You're Another Read online

  YOU'RE ANOTHER

  Damon Knight

  Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, June 1955

  It was a warm spring Saturday, and Johnny Bornish spent the morning in Central Park. He drew sailors lying on the grass with their girls; he drew old men in straw hats, and Good Humor men pushing their carts. He got two quick studies of children at the toy-boat pond, and would have had another, a beauty, except that somebody's dammed big Dalmatian, romping, blundered into him and made him sit down hard in the water.

  A bright-eyed old gentleman solemnly helped him arise. Johnny thought it over, then wrung out his wet pants in the men's rest room, put them hack on and spread himself like a starfish in the sun. He dried before his sketchbook did, so he took the bus back downtown, got off at 14th Street and went into Mayer's.

  The only clerk in sight was showing an intricate folding easel to a tweedy woman who didn't seem to know which end was which. Johnny picked up the sketchbook he wanted from a pile on the table, and pottered around looking at clay figures, paper palettes and other traps for the amateur. He glimpsed some interesting textured papers displayed in the other aisle and tried to cross over to them, but misjudged his knobby-kneed turning circle, as usual, and brought down a cascade of little paint cans. Dancing for balance, somehow he managed to put one heel down at an unheard-of angle, buckle the lid of one of the cans and splash red enamel all over hell.

  He paid for the paint, speechless, and got out. He had dropped the sketchbook somewhere, he discovered. Evidently God did not care for him to do any sketching today.

  Also, he was leaving little red heel prints across the pavement. He wiped off his shoe as well as he could with some newspaper from the trashbasket at the corner, and walked down to the Automat for coffee.

  The cashier scooped in his dollar and spread two rows of magical dimes on the marble counter, all rattling at once like angry metal insects. They were alive in Johnny's palm; one of them got away, but he lunged for it and caught it before it hit the floor.

  Flushed with victory, he worked his way through the crowd to the coffee dispenser, put a china cup under the spigot and dropped his dime in the slot. Coffee streamed out, filled his cup and went on flowing.

  Johnny watched it for a minute. Coffee went on pouring over the lip and handle of the cup, too hot to touch, splashing through the grilled metal and gurgling away somewhere below.

  A white-haired man shouldered him aside, took a cup from the rack and calmly filled it at the spigot. Somebody else followed his example, and in a moment there was a crowd.

  After all, it was his dime. Johnny got another cup and waited his turn. An angry man in a white jacket disappeared violently into the crowd, and Johnny heard him shouting something. A moment later the crowd began to disperse.

  The jet had stopped. The man in the white jacket picked up Johnny's original cup, emptied it, set it down on a busboy's cart, and went away.

  Evidently God did not care for him to drink any coffee, either. Johnny whistled a few reflective bars of "Dixie" and left, keeping a wary eye out for trouble.

  At the curb a big pushcart was standing in the sunshine, flaming with banana yellows, apple reds. Johnny stopped himself. "Oh, no," he said, and turned himself sternly around, and started carefully down the avenue, hands in pockets, elbows at his sides. On a day like what this one was shaping up to be, he shuddered to think what he could do with a pushcart full of fruit.

  How about a painting of that? Semi-abstract -- "Still Life in Motion." Flying tangerines, green bananas, dusty Concord grapes, stopped by the fast shutter of the artist's eye. By Cèzanne, out of Henry Moore. By heaven, it wasn't bad.

  He could see it, big and vulgar, about a 36 by 30 -- (stretchers: he'd have to stop at Mayer's again, or on second thought somewhere else, for, stretchers) the colors grayed on a violet ground, but screaming at each other all the same like a gaggle of parakeets. Black outlines here and there, weaving a kind of cockeyed carpet pattern through it. No depth, no light-and-dark -- flat easter-egg colors, glowing as enigmatically as a Parrish cut up into jigsaw pieces. Frame it in oyster-white moulding -- wham! The Museum of Modern Art!

  The bananas, he thought, would have to go around this way, distorted, curved like boomerangs up in the foreground. Make the old ladies from Oshkosh duck. That saturated buttery yellow, transmuted to a poisonous green . . . He put out a forefinger absently to stroke one of the nearest, feeling how the chalky smoothness curved up and around into the dry hard stem.

  "How many, Mac?"

  For an instant Johnny thought he had circled the block, back to the same pushcart: then he saw that this one had only bananas on it. He was at the corner of 11th Street; he had walked three blocks, blind and deaf.

  "No bananas," he said hurriedly, backing away. There was a skriek in his ear. He turned; it was a glitter-eyed tweedy woman, brandishing an enormous handbag.

  "Can't you watch where you're --"

  "Sorry, ma'am," he said, desperately trying to keep his balance. He toppled off the curb, grabbing at the pushcart. Something slithery went out from under his foot. He was falling, sliding like a bowling ball, feet first toward the one upright shaft that supported the end of the pushcart . . .

  The first thing that he noticed, as he sat there up to his chest in bananas, with the swearing huckster holding the cart by main force, was that an alert, white-haired old gentleman was in the front rank of the crowd, looking at him.

  The same one who --?

  And come to think of it, that tweedy woman --

  Ridiculous.

  All the same, something began to twitch in his memory. Ten confused minutes later he was kneeling asthmatically on the floor in front of his closet, hauling out stacks of unframed paintings, shoeboxes full of letters and squeezed paint tubes, a Scout ax (for kindling), old sweaters and mildewed magazines, until he found a battered suitcase.

  In the suitcase, under untidy piles of sketches and watercolors, was a small cardboard portfolio. In the portfolio were two newspaper clippings.

  One was from the Post, dated three years back: it showed Johnny, poised on one heel in a violent adagio pose, being whirled around by the stream of water from a hydrant some Third Avenue urchins had just opened. The other was two years older, from the Journal: in this one Johnny seemed to be walking dreamily up a wall -- actually, he had just slipped on an icy street in the upper 40's.

  He blinked incredulously. In the background of the first picture there were half a dozen figures, mostly kids.

  Among them was the tweedy woman.

  In the background of the second, there was only one. It was the white-haired old man.

  Thinking it over, Johnny discovered that he was scared. He had never actually enjoyed being the kind of buffoon who gets his shirttail caught in zippers, is trapped by elevators and revolving doors, and trips on pebbles; he had accepted it humbly as his portion, and in between catastrophes he'd had a lot of fun.

  But suppose somebody was doing it to him?

  A lot of it was not funny, look at it any way you like. There was the time the bus driver had closed the door on Johnny's foot and dragged him for three yards, bouncing on the pavement. He had got up with nothing worse than bruise -- but what if that passenger hadn't seen him in time?

  He looked at the clippings again. There they were, the same faces -- the same clothing, even, except that the old man was wearing an overcoat. Even in the faded halftones, there was a predatory sparkle from his rimless eyeglasses; and the tweedy woman's sharp beak was as threatening as a hawk's.

  Johnny felt a stifling sense of panic. He felt like a man waiting helplessly for the punchline of a long bad joke; or like a mouse being played with by a cat.

  Something bad was going to happen next.

&n
bsp; The door opened; somebody walked in. Johnny started, but it was only the Duke, brawny in a paint-smeared undershirt, with a limp cigarette in the corner of his mouth. The Duke had a rakish Errol Flynn mustache, blending furrily now into his day-old beard, and a pair of black, who-are-you-varlet brows. He was treacherous, clever, plausible, quarrelsome, ingenious, a great brawler and seducer of women -- in short, exactly like Cellini, except he had no talent.

  "Hiding?" said Duke, showing his big teeth.

  Johnny became aware that, crouched in front of the closet that way, he looked a little as if he were about to dive into it and pull overcoats over his head. He got up stiffly, tried to put his hands in his pockets, and discovered he still had the clippings. Then it was too late. Duke took them gently, inspected them with a judicial eye, and stared gravely at Johnny. "Not flattering," he said. "Is that blood on your forehead?"

  Johnny investigated; his fingers came away a little red, not much. "I fell down," he said uncomfortably.

  "My boy," Duke told him, "you are troubled. Confide in your old uncle."

  "I'm just -- Look, Duke, I'm busy. Did you want something?"

  "Only to be your faithful counselor and guide," said Duke, pressing Johnny firmly into a chair. "Just lean back, loosen the sphincters and say the first thing that comes into your mind." He looked expectant.

  "Ugh," said Johnny.

  Duke nodded sagely. "A visceral reaction. Existentialist. You wish to rid yourself of yourself -- get away from it all. Tell me, when you walk down the street, do you feel the buildings are about to close on you? Are you being persecuted by little green men who come out of the woodwork? Do you feel an overpowering urge to leave town?"

  "Yes," said Johnny truthfully.

  Duke looked mildly surprised. "Well?" he asked, spreading his hands.

  "Where would I go?"

  "I recommend sunny New Jersey. All the towns have different names -- fascinating. Millions of them. Pick one at random. Hackensack, Perth Amboy, Passaic, Teaneck, Newark? No? You're quite right -- too suggestive. Let me see. Something farther north? Provincetown, Martha's Vineyard -- lovely this time of the year. Or Florida -- yes, I can really see you, Johnny, sitting on a rotten wharf in the sunshine, fishing with a bent pin for pompano. Peaceful, relaxed, carefree . . ."

  Johnny's fingers stirred the change in his pocket. He didn't know what was in his wallet -- he never did -- but he was sure it wasn't enough. "Duke, have you seen Ted Edwards this week?" he asked hopefully.

  "No. Why?"

  "Oh. He owes me a little money, is all. He said he'd pay me today or tomorrow."

  "If it's a question of money --" said the Duke after a moment.

  Johnny looked at him incredulously.

  Duke was pulling a greasy wallet out of his hip pocket. He paused with his thumb in it. "Do you really want to get out of town, Johnny?"

  "Well, sure, but --"

  "Johnny, what are friends for? Really, I'm wounded. Will fifty help?"

  He counted out the money and stuffed it into Johnny's paralyzed palm. "Don't say a word. Let me remember you just as you are." He made a frame of his hands and squinted through it. He sighed, then picked up the battered suitcase and went to work with great energy throwing things out of the dresser into it. "Shirts, socks, underwear. Necktie. Clean handkerchief. There you are." He closed the lid. He pumped Johnny's hand, pulling him toward the door. "Don't think it hasn't been great, because it hasn't. So on the ocean of life we pass and speak to one another. Only a look and a voice; then darkness and silence."

  Johnny dug in his heels and stopped. "What's the matter?" Duke inquired.

  "I just realized -- I can't go now. I'll go tonight I'll take the late train."

  Duke arched an eyebrow. "But why wait, Johnny? When the sunne shineth, make hay. When the iron is hot, strike. The tide tarrieth for no man."

  ''They'll see me leave," said Johnny, embarrassed.

  Duke frowned. "You mean the little green men actually are after you?" His features worked; he composed them with difficulty. "Well, this is -- Pardon me. A momentary aberration. But now don't you see, Johnny, you haven't got any time to lose. If they're following you, they must know where yon live. How do you know they won't come here?"

  Johnny, flushing, could think of no adequate reply. He had wanted to get away under cover of darkness, but that would mean another five hours at least . . .

  "Look here," said Duke suddenly, "I know the very thing. Biff Feldstein -- works at the Cherry Lane. Your own mother won't admit she knows you. Wait here."

  He was back in fifteen minutes, with a bundle of old clothes and an object which turned out, on closer examination, to be a small brown beard.

  Johnny puit it on unwillingly, using gunk from a tube Duke had brought along. Duke helped him into a castoff jacket, color indistinguishable, shiny with grease, and clapped a beret on his head. The result, to Johnny's horrified gaze, looked like an old-time Village phony or a peddler of French postcards. Duke inspected him judicially. "It's magnificent, but it isn't war," he said. "However, we can always plant vines. Allons! I am grass; I cover all!"

  Walking toward Sixth at a brisk pace, a hand firmly on Johnny's elbow, Duke suddenly paused. "Ho!" he said. He sprang forward, bent, and picked something up.

  Johnny stared at it glassily. It was a five-dollar bill.

  Duke was calmly putting it away. "Does that happen to you often?" Johnny asked.

  "Now and again," said Duke. "Merely a matter of keeping the eyes in focus."

  "Luck," said Johnny faintly.

  "Never think it," Duke told him. "Take the word of an older and wiser man. You make your own luck in this world. Think of Newton. Think of O'Dwyer. Hand stuck in the jam jar? You asked for it. Now the trouble with you --"

  Johnny, who had heard this theory before, was no longer listening. Look, he thought, at all the different things that had had to happen so that Duke could pick up that fiver. Somebody had to lose it, to begin with -- say because be met a friend just as he was about to put the bill away, and stuffed it in his pocket instead so he could shake hands, and then forgot it, reached for his handkerchief -- All right. Then it just had to happen that everybody who passed this spot between then and now was looking the other way, or thinking about something else. And Duke, finally, had to glance down at iust the right moment. It was all extremely improbable, but it happened, somewhere, every day.

  And also every day, somewhere, people were being hit by flowerpots knocked off tenth-story window ledges, and falling down manholes, and walking into stray bullets fired by law enforcement officers in pursuit of malefactors. Johnny shuddered.

  "Oh-oh," said Duke suddenly. "Where's a cab? Ah -- Cabby!" He sprang forward to the curb, whistling and waving.

  Looking around curiously, Johnny saw a clumsy figure hurrying toward them down the street. "There's Mary Finigan," he said, pointing her out.

  "I know," said Duke irascibly. The cab was just pulling in toward them, the driver reaching back to open the door. "Now here we go, Johnny --"

  "But I think she wants to talk to you," said Johnny. "Hadn't we --"

  "No time now," said Duke, helping him in with a shove. "She's taken to running off at the mouth -- that's why I had to give her up. Get moving!" he said to the driver, and added to Johnny, "Among other things, that is . . . Here will be an old abusing of God's patience, and the King's English."

  As they pulled away into traffic, Johnny had a last glimpse of the girl standing on the curb watching them. Her dark hair was straggling down off her forehead; she looked as if she had been crying.

  Duke said comfortably, "Every man, as the saying is, can tame a shrew but he that hath her. Now there, John boy, you have just had an instructive object lesson. Was it luck that we got away from that draggle-tailed ear-bender? It was not . . ."

  But, thought Johnny, it was. What if the cab hadn't come along at just the right time?

  "-- in a nutshell, boy. Only reason you have bad luck, you go hunting for it
."

  "That isn't the reason," said Johnny.

  He let Duke's hearty voice fade once more into a kind of primitive background music, like the muttering of the extras in a Tarzan picture when the Kalawumbas are about to feed the pretty girl to the lions. It had just dawned on him, with the dazzling glow of revelation, that the whole course of anybody's life was determined by improbable accidents. Here he stood, all five feet ten and a hundred thirty pounds of him -- a billion-to-one shot from the word go. (What were the chances against any given sperm's uniting with any given ovum? More than a billion to one -- unimaginable.) What if the apple hadn't fallen on Newton's head? What if O'Dwyer had never left Ireland? And what did free will have to do with the decision not to become, say, a Kurdish herdsman, if you happened to be born in Ohio?

  . . . It meant, Johnny thought, that if you could control the random factors -- the way the dice fall in a bar in Sacramento, the temper of a rich uncle in Keokuk, the moisture content of the clouds over Sioux Falls at 3:03 CST, the shape of a pebble in a Wall Street newsboy's sock -- you could do anything. You could make an obscure painter named Johnny Bornish fall into the toy-boat pond in Central Park and get red paint all over his shoe and knock down a pushcart.