Time and Again

Introduction

Jack Finney died in California in 1995, two years before I began writing my first novel. I would have loved to have had the chance to meet him and say thank you for writing the book you are now holding in your hands, which in so many ways handed me the keys to the writing career I have today.

My first encounter with Time and Again is inextricably linked to one of the most formative moments of my life. It is 1988 or ’89, which means I’m ten or eleven years old. And though I can’t say with absolute certainty, I’m confident it’s summertime, because I’m in a place—a beloved place—that was an oasis of silence, imagination, and glorious air-conditioning: the Iredell County Public Library in Statesville, North Carolina.

Though the library has since relocated, the building where it once existed, just like the Dakota apartment building in Time and Again, still stands. I make a point of driving past it every time I return to my childhood home.

In my memory, I’m browsing the fiction shelves in the heat of summer. Because this is North Carolina, it is a humid and sweltering afternoon on the other side of the tall windows that look out on Water Street. The sky is the color of acid-washed denim, and thunderstorms are just beginning to build. Somewhere nearby, my mother is reading a picture book to my younger brother.

I’m standing between the shelves, the air perfumed by the breakdown of cellulose and lignin in paper, producing organic compounds like benzaldehyde and ethylhexanol—the scientific explanation for that wonderful, antique smell we associate with old books. I don’t remember lifting the book off the shelf but I’m guessing it was the cover of the 1986 edition that first drew my attention—a hand holding a photograph of old New York. I start reading the first chapter and I’m getting to know the protagonist: advertising sketch artist Simon Morley. But it’s the moment Simon is approached by Army Major Ruben Prien that grabs me, specifically when Prien says:

There’s a project. A U.S. government project I guess you’d have to call it. Secret, naturally; as what isn’t in government these days? In my opinion, and that of a handful of others, it’s more important than all the nuclear, space-exploration, satellite, and rocket programs put together, though a hell of a lot smaller. I tell you right off that I can’t even hint what the project is about.

At this point, I actually sit down in the aisle to continue reading and don’t get up again for two hours. I have to stop when my mom finally comes looking for me. This is the first adult book in my short reading life, and nothing has ever entranced me so completely. It’s my first sampling of the drug that is the true page-turner, a high I will seek out again and again. I simply have to know what happens next.

I didn’t know in that moment that I would come to love reading so desperately that I would pursue writing as a career in order to write the kinds of books I wanted to read. I didn’t know that the first chapter, and the slow build of this secret government project surrounding mental time travel—one of the greatest commercial hooks ever written—was coding in me a deep love, not just for the kinds of books I would gravitate toward for the rest of my life, but the types of books I would endeavor to write. It is one of the great mysteries of our existence how the most seemingly insignificant moments can profoundly alter our lives—like picking up a book, or a chance encounter in a theater (if you’ve read Time and Again, you know exactly which pivotal scene I’m talking about).

Science fiction is a tricky moniker. As a sci-fi writer, the most common email I receive from fans goes something like this: I never read science fiction, but I gave your books a try and love them! There’s a perception that science fiction means hard sci-fi. Spaceships, ray guns, and aliens. Light on character, heavy on dense world-building with endless backstory—complicated tales filled with weird words and weirder character names.

While Robert Heinlein is credited with coining the term speculative fiction in a 1947 essay, I think Jack Finney invented the grounded speculative thriller, a type of science fiction novel that feels not of the distant future or of alien worlds, but of our world, our time. The thing about Time and Again is that it feels so plausible, as if, perhaps under perfect conditions, the time-travel conceit at the heart of the story might just be attainable. For all we know, someone has already done it.

What helps to build this illusion is that Finney fills his magnum opus with very real characters and a story, which, at its core, is structured not on outlandish plotting machinations, but an emotional, beating heart. If you’ve already read this book, then you know exactly what I’m talking about. If you haven’t, well, I envy you, and I won’t spoil what’s coming. But know that, like all great fiction, Time and Again is about a character searching for home. Simon Morley’s just happens to be in 1882, and his journey of discovering this truth defines his character arc and drives the story itself.

I like to say that I write science fiction for people who don’t read science fiction. Stories built on what-ifs.

Here are some: What if, thirty-some-odd years ago, I hadn’t happened to glance at the cover of the 1986 edition of Time and Again? What if I hadn’t picked the book up, thumbed to the first chapter, and started reading? Would I have written the Wayward Pines series, Dark Matter, and Recursion? Would I have a writing career at all if I hadn’t taken this book off the shelf of my local library when I was at that perfect, impressionable age where the trajectory of a lifetime can still be determined by the raw power of a story?

Here is one last question: What if you, dear reader, never read this book? That hypothetical I can easily answer. You will deprive yourself of a once-in-a-lifetime reading experience.

As I said before, I never got the chance to thank Jack Finney for this beautiful and enthralling novel that helped to shape the life I have today.

So this introduction to the fiftieth anniversary edition of Time and Again will have to suffice.

Wherever you are, thank you, Jack.

This book you wrote changed my life.

Blake Crouch

Durango, Colorado

February 24, 2020

1

In shirt-sleeves, the way I generally worked, I sat sketching a bar of soap taped to an upper corner of my drawing board. The gold-foil wrapper was carefully peeled back so that you could still read most of the brand name printed on it; I’d spoiled the wrappers of half a dozen bars before getting that effect. This was a new idea, the product to be shown ready for what the accompanying copy called "fragrant, lathery, lovelier you" use, and I had the job of sketching it into half a dozen layouts, the bar of soap at a slightly different angle in each.

It was just exactly as boring as it sounds, and I stopped to look out the window beside me, down twelve stories at Fifty-fourth Street and the little heads moving along the sidewalk. It was a sunny, sharply clear day in mid-November, and I’d have liked to be out in it, the whole afternoon ahead and nothing to do; nothing I had to do, that is.

Over at the paste-up table Vince Mandel, our lettering man, thin and dark and probably feeling as caged-up today as I was, stood working with the airbrush, a cotton surgical mask over his mouth. He was spraying a flesh-colored film onto a Life magazine photo of a girl in a bathing suit. The effect, when he finished, would be to remove the suit, leaving the girl apparently naked except for the ribbon she wore slanted from shoulder to waist on which was lettered MISS BUSINESS MACHINES. This kind of stunt was Vince’s favorite at-work occupation ever since he’d thought of it, and the retouched picture would be added to a collection of others like it on the art-department bulletin board, at which Maureen, our nineteen-year-old paste-up girl and messenger, refused ever to look or even glance, though often urged.

Frank Dapp, our art director, a round little package of energy, came trotting toward his partitioned-off office in the northeast corner of the artists’ bullpen. As he passed the big metal supply cabinet just inside the room he hammered violently on its open door, yodeling at full bellow. It was an habitual release of unused energy like a locomotive jetting steam, a startling eruption of sound. But neither Vince nor I nor Karl Jonas at the board ahead of mine glanced up. Neither did anyone in the typists’ pool outside, I knew, although strangers waiting in the art-department reception room just down the hall had been known to leap to their feet at the sound.

It was an ordinary day, a Friday, twenty minutes till lunchtime, five hours till quitting time and the weekend, ten months till vacation, thirty-seven years till retirement. Then the phone rang.

Man here to see you, Si. It was Vera, at the switchboard. He has no appointment.

That’s okay. He’s my connection; I need a fix.

What you need can’t be fixed. She clicked off. I got up, wondering who it was; an artist in an advertising agency doesn’t usually have too many visitors. The main reception room was on the floor below, and I took the long route through Accounting and Media, but no new girls had been hired.

Frank Dapp called the main reception room Off Broadway. It was decorated with a genuine Oriental rug, several display cases of antique silver from the collection of the wife of one of the three partners, and with a society matron whose hair was also antique silver and who relayed visitors’ requests to Vera. As I walked toward it my visitor stood looking at one of the framed ads hung on the walls. Something I don’t like admitting and which I’ve learned to disguise is a shyness about meeting people, and now I felt the familiar slight apprehension and momentary confusion as he turned at the sound of my approaching footsteps. He was bald and short, the top of his head reaching only to my eye level, and I’m an inch short of six feet. He looked about thirty-five, I thought, walking toward him, and he was remarkably thick-chested; he’d outweigh me without being fat. He wore an olive-green gabardine suit that didn’t go with his pink redhead’s complexion. I hope he’s not a salesman, I thought; then he smiled as I stepped into the lobby, a real smile, and I liked him instantly and relaxed. No, I told myself, he’s not selling anything, and I couldn’t have been more wrong about that.

Mr. Morley? I nodded, smiling back at him. Mr. Simon Morley? he said, as though there might be several of us Morleys here at the agency and he wanted to be certain.

Yes.

He still wasn’t satisfied. Just for fun, do you remember your army serial number? He took my elbow and began walking me out into the elevator corridor away from the receptionist.

I rattled it off; it didn’t even occur to me to wonder why I was doing this for a stranger, no questions asked.

Right! he said approvingly, and I felt pleased. We were out in the corridor now, no one else around.

Are you from the army? If so, I don’t want any today.

He smiled, but didn’t answer the question, I noticed. He said, I’m Ruben Prien, and hesitated momentarily as though I might recognize the name, then continued. I should have phoned and made an appointment, but I’m in a hurry so I took a chance on dropping in.

That’s all right, I wasn’t doing anything but working. What can I do for you?

He grimaced humorously at the difficulty of what he had to say. I’ve got to have about an hour of your time. Right now, if you can manage it. He looked embarrassed. I’m sorry, but… if you could just take me on faith for a little while, I’d appreciate it.

I was hooked; he had my interest. All right. It’s ten to twelve; would you like to have lunch? I can leave a little early.

Fine, but let’s not talk indoors. We could pick up some sandwiches and eat in the park. Okay? It’s not too cool.

Nodding, I said, I’ll get my coat and meet you here. You interest me strangely. I stood hesitating, looking closely at this pleasant, tough-looking, bald little man, then said it. As I think you know. Matter of fact, you’ve been through this whole routine before, haven’t you? Complete with embarrassed look.

He grinned and made a little finger-snapping motion. And I thought I really had it down. Well, it’s back to the mirror, and more practice. Get your coat; we’re losing time.

We walked north on Fifth Avenue past the incredible buildings of glass and steel, glass and enameled metal, glass and marble, and the older ones of more stone than glass. It’s a stunning street and unbelievable; I never get used to it, and I wonder if anyone really does. Is there any other place where an entire cloud bank can be completely reflected in the windows of one wall of only one building, and with room to spare? Today I especially enjoyed being out on Fifth, the temperature in the high 50’s, a nice late-fall coolness in the air. It was nearly noon, and beautiful girls came dancing out of every office building we passed, and I thought of how regrettable it was that I’d never know or even speak to most of them. The little bald man beside me said, "I’ll tell you what I’ve come to say to you; then I’ll listen to questions. Maybe I’ll even answer some. But everything I can really tell you I will have said before we reach Fifty-sixth Street. I’ve done this thirty-odd times now, and never figured out a good way to say it or even sound very sane while trying, so here goes.

There’s a project. A U.S. government project I guess you’d have to call it. Secret, naturally; as what isn’t in government these days? In my opinion, and that of a handful of others, it’s more important than all the nuclear, space-exploration, satellite, and rocket programs put together, though a hell of a lot smaller. I tell you right off that I can’t even hint what the project is about. And believe me, you’d never guess. I can and do say that nothing human beings have ever before attempted in the entire nutty history of the race even approaches this in absolute fascination. When I first understood what this project is about I didn’t sleep for two nights, and I don’t mean that in the usual way; I mean I literally did not sleep. And before I could sleep on the third night I had to have a shot in the arm, and I’m supposed to be the plodding unimaginative type. Do I have your attention?

Yes; if I understand you, you’ve finally discovered something more interesting than sex.

"You may find out that you’re not exaggerating. I think riding to the moon would be almost dull in comparison to what you may just possibly have a chance to do. It is the greatest possible adventure. I would give anything I own or will ever have just to be in your shoes; I’d give years of my life just for a chance at this. And that’s it, friend Morley. I can go on talking, and will, but that’s really all I have to say. Except this: through no virtue or merit of your own, just plain dumb luck, you are invited to join the project. To commit yourself to it. Absolutely blind. That’s some pig in a poke, all right, but oh, my God, what a pig. There’s a pretty good delicatessen on Fifty-seventh Street; what kind of sandwiches you want?"

Roast pork, what else?

We bought our sandwiches and a couple of apples, then walked on toward Central Park a couple of blocks ahead. Prien was waiting for some sort of reply, and we walked in silence for half a block; then I shrugged irritably, wanting to be polite but not knowing how else to answer. What am I supposed to say?

Whatever you want.

All right; why me?

Well, I’m glad you asked, as the politicians say. There is a particular kind of man we need. He has to have a certain set of qualities. A rather special list of qualities, actually, and a long list. Furthermore, he has to have them in a pretty exact kind of balance. We didn’t know that at first. We thought most any intelligent eager young fellow would do. Me, for example. Now we know, or think we do, that he has to be physically right, psychologically right, temperamentally right. He has to have a certain special way of looking at things. He’s got to have the ability, and it seems to be fairly rare, to see things as they are and at the same time as they might have been. If that makes any sense to you. It probably does, because it may be that what we mean is the eye of an artist. Those are just some of what he must have or be; there are others I won’t tell you about now. Trouble is that on one count or another that seems to eliminate most of the population. The only practical way we’ve found to turn up likely candidates is to plow through the tests the army gave its inductees; you remember them.

Vaguely.

I don’t know how many sets of those tests have been analyzed; that’s not my department. Probably millions. They use computers for the early check-throughs, eliminating all those that are comfortably wide of the mark. Which is most of them. After that, real live people take over; we don’t want to miss even one candidate. Because we’re finding damn few. We’ve checked I don’t know how many millions of service records, including the women’s branches. For some reason women seem to produce more candidates than men; we wish we had more we could check. Anyway, one Simon L. Morley with the fine euphonious serial number looks like a candidate. How come you only made PFC?

A lack of talent for idiocies such as close-order drill.

I believe the technical term is two left feet. Out of fewer than a hundred possibilities we’ve found so far, about fifty have already heard what you’re hearing now, and turned us down. About fifty more have volunteered, and over forty of them flunked some further tests. Anyway, after one hell of a lot of work, we have five men and two women who just might be qualified. Most or all of them will fail in the actual attempt; we don’t have even one we feel very sure of. We’d like to get about twenty-five candidates, if we possibly can. We’d like a hundred, but we don’t believe there are that many around; at least we don’t know how to find them. But you may be one.

Gee whiz.

At Fifty-ninth Street as we stood waiting for the light, I glanced at Rube’s profile and said, Rube Prien; yeah. You played football. When was it? About ten years ago.

He turned to grin up at me. You remembered! You’re a good boy; I wish I’d bought you some thick gooey dessert, the kind I can’t eat anymore. Only it was fifteen years ago; I’m not really the young handsome youth I know I must seem.

Where’d you play again? I can’t remember.

The light clicked green, and we stepped down off the curb. West Point.

I knew it! You’re in the army!

Yep.

I was shaking my head. Well, I’m sorry, but it’ll take more than you. It’ll take five husky fighting MPs to drag me back in, kicking and screaming all the way. Whatever you’re selling and however fascinating, I don’t want any. The lure of sleepless nights in the army just isn’t enough, Prien; I’ve already had all I want.

On the other side of the street we stepped up onto the sidewalk, crossed it, then turned onto the curve of a dirt-and-gravel path of Central Park and walked along it looking for an empty bench. What’s wrong with the army? Rube said with fake injured innocence.

You said this would take an hour; I’d need a week just for the chapter headings.

"All right, don’t join the army. Join the navy; we’ll make you anything you like from bosun’s mate to lieutenant senior grade. Or join the Department of the Interior; you can be a forester with your very own Smokey-the-Bear hat. Prien was enjoying himself. Sign up with the post office if you want; we’ll make you an assistant inspector and give you a badge and the power to arrest for postal fraud. I mean it; pick almost any branch of the government you like except State or the diplomatic corps. And pick any title you fancy at no more than around a twelve-thousand-a-year salary, and so long as it isn’t an elective office. Because, Si—all right to call you Si?" he said with sudden impatience.

Sure.

And call me Rube, if you care to. Si, it doesn’t matter what payroll you’re technically on. When I say this is secret, I mean it; our budget is scattered through the books of every sort of department and bureau, our people listed on every roster but our own. We don’t officially exist, and yes, I’m still a member of the U.S. Army. The time counts toward my retirement, and besides I like the army, eccentric as I know that sounds. But my uniforms are in storage, I salute nobody these days, and the man I take a lot of my orders from is an historian on leave from Columbia University. Be a little chilly on the benches in the shade; let’s find a place in the sun.

We picked a place a dozen yards off the path beside a big outcropping of black rock. We sat down on the sunny side, leaning back against the warm rock, and began opening our sandwiches. To the south, east, and west the New York buildings rose high, hanging over the park’s edges like a gang ready to rush in and cover the greenery with concrete.

You must have been in grade school when you read about Flying Rube Prien, deer-footed quarterback.

I guess so; I’m twenty-eight. I bit into my sandwich. It was very good, the meat sliced thin and packed thick, the fat trimmed.

Rube said, Twenty-eight on March eleventh.

So you know that, do you? Well, goody goody gumshoes.

It’s in your army record, of course. But we know some things that aren’t; we know you were divorced two years ago, and why.

Would you mind telling me? I never did figure out why.

You wouldn’t understand. We also know that in about the last five months you’ve gone out with nine women but only four of them more than once. That in the last six weeks or so it seems to have narrowed down more and more to one. Just the same, we don’t think you’re ready to get married again. You may think you are, but we think you’re still afraid to. You have two men friends you occasionally have lunch or dinner with; your parents are dead; you have no brothers or sist—

My face had been flushing; I felt it, and took care to keep my voice quiet. I said, Rube, I think I like you personally. But I feel I have to say: Who gave you or anyone else the right to poke into my private affairs?

Don’t get mad, Si. It isn’t worth it; we haven’t snooped that much. And nothing embarrassing, nothing illegal. We’re not like one or two government agencies I could name; we don’t think we’re divinely appointed. There’s no wiretapping or illegal searches; we think the Constitution applies even to us. But before I leave I’ll want your permission to search your apartment before you go back tonight.

I felt my lips compressing, and I shook my head.

Rube smiled and reached out to touch my arm. I’m teasing you a little. But I hope you don’t mean that. I’m offering you a crack at the damnedest experience a human being has ever had.

"And you can’t tell me anything about it? I’m surprised you got seven people. Or even one."

Rube stared down at the grass; thinking about what he could say; then he looked up at me again. We’d want to know more, he said slowly. "We’d want to test you in several other ways. But we think we already know an awful lot about the way you are, the way you think. We own two original Simon Morley paintings, for example, from the Art Directors’ Show last spring, plus a watercolor and some sketches, all bought and paid for. We know something about the kind of man you are, and I’ve learned some more today. So I think I can tell you this: I can just about guarantee you, I believe I can guarantee you, that if you’ll take this on faith and commit yourself for two years, assuming you get through some further testing, you will thank me. You’ll say I was right. You’ll tell me that the very thought that you might have missed out on this gives you the chills. How many human beings have ever lived, Si? Five or six billions, maybe? Well, if you should test out, you’ll become one of maybe a dozen out of all those billions, maybe the only one, who just might have the greatest adventure any human being has ever had."

It impressed me. I sat eating an apple, staring ahead, thinking. Suddenly I turned to him. You haven’t said a damn thing more than you did in the first place!

"You noticed, did you? Some don’t. Si, that’s all I can say!"

Well, you’re too modest; you’ve got your sales pitch worked out beautifully. Will you accept a down payment on the Brooklyn Bridge? My God, Rube, what am I supposed to tell you? ‘Sure, I’ll join; where do I sign?’

He nodded. I know. It’s tough. There’s just no other way it can be done, that’s all. He sat looking at me. Then he said softly, But it’s easier for you than most. You’re unmarried, no kids. And you’re bored silly with your work; we know that. As why shouldn’t you be? It doesn’t amount to anything, it’s not worth doing. You’re bored and dissatisfied with yourself, and time is passing; in two years you’ll be thirty. And you still don’t know what to do with your life. Rube sat back against the warm rock, staring off at the path and the people strolling along it through the sunny fall noon-hour, giving me a chance to think. What he’d just said was true.

When I turned to look at him again, Rube was waiting. He said, So this is what you have to do: take a chance. Take a deep breath, close your eyes, grab your nose, and jump in. Or would you rather keep on selling soap, chewing gum, and brassieres, or whatever the hell it is you peddle down the street? You’re a young man, for crysake! Rube sliced his hands together, dusting off crumbs, and shoved several balls of waxed paper into his lunch sack. Then he stood up quickly and easily, the ex-footballer. You know what I’m talking about, Si; the only possible way you can do this is to just go ahead and do it.

I stood up too, and we walked to a wire trash-basket chained to a tree, and dropped our wastepaper into it. Turning back toward the path with Rube, I knew that if I took my wrist between thumb and forefinger my pulse rate would be up; I was scared. With an irritation that surprised me, I said, I’d be taking a hell of a lot on the say-so of an absolute stranger! What if I joined this big mystery and didn’t think it was all that fascinating?

Impossible.

But if I did!

Once we’re satisfied you’re a candidate and tell you what we’re doing we have to know that you’ll go through with it. We need your promise in advance; we can’t help that.

Would I have to go away?

In time. With some story for your friends. We couldn’t have anyone wondering where or why Si Morley disappeared.

Is this dangerous?

We don’t think so. But I can’t truthfully say we really know.

Walking toward the corner of the park at Fifth Avenue and Fifty-ninth Street, I thought about the life I’d made for myself since I’d arrived in New York City two years ago looking for a job as an artist, a stranger from Buffalo with a portfolio of samples under my arm. Every now and then I had dinner with Lennie Hindesmith, an artist I’d worked with in my first New York job. We’d generally see a movie after dinner or go bowling or something like that. I played tennis fairly often, public courts in the summer, the armory in the winter, with Matt Flax, a young accountant in my present agency; he’d also brought me into a weekly Monday-night bridge game, and we were probably on the way to becoming good friends. Pearl Moschetti was an assistant account executive on a perfume account at the first place I worked; ever since, I’d seen her now and then, once in a while for an entire weekend, though I hadn’t seen her for quite a while now. I thought about Grace Ann Wunderlich, formerly of Seattle, whom I’d picked up almost accidentally in the Longchamps bar at Forty-ninth and Madison when I saw her start crying out of overwhelming loneliness brought on from sitting at a table by herself having a drink she didn’t want or like when everyone else in the place seemed to have friends. Every time I’d seen her after that we drank too much, apparently following the pattern of the first time, usually at a place in the Village, a bar. Sometimes I stopped in there alone because I knew the bartenders now and some of the regulars, and it reminded me of a wonderful bar I’d been to a few times on a vacation, in Sausalito, California, called the No-Name Bar. Mostly I thought about Katherine Mancuso, a girl I’d been seeing more and more often, and the girl I’d begun to suspect I’d eventually be asking to marry me.

At first a lot of my life in New York had been lonely; I’d have left it willingly then. But now, while I still spent two or three and sometimes more nights a week by myself—reading, seeing a movie I wanted to see that Katie didn’t, watching television at home, or just wandering around the city once in a while—I didn’t mind. I had friends now, I had Katherine, and I liked a little time to myself.

I thought about my work. They liked it at the agency, they liked me, and I made a decent enough salary. The work wasn’t precisely what I’d had in mind when I went to art school in Buffalo, but I didn’t know either just what I did have in mind then, if anything.

So all in all there wasn’t anything really wrong with my life. Except that, like most everyone else’s I knew about, it had a big gaping hole in it, an enormous emptiness, and I didn’t know how to fill it or even know what belonged there. I said to Rube, Quit my job. Give up my friends. Disappear. How do I know you’re not a white slaver?

Look in the mirror.

We turned out of the park and stopped at the corner. I said, Well, Rube, this is Friday: Can you let me think about it? Over the weekend, anyway? I don’t think I’m interested, but I’ll let you know. I don’t know what else I can tell you right now.

What about that permission? I’d like to make my phone call now. From the nearest booth, in fact, at the Plaza—he nodded at the old hotel just across Fifty-ninth Street—and send a man over to search your apartment this afternoon.

Once more I felt a flush rise up in my face. Everything in it?

He nodded. If there are letters, he’ll read them. If anything’s hidden, he’ll find it.

"All right, goddammit! Go ahead! He sure as hell won’t find anything interesting!"

I know. Rube was laughing at me. Because he won’t even look. There’s no man I’m going to phone. Nobody’s going to search your crummy apartment. Or ever was.

Then what the hell is this all about!

Don’t you know? He stood looking at me for a moment; then he grinned. You don’t know it and you won’t believe it; but it means you’ve already decided.

2

Saturday morning Katie and I drove up into Connecticut for the day. The clear sunny weather still held, as long a fall as I could remember. It was weather that couldn’t last, we didn’t want to waste it, and we drove up in Katie’s MG. It was the old-style model with running boards and exposed radiator-front, and although New York is really no place to own a car, Kate had this because it just exactly fitted into a narrow areaway beside her shop if she illegally drove up over the curb. When it was parked you had to climb in and out over the back end, but it saved garage rent, making it possible for Kate to have it.

Katie had a tiny antique shop on Third Avenue in the Forties. Her foster parents—she’d been adopted when she was two—had died two years ago within six months of each other; they were elderly, older than her own parents would have been. She’d moved to New York then, from Westchester, worked as a stenographer, didn’t like it, and opened the shop a year later with the few thousand dollars she’d inherited. It was failing. She’d added greeting cards and a little rental library which hadn’t helped, and we both knew she’d have to give up the shop when the lease expired in the spring.

I was sorry, both for Kate and because I liked the place. I liked poking around it, discovering something I hadn’t seen before: a box of old political-campaign buttons under a counter, maybe, or something new she’d just bought such as an admiral’s hat I could try on. And whenever there’s been time or when I’ve had to wait for Kate as I did this morning, I’d usually sit down with one of the stereoscopes—the viewers—she had, and one of several big boxes loaded with old stereoscopic views, mostly of New York City. Because I’ve always felt a wonder at old photographs not easy to explain. Maybe I don’t need to explain; maybe you’ll recognize what I mean. I mean the sense of wonder, staring at the strange clothes and vanished backgrounds, at knowing that what you’re seeing was once real. That light really did reflect into a lens from these lost faces and objects. That these people were really there once, smiling into a camera. You could have walked into the scene then, touched those people, and spoken to them. You could actually have gone into that strange outmoded old building and seen what now you never can—what was just inside the door.

The wonder is even stronger with old stereoscopic views—the almost, but not quite, identical pair of photographs mounted side by side on stiff cardboard, that, looked at through the viewer, give a miraculous effect of depth. It’s never been a mystery to me why the whole country was once crazy about them. Because the good ones, the really clear sharp photographs, are so real: Insert a view, slide it into focus, and the old scene leaps out at you, astonishingly three-dimensional. And then, for me, the awe becomes intense. Because now you really see the arrested moment, so actual it seems that if you watch intently, the life caught here must continue. That the raised horse’s hoof so startlingly distinct in the foreground must move down to the solidness of pavement below it again; those carriage wheels revolve, the girl walk closer, the man move on out of the scene. The feeling that the tantalizing reality of the vanished moment might somehow be seized—that if you watch long enough you might detect that first nearly imperceptible movement—is the answer to the question Kate has asked me more than once: How can you sit there so long—you hardly move!—staring endlessly at the very same picture? So I liked the shop; it had things like stereoscopic views to stare at. And I liked it because I’d met Katie through it; it’s the only time in my life I ever worked up the nerve to do what I did.

I’d needed a certain kind of antique table lamp to sketch into an ad I was working on, and I came to Katie’s shop and stopped to look into the window just as she was taking something out of it. I looked at her; she’s a nice-looking girl with that kind of thick dark-brown coppery hair that just misses being red, and the lightly freckled skin and the brown eyes that so often go with it. But it was her face that hooked me; I mean the look of it, the expression. It’s the face, you know at first sight, of an extremely nice person, that’s all. I liked her instantly, the person as much as the nice-looking girl. And I’m sure that’s why, when she glanced up at me, I had the nerve—before I could remember that I didn’t have the nerve—to touch my lips with my bunched fingers and toss her a kiss through the glass, at the same time crossing my eyes. She smiled, and before I could lose this new untypical courage I walked right on into the shop, trusting that I’d think of something to say, which I did. I said I was looking for another Napoleon hat, that they’d taken my old one away. She smiled again, which shows how kind she was, and we talked. And while she couldn’t come out for a cup of coffee with me then, I was back next day, and we went out to dinner.

Katie came down now—her apartment is over the shop—in a short brown-canvas car coat, a yellow scarf over her hair, which was a great combination, and she gave me the car keys, asking if I’d mind driving; she knew I liked to drive the MG.

We had a good time, a nice day, and in the late afternoon I was driving along a little country road I’d found—a dirt road, farmland on each side, occasional stone fences, and a lot of trees, some still with fall foliage. I was going no more than twenty, just lazing along, one hand on the wheel, not thinking of anything much. Off and on during the day I’d thought of Rube Prien, wishing I could talk to Katie about it; I couldn’t quite remember whether or not I’d promised I wouldn’t mention even the conversation with Prien, so I didn’t say anything.

It was still fairly warm, lots of late-afternoon sun, and Katie untied her scarf, pulled it off, then tossed her head to shake out that thick handsome hair, very coppery now in the slanted sunlight, then fluffing it up at the back with one hand—a great combination of feminine gestures—and I glanced at her and smiled. She smiled back, sitting there smoothing her scarf flat on her lap; she was wearing a green tweed skirt. Then she looked at me and slid closer, which was pleasant and flattering. She was holding the scarf by the front two corners now, stretching it out tight between her hands. She lifted it to just above windshield level and the air took it, fluttering it tautly back from the corners she held. She moved it directly over my head, and then very quickly—a scurry of motion—she drew the two corners down past my face to below my chin and let go the scarf. The wind instantly plastered it tight to my face like a pale-yellow skin, and I was absolutely blind. I couldn’t even breathe very well, or thought I couldn’t, and I let out a strangled yelp and was in a panic for a second or so, unable to think.

Just try it some time: driving along a road with a damn scarf plastered over your eyes. You don’t know what to do; whether to hang onto the wheel trying to steer from memory, braking as fast as you can without skidding off the road; or whether to let go and try to snatch off the scarf before piling up.

I tried both. One hand still on the wheel, and trying to remember exactly what there’d been along the sides of the road here, I grabbed at the scarf with my other hand but got a handful of hair along with it, and the scarf wouldn’t budge. I was braking too hard and felt the rear end swing into a slide and knew that if the ditches were at all deep along here, the car couldn’t help but go into one. I was trying to scoop the scarf off my face but my fingers only scrabbled over glossy nylon. Then we were stopped, the motor killed, car slewed halfway around in the road, the rear end off it, and when I finally plucked and dragged that scarf from my face, Kate was leaning back against her door, an arm raised limply to point a finger at me, almost helpless with laughter.

The instant I could see, I checked the road ahead and behind as fast as I could swivel my head, and of course nothing was in sight in either direction or Katie wouldn’t have done it; and the ditches beside us were so shallow they were almost nonexistent and entirely dry. I said, Marvelous. Absolutely great. Let’s do it again! On the parkway coming home tonight.

Oh, God, you were funny, she said, hardly able to get out the words. "You looked so funny!" I grinned at her, very pleased with this nutty girl, and at that moment and for all that weekend Rube Prien’s mystery project had no chance at all with me.

I’m not going to say everything there is to say about Kate and me. I’ve read such accounts, completely explicit and detailed, nothing omitted; and when they’ve been good I’ve liked them. Sometimes I’ve even learned something about people from them, almost like an actual experience, and that’s very good indeed. But my nature is different, that’s all. I don’t like to and I could not reveal everything about myself. I like to read them, but I wouldn’t like to write one. I’m not holding back anything all that unique, in any case. So if now and then you think you can read between the lines, you may be right; or may not. Anyway, everything I might possibly find to say about Kate and me isn’t what I’m trying to get down.

During that weekend I didn’t believe I was even thinking very much about Rube and his proposal. Yet at two-thirty Monday afternoon I finished the last of my "lovelier you soap sketches, walked into Frank Dapp’s office, laid them on his desk, started to turn and leave, and instead my mouth opened, and I stood listening to myself give notice. I’d saved some money, I told Frank; now, before it was too late, I was going to take some time and see if I could make it as a serious artist. It was a lie, and yet something I’d often thought of. You want to paint?" Frank said, leaning back in his chair.

No. Painting’s pretty much all abstract and nonrepresentational these days.

You anti-abstract or something?

No. Actually I’m kind of a Mondrian fan, though I think he painted himself into a corner. But my talent, if any, is all representational; so I’m going to draw.

Frank nodded, looking wistful. It’s what he wanted to do, but he had two kids in high school who’d be expecting to go to college. He said if I was in a hurry I could leave as soon as I got rid of my current work, that he wanted to buy me a good-luck drink before I left, and I thanked him, feeling lousy about the lie, and took the elevator to the building lobby and the public phone booths. There I dialed the number Rube had given me.

It took a long time to get him on the line. I had to speak to two people, first a woman, then a man, and then wait for what must have been two full minutes; the operator came on for more money. Finally Rube spoke, and I said, I phoned to say that if I do this I’ll have to tell Katherine what’s going on.

There was a longish pause. Then he said, Well, you won’t have much of anything to tell until we’re sure you’re a candidate. If it turns out you aren’t, we’ll thank you for your trouble, and in that case I don’t think you’ll have to tell her anything about it. Can we agree on that?

Yeah.

If you reach the point of joining the project, knowing what we’re doing—he hesitated—well, damn it, if you have to tell her, I guess you have to. We have two guys who are married, and their wives know. We swear them to secrecy, and hope, that’s all.

Okay. What would happen if she blabbed, Rube? Or if I did? Just out of curiosity.

"A man in a skintight black suit and a mask will come down your chimney and shoot you with a soundless blow dart, paralyzing you. Then we seal you in a big block of clear plastic till the year 2001. Nothing would happen, for crysake! You think the CIA murders you or something? All we can do is pick people we think we can trust. And we’ve seen Katherine, you know; inquired about her, very discreetly and all that. Of the two of you, I trust her the most. I take it you’re joining us?"

I felt an impulse to hesitate, but didn’t bother. Yeah.

Okay, the first day you can make it come around about nine in the morning; here’s the address.

And so, three days later, on Thursday morning a little after nine, too tense to sit in a cab, I was walking through the rain, the good weather finally over apparently, looking for the address Rube had