Harlan Ellison - Shatterday

He had been abstracted, thinking about something else. It didn’t matter what. He had gone to the telephone in the restaurant, to call Jamie, to find out where the hell she was already, to find out why she’d kept him sitting in the bloody bar for thirty-five minutes. He had been thinking about something else, nothing deep, just woolgathering, and it wasn’t till the number was ringing that he realized he’d dialed his own apartment, He had done it other times, not often, but as many as anyone else, dialed a number by rote and not thought about it, and occasionally it was his own number, everyone does it (he thought later), everyone does it, it’s a simple mistake.

He was about to hang up, get back his dime and dial Jamie, when the receiver was lifted at the other end.

He answered.

Himself.

He recognized his own voice at once. But didn’t let it penetrate.

He had no little machine to take messages after the bleep, he had had his answering service temporarily disconnected (unsatisfactory service, they weren’t catching his calls on the third ring as he’d insisted), there was no one guesting at his apartment, nothing. He was not at home, he was here, in the restaurant, calling his apartment, and he answered.

“Hello?”

He waited a moment. Then said, “Who’s this?”

He answered, “Who’re you calling?”

“Hold it,” he said. “Who is this?”

His own voice, on the other end, getting annoyed, said, “Look, friend, what number do you want?”

“This is BEacon 3-6189, right?”

Warily: “Yeah… ?”

“Peter Novins’s apartment?”

There was silence for a moment, then: “That’s right.”

He listened to the sounds from the restaurant’s kitchen. “If this is Novins’s apartment, who’re you?”

On the other end, in his apartment, there was a deep breath. “This is Novins.”

He stood in the phone booth, in the restaurant, in the night, the receiver to his ear, and listened to his own voice. He had dialed his own number by mistake, dialed an empty apartment… and he had answered.,

Finally, he said, very tightly, “This is Novins.”

“Where are you?”

“I’m at The High Tide, waiting for Jamie.”

Across the line, with a terrible softness, he heard himself asking, “Is that you?”

A surge of fear pulsed through him and he tried to get out of it with one last possibility. “If this is a gag… Freddy… is that you, man? Morrie? Art?”

Silence. Then, slowly, “I’m Novins. Honest to God.”

His mouth was dry. “I’m out here. You can’t be, I can’t be in the apartment.”

“Oh yeah? Well, I am.”

‘‘I’ll have to call you back.” Peter Novins hung up.

He went back to the bar and ordered a double Scotch, no ice, straight up, and threw it back in two swallows, letting it burn. He sat and stared at his hands, turning them over and over, studying them to make sure they were his own, not alien meat grafted onto his wrists when he was not looking.

Then he went back to the phone booth, closed the door and sat down, and dialed his own number. Very carefully.

It rang six times before he picked it up.

He knew why the voice on the other end had let it ring six times; he didn’t want to pick up the snake and hear his own voice coming at him.

“Hello?” His voice on the other end was barely controlled.

“It’s me,” he said, closing his eyes.

“Jesus God,” he murmured.

They sat there, in their separate places, without speaking. Then Novins said, “I’ll call you Jay.”

“That’s okay,” he answered from the other end. It was his middle name. He never used it, but it appeared on his insurance policy, his driver’s license and his social security card. Jay said, “Did Jamie get there?”

“No, she’s late again.”

Jay took a deep breath and said, “We’d better talk about this, man.”

“I suppose,” Novins answered. “Not that I really want to. You’re scaring the shit out of me.”

“How do you think I feel about it?”

“Probably the same way I feel about it.”

They thought about that for a long moment. Then Jay said, “Will we be feeling exactly the same way about things?”

Novins considered it, then said, “If you’re really me then I suppose so. We ought to try and test that.”

“You’re taking this a lot calmer than I am, it seems to me,” Jay said.

Novins was startled. “You really think so? I was just about to say I thought you were really terrific the way you’re handling all this. I think you’re much more together about it than I am. I’m really startled, I’ve got to tell you.”

“So how’ll we test it?” Jay asked.

Novins considered the problem, then said, “Why don’t we compare likes and dislikes. That’s a start. That sound okay to you?”

“It’s as good a place as any, I suppose. Who goes first?”

“It’s my dime,” Novins said, and for the first time he smiled. “I like, uh, well-done prime rib, end cut if I can get it, Yorkshire pudding, smoking a pipe, Max Emst’s paintings, Robert Altman films, William Goldman’s books, getting mail but not answering it, uh…”

He stopped. He had been selecting random items from memory, the ones that came to mind first. But as he had been speaking, he heard what he was saying, and it seemed stupid. “This isn’t going to work,” Novins said. “What the hell does it matter? Was there anything in that list you didn’t like?”

Jay sighed. “No, they’re all favorites. You’re right. If I like it, you’ll like it. This isn’t going to answer any questions.”

Novins said, “I don’t even know what the questions are!”

“ That’s easy enough,” Jay said. “There’s only one question: which of us is me, and how does me get rid of him?”

A chill spread out from Novins’s shoulder blades and wrapped around his arms like a mantilla. “What’s that supposed to mean? Get rid of him? What the hell’s that?”

“Face it,” Jay said—and Novins heard a tone in the voice he recognized, the tone he used when he was about to become a tough negotiator—”we can’t both be Novins. One of us is going to get screwed.”

“Hold it, friend,” Novins said, adopting the tone. “That’s pretty muddy logic. First of all, who’s to say you’re not going to vanish back where you came from as soon as I hang up…”

“Bullshit,” Jay answered.

“Yeah, well, maybe; but even if you’re here to stay, and I don’t concede that craziness for a second, even if you are real—”

“Believe it, baby, I’m real,” Jay said, with a soft chuckle. Novins was starting to hate him.

“—even if you are real,” Novins continued, “there’s no saying we can’t both exist, and both lead happy, separate lives.”

“You know something, Novins,” Jay said, “you’re really full of horse puckey. You can’t lead a happy life by yourself, man, how the hell are you going to do it knowing I’m over here living your life, too?”

“What do you mean I can’t lead a happy life? What do you know about it?” And he stopped; of course Jay knew about it. ALL about it.

“You’d better start facing reality, Novins. You’ll be coming to it late in life, but you’d better learn how to do it. Maybe it’ll make the end come easier.”

Novins wanted to slam the receiver into its rack. He was at once furiously angry and frightened. He knew what the other Novins was saying was true; he had to know, without argument; it was, after all, himself saying it. “Only one of us is going to make it,” he said, tightly. “And it’s going to be me, old friend.”