Finney, Jack / Финней, Джек - Собрание сочинений (69 произведений) [1954-2016, fb2/epub, ENG]

5 Against the House 1954, epub Invasion of the Body Snatchers (= The Body Snatchers) / Похитители плоти 1955, fb2 (исходная книжная версия) Invasion of the Body Snatchers (= The Body Snatchers) / Похитители плоти 2014, epub (retail), ISBN: 978-1-4767-7209-7, Touchstone / Simon & Schuster (переработанная в 1978 году книжная версия) The House of Numbers 1957, epub Assault on a Queen (= The U-19's Last Kill) 1959, epub The U-19's Last Kill (= Assault on a Queen) 2016, epub, Jerry eBooks (журнальный вариант с иллюстрациями) Good Neighbor Sam 1963, epub

Three by Finney 2013, epub, ISBN: 978-1-4391-4396-4, Touchstone / Simon & Schuster About Time 2013, epub, ISBN: 978-1-4391-4448-0, Touchstone / Simon & Schuster The Jack Finney Reader 2011, epub (коллекция журнальных публикаций)

Double Take 1965, fb2

Forgotten News: The Crime of the Century and Other Lost Stories 1983, epub

WHEN JESSICA WALKED into the club car, everyone knew with one startled glance that this was somebody special, someone important, and I sat watching their eyes and mouths pop open. Out of the world’s three billion people there can’t be more than, say, a hundred women like Jessica Maxwell. Her red-brown hair was thick and shining with health, her brown eyes magnificent, her complexion so flawless your fingers ached to touch it, her figure marvelous. But that doesn’t tell you how beautiful she was; I can only say that if you were staggering toward a hospital with three bullets in your chest, you’d stop and turn to stare after Jessica if she walked past. She said, “Hi, Jake,” smiled so that an actual chill ran up my spine, and sat down beside me. People sat sipping drinks, glancing out windows, turning pages and sneaking looks, but I was pretty sure no one actually recognized her. She’d been in only two pictures, in small parts; on the screen less than a minute in one of them. But of course they knew she almost had to be in pictures; we were out of Los Angeles station only 20 minutes, and with looks like hers what else could she be? We talked, I made a joke or so, she laughed delightedly, and every man in the car sat sizing me up, eyes narrowed, resentful, wondering who the hell I was to be with a girl like Jess. Well, I wondered, too. I work for the same studio, and was in love with Jessie or close to it, but who wasn’t? I didn’t even know her well—just through this one picture—and I’m only a dialog director. Eventually I’ll be a director, maybe a very damn good one, but no one else knows that, and right now I’m not much in job or looks, either. I’m only average height, skinny, 26, name of Jake Pelman, and slightly homely. I freely admit I’d rather be handsome, taller, heavier, the world’s finest rumba dancer, and a master with foil and epee. But as things stood, I had to wonder why a girl like Jess had asked me, even urged me, to take the train with her. We were going to New York on location to make a few last scenes for the picture, most of which had already been filmed at the studio, and everyone else in the unit was flying, of course; it’s a long trip. So with Jess and me alone, and nothing else to do but get better acquainted, my hopes were high. “Jake, would you like to come back to my bedroom?” Jessie said after ten minutes or so, and I allowed as how I would, and stood up. A minute later she was unfastening her bag, handing me a script and explaining that three uninterrupted days on the train were a wonderful chance to get her New York scenes to perfection. Would I mind helping? Read through the scenes with her, and coach her? It was why she’d wanted me to come along, she explained innocently; at least I think it was innocently. After a few stunned seconds in which I stood hooting with inaudible invisible jeering laughter at myself and my hopes, I said I’d be glad to, and we settled down to work on Jessie’s scenes for most of the next three days. I didn’t blame her; these final few scenes were the biggest of the picture for Jessie. One in particular—we worked on it through Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and almost to Grand Central Station—was her chance to be noticed, and she knew it. Maybe every actor or actress has a part like this early in his or her career; the big one, the one that counts if only you recognize it. Jessie did; she understood instinctively that this particular scene in this particular picture was her first step, and one she had to take, toward stardom or oblivion. We worked. We also had an occasional drink in the club car, ate our meals together, sat and talked or read, even played a little gin, and got to know each other. But mostly we worked on that scene. In the picture Jess was the daughter of a woman speak-easy owner in New York, played by the star; like most other studios these days, we were making a picture set in the 1920s. In her big scene, Jess was in love with a much older man, and was heartbroken when he left her. An hour and a half out of New York, Jessie laid her script on the seat beside her and said, “I’m not getting it, am I, Jake? I’m no closer than the day we started,” and the truth was no; she wasn’t getting it at all. . . .

The presidents of the New York Central and the New York, New Haven and Hartford railroads will swear on a stack of timetables that there are only two. But I say there are three, because I’ve been on the third level at Grand Central Station. Yes, I’ve taken the obvious step: I talked to a psychiatrist friend of mine, among others. I told him about the third level at Grand Central Station, and he said it was a waking-dream wish fulfillment. He said I was unhappy. That made my wife kind of mad, but he explained that he meant the modern world is full of insecurity, fear, war, worry and all the rest of it, and that I just want to escape. Well, who doesn’t? Everybody I know wants to escape, but they don’t wander down into any third level at Grand Central Station. But that’s the reason, he said, and my friends all agreed. Everything points to it, they claimed. My stamp collecting, for example; that’s a “temporary refuge from reality.” Well, maybe, but my grandfather didn’t need any refuge from reality; things were pretty nice and peaceful in his day, from all I hear, and he started my collection. It’s a nice collection, too, blocks of four of practically every U. S. issue, first-day covers, and so on. President Roosevelt collected stamps, too, you know. Anyway, here’s what happened at Grand Central. One night last summer I worked late at the office. I was in a hurry to get uptown to my apartment so I decided to take the subway from Grand Central because it’s faster than the bus. Now, I don’t know why this should have happened to me. I’m just an ordinary guy named Charley, thirty-one years old, and I was wearing a tan gabardine suit and a straw hat with a fancy band; I passed a dozen men who looked just like me. And I wasn’t trying to escape from anything; I just wanted to get home to Louisa, my wife. I turned into Grand Central from Vanderbilt Avenue, and went down the steps to the first level, where you take trains like the Twentieth Century. Then I walked down another flight to the second level, where the suburban trains leave from, ducked into an arched doorway heading for the subway—and got lost. That’s easy to do. I’ve been in and out of Grand Central hundreds of times, but I’m always bumping into new doorways and stairs and corridors. Once I got into a tunnel about a mile long and came out in the lobby of the Roosevelt Hotel. Another time I came up in an office building on Forty-sixth Street, three blocks away. Sometimes I think Grand Central is growing like a tree, pushing out new corridors and staircases like roots. There’s probably a long tunnel that nobody knows about feeling its way under the city right now, on its way to Times Square, and maybe another to Central Park. And maybe—because for so many people through the years Grand Central has been an exit, a way of escape—maybe that’s how the tunnel I got into . . . But I never told my psychiatrist friend about that idea. . . .

Добавлено: Finney, Jack - 5 Against the House - 1954.epub Finney, Jack - The House of Numbers - 1957.epub Finney, Jack - Assault on a Queen - 1959.epub Finney, Jack - Good Neighbor Sam - 1963.epub Finney, Jack - The Jack Finney Reader - 2011.epub (сборник журнальных публикаций) Finney, Jack - Invasion of the Body Snatchers - 2014.epub (переработанная в 1978 году, в релизе есть первая книжная версия в fb2 и журнальная версия в сборнике The Jack Finney Reader) Finney, Jack - Forgotten News - 1983.epub (документальная)

Добавлено: Finney, Jack - The U-19's Last Kill - 2016.epub (журнальный вариант Assault on a Queen)