. You know how it is.”

“What is your field, Dr. Kramer?” Gernshon asked quietly.

“Electricity,” Harry said, and hit him on the back of the head with a solid brass candlestick from the pocket of his coat. The candlestick had cost him three dollars at a pawn shop.

They had walked past the stores and pushcarts to a point where the locked business offices and warehouses began. There were no passersby, no muggers, no street dealers, no Guardian Angels, no punk gangs. Only him, hitting an unarmed man with a candlestick. He was no better than the punks. But what else could he do? Nothing but hit him softly, so softly that Gernshon was struggling again almost before Harry got his hands and feet tied, well before he got on the blindfold and gag. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he kept saying to Gernshon. Gernshon did not look as if the apology made any difference. Harry dragged him into the warehouse.

Rudy was asleep over
Spicy Stories
. Breathing very hard, Harry pulled the young man—not more than 150 pounds, it was good Harry had looked for slim—to the far corner, through the gate, and into his closet.

“Listen,” he said urgently to Gernshon after removing the gag. “Listen. I can call the Medicare Emergency Hotline. If your head feels broken. Are you feeling faint? Do you think you maybe might go into shock?”

Gernshon lay on Harry’s rug, glaring at him, saying nothing.

“Listen, I know this is maybe a little startling to you. But I’m not a pervert, not a cop, not anything but a grandfather with a problem. My granddaughter. I need your help to solve it, but I won’t take much of your time. You’re now somewhere besides where you gave your lecture. A pretty long ways away. But you don’t have to stay here long, I promise. Just two weeks, tops, and I’ll send you back. I promise, on my mother’s grave. And I’ll make it worth your while. I promise.”

“Untie me.”

“Yes. Of course. Right away. Only you have to not attack me, because I’m the only one who can get you back from here.” He had a sudden inspiration. “I’m like a foreign consul. You’ve maybe traveled abroad?”

Gernshon looked around the dingy room. “Untie me.”

“I will. In two minutes. Five, tops. I just want to explain a little first.”

“Where am I?”

“1989.”

Gernshon said nothing. Harry explained brokenly, talking as fast as he could, saying he could move from 1989 to September, 1937 when he wanted to, but he could take Gernshon back too, no problem. He said he made the trip often, it was perfectly safe. He pointed out how much farther a small Social Security check, no pension, could go at 1937 prices. He mentioned Manny’s strudel. Only lightly did he touch on the problem of Jackie, figuring there would be a better time to share domestic difficulties, and his closet he didn’t mention at all. It was hard to keep his eyes averted from the closet door. He did mention how bitter people could be in 1989, how lost, how weary from expecting so much that nothing was a delight, nothing a sweet surprise. He was just working up to a tirade on innocence when Gernshon said again, in a different tone, “Untie me.”

“Of course,” Harry said quickly, “I don’t expect you to believe me. Why should you think you’re in 1989? Go, see for yourself. Look at that light, it’s still early morning. Just be careful out there, is all.” He untied Gernshon and stood with his eyes squeezed shut, waiting.

When nothing hit him, Harry opened his eyes. Gernshon was at the door. “Wait!” Harry cried. “You’ll need more money!” He dug into his pocket and pulled out a twenty-dollar bill, carefully saved for this, and all the change he had.

Gernshon examined the coins carefully, then looked up at Harry. He said nothing. He opened the door and Harry, still trembling, sat down in his chair to wait.

Gernshon came back three hours later, pale and sweating. “My God!”

“I know just what you mean,” Harry said. “A zoo out there. Have a drink.”

Gernshon took the mixture Harry had ready in his toothbrush glass and gulped it down. He caught sight of the bottle, which Harry had left on the dresser: Seagram’s V.O., with the cluttered, tiny-print label. He threw the glass across the room and covered his face with his hands.

“I’m sorry,” Harry said apologetically. “But back then it cost only $3.37 the fifth.”

Gernshon didn’t move.

“I’m really sorry,” Harry said. He raised both hands, palms up, and dropped them helplessly. “Would you…would you maybe like an orange?”

Gernshon recovered faster than Harry had dared hope. Within an hour he was sitting in Harry’s worn chair, asking questions about the space shuttle; within two hours taking notes; within three become again the intelligent and captivating young man of the lecture hall. Harry, answering as much as he could as patiently as he could, was impressed by the boy’s resilience. It couldn’t have been easy. What if he, Harry, suddenly had to skip fifty-two more years? What if he found himself in 2041? Harry shuddered.