The Burglar Who Met Fredric Brown

8

I talked for a long time, and I don’t think I left much of anything out. At first Carolyn had questions, but it didn’t take her long to stop asking them. I wound up telling her how when I’d left the bookstore I’d thought about something from the deli or the Thai place, and then decided that just because we’d had Laotian food yesterday was no reason not to have it again today.

“So I went to Two Guys,” I said, “and it was a different Two Guys, with two different guys behind the counter, and I don’t know how to explain this, but I was surprised but not shocked. Because if the world had turned upside-down, why shouldn’t Luang Prabang turn into Dushanbe?”

“Bowl-Mor is honest to God back on University Place?”

“Right where it’s always been. You want to walk over there and see?”

“Not right now.” She thought for a moment, then hauled off and slapped herself across the face.

I stared at her.

“In case it was all a dream,” she said, “but it’s not, is it? You want me to slap you, Bern?”

“Not unless I’ve said something offensive.”

“None of this is offensive,” she said, “but that doesn’t mean I can get my mind around it. I mean, it’s not enough to say it’s weird. What it is, it’s impossible.”

“I know.”

“Like, literally impossible. As in there’s no way on earth that what’s happening could be happening.”

“I know.”

“It’s flat-out unbelievable,” she said, “but as sure as I’ve just scarfed down a plateful of Tajik food, which I didn’t even know they had any of, so how could I dream it?”

“Good point.”

“I mean, my Metrocard’s gone and instead I’ve got a green and white SubwayCard, so how can I refuse to believe it? You know what I’m gonna do right this minute, Bern? I’m gonna get on the computer and see if Amazon has a book on the cuisine of Tajikistan.”

“Sounds like a plan.”

She was back a few minutes later. “Just as you said,” she reported. “There’s no Amazon and there’s no eBay. You Google Amazon and all you get is the river.”

“Well, it’s a pretty important river.”

“It was a pretty important company. How could it disappear? And it’s not like it went bankrupt, because then there’d be a million articles about it. Instead it vanished without a trace.”

“So did the little sign I put up. ‘Please wait until you have exited the premises before ordering the book from Amazon.’ When I first noticed it was gone, I figured some customer felt sufficiently offended to take it down. But I don’t think that’s what happened.”

“You don’t?”

“I think it was there yesterday when I closed for the night, and by the time I opened up this morning it was gone.”

“It just disappeared.”

“That’d be my guess.”

“Like eBay and Amazon.”

“But on a smaller scale.”

“Like my Metrocard.”

“And mine.”

“What’s going on, Bern? If this isn’t a dream, what the hell is it?”

“I’m not a hundred percent sure.”

“Well, what I am is a hundred percent baffled,” she said, “so if you’ve got any kind of a clue, let’s hear it. Because all I know right now is that the planet’s gone crazy.”

“Not the planet,” I said.

“You mean it’s just us?”

“No, I mean it’s the entire universe,” I said. “And what it’s gone is mad.”

“This’ll sound nuts,” I said. “I don’t think it makes sense, but neither does anything else. You remember the book I was reading?”

“Vaguely. We talked about it, and then I went to the Cubby Hole and drank some more scotch, so my memory could stand refreshing.”

“What Mad Universe,” I said, “by Fredric Brown.”

“It’s coming back to me,” she said, and thought about it, and her eyes widened. “No! Bern, is that even possible?”

“You tell me.”

“Alternate worlds,” she said. “Or universes, whatever. An infinite number of them, like monkeys with typewriters.”

“And we were in one of them for our whole lives.”

“And then this morning—”

“Tilt!”

“And now we’re in a different universe,” she said, “the same as the original in most ways, but there’s no Amazon in this universe, and no eBay either.”

“And Bowl-Mor is back on University Place where it belongs.”

“And our Metrocards changed color and turned into SubwayCards, and Mowgli brings books to you instead of raiding your shelves and turning into an online entrepreneur.”

“And the city streets are the same, except for one important difference.”

“What’s that, Bern?”

“No CCTV. No security cameras. No need to smile, because you’re not on Candid Camera.”

“And Two Guys—”

“Is right where it’s always been, but the guys aren’t from Luang Prabang anymore.”

“They’re from Whatsit in Whatchamacallit.”

“Dushanbe.”

“Right.”

“In Tajikistan.”

“Whatever you say, Bern. They know how to cook, I’ll give them that. You know what? I think you must be right.”

“About...”

“About what happened, or what’s happening, whatever. Did you read the book through to the end?”

“In bed,” I said. “propped up on a pillow, with a cup of chamomile tea on the night table. I was tired, but I was caught up in the book, and then I turned the last page and closed the book and turned off my light.”

“And?”

“And nothing. Next thing I knew it was morning.”

“And you were in a parallel universe.”

I thought about it. “You think I did this,” I said.

“What I think,” she began, and then there was a knock on the door. We turned toward the sound, just in time to see the door open to admit a big man in an expensive suit that looked as though it had been expertly tailored for someone else.

It was Ray Kirschmann, the best cop money can buy, and it was oddly comforting to see that he’d made the cut in our brave new universe.

“Don’t get up,” he said, unnecessarily. “Somethin’ smells good, but from the looks of it you both get to join the Clean Plate Club. Shame I didn’t show up a few minutes earlier.”

“Ray,” Carolyn said, “there are those who’d say it’s a shame you showed up at all.”

“Just so you’re not one of ’em, Shorty. Reason I’m here, Bernie, I noticed you closed up but left your book table out on the sidewalk. Aren’t you worried about shoplifters?”

“It’s only shoplifting,” I said, “if it takes place inside the shop. But no, I’m not worried. You could argue that anybody who swipes a book off the bargain table is doing me a favor.”

“Well, somebody did you three favors,” he said, “by takin’ three books. And then he wrote you a note.” He drew out and unfolded a sheet of notebook paper. “‘In a hurry. Am taking three books.’ There’s no signature.”

“The note itself is miracle enough.”

“It doesn’t stop there, Bernie. When he folded it he tucked this in.”

He held up a ten-dollar bill.

“Now you might not care if somebody walks off with a book,” he went on, “but I figured Mrs. Rhodenbarr’s son Bernard would just as soon hang onto the cash, and ten bucks sittin’ on an untended table doesn’t last long in this town.”

“So you brought it here.”

He nodded, handed me the bill. “That’s all I got,” he said. “Bernie, Shorty. Next time I’ll try to get here before you run out of food.”

“In the universe I remember,” she said, “that ten dollars would have wound up in Ray’s pocket.”

I shook my head. “He does like to supplement his income,” I said, “but not by stealing petty cash. On balance, I’d say he’s the same old Ray.”

“I guess. I’d find him easier to take if he’d cool it with the height jokes. I’ve got a perfectly good name, the one my parents picked out just for me, and it’s not Shorty.”

“Well—”

“It’s nothing important, Bern, just something for you to keep in mind next time you shuttle us into a new universe. Same Ray but no more short jokes.”

“I’ll keep it in mind. You really think all of this is my doing?”

“What else could it be? Look what’s changed. Security cameras. You hate them, you can rant for hours about them—”

“For hours? Really?”

“Maybe it just seems like hours, but you do go on and on about them, how they put you out of business the way desktop publishing shut down all the little print shops on Hudson Street.”

“Well, they did.”

“And Bowl-Mor. It’s really there?”

“You want to walk over there now? Rent a pair of shoes? Bowl a couple of frames?”

“Maybe later, Bern. But Bowl-Mor means this has to be your doing, Bern. It was nothing more than a neighborhood bowling alley, and if the neighborhood really needs a bowling alley I suppose somebody will open another one sooner or later. But for you it was a whole symbol of gentrification and the impending end of Greenwich Village as we know it.”

“When I saw it this morning,” I recalled, “I didn’t really think anything of it, because it looked as though it had been there forever.”

“And in this world, it has.”

“And eBay and Amazon, and the way Mowgli changed from being a supplier to a customer—”

“It’s as if you somehow absorbed the knack of world-building from Fredric Brown’s book, and when you woke up you were in this brand-new world of your own devising.”

“That sounds—”

“I know how it sounds. Do you have a better explanation, Bern?”

“No,” I said. “On the one hand it sounds utterly crazy, and at the same time it’s not only oddly plausible, it’s the only possible explanation around.”

“Uh-huh.”

“But—”

“But what?”

“Metrocards and SubwayCards. I’ve used a Metrocard just about every day since they introduced them. It’s so much better than having to buy tokens, and you could refill the thing with a credit card, and except for the cost, it’s like having a master key that unlocks every bus and subway car in the city. What did I ever object to about my Metrocard?”

“The name,” she said.

“Huh?”

“You don’t remember?”

“Remember what?”

“‘Metrocard? What kind of a boneheaded name is Metrocard? You know what the Metro is? The Metro’s what people in Paris call their subway. The Paris Metro, you hear the word Metro and you think Paris, you don’t think of hopping on the L Train and riding it all the way out to Canarsie.’”

“I said that?”

“More than once, Bern. ‘In London it’s the Underground, or maybe the Tube. In New York it’s the subway. The word is New York City’s gift to the world. When a couple of yuppies in a gentrified tenement give their bathroom a new look, do they finish the walls with Metro tiles? When someone jonesing for a hero sandwich makes the bad decision to pass up a proper Italian deli for a fast-food chain, does he pick a place called Metro?’”

“I wonder why I felt so strongly about it.”

“I think it was around the time you were breaking up with a girlfriend. I can’t remember which one.”

“They sort of merge in memory,” I said.

“If you’re going to use it to get on the subway, you said, then they ought to call it a Subway Card. And you didn’t like the colors, either.”

I thought a moment. “Orange and blue. Oh, because they’re New York Mets colors.”

“‘Why the Mets? When those clowns have three men on base, they’re generally all on the same base. What about the Yankees?’ You thought a Subway Card ought to have pinstripes.”

“A full-fledged rant,” I said. “Whoever she was, it must have been a bad break-up. You know, it’s beginning to come back to me. I guess I felt strongly at the time. But all these years later?”

“I don’t know how it works, Bern, but the thought must have lingered in a couple of your brain cells, and when your unconscious mind got around to ordering up a new universe—”

“That’s what I did? Specify what I wanted in a new improved world?”

My right hand was resting on my knee, and she laid a hand of her own on top of it. “I can’t think of any other explanation,” she said. “The book you were reading handed you a key, and you—”

“Waved it aside,” I said. “And picked the lock.”