Changing the Past Read Free

could pretty well come up with the equivalent. Most middle-aged suburban wives sell real estate, don’t they? And having intelligent and vigorous offspring is not unusual. Decadence is not as prevalent among the young as the journalists would have you think. Anyway, the other members of your family are not you . They have their own lives to deal with. As to yours, could it not stand some improvement? For example, what about your name? Is it really the one you’d want if you had your choice?”
    As it happened, Walter Hunsicker had never much liked either of those names, and the middle, Grover, was no improvement. But he said now, defiantly, “It’s a good name, a good strong solid three syllables, and it was my dad’s, and I loved him.”
    â€œVery touching,” said the little man, “but confess that if you could have changed it, no questions asked and no hard feelings, would you not have done so? What I’m talking about would be no betrayal of your forebears. Remember, it would be changing the past. Whatever new name you elected to take would thereupon not be new, but rather the one used by your family for generations. Now, what sounds good?”
    It could do no harm to play this game, but, as he saw by his wristwatch, the time was now halfway to three. “Really, I must go.”
    â€œRemember that it could be changed back again,” the little man said. “You’ve nothing to lose. Try some new names on for size!”
    Hunsicker was shy. “I wouldn’t know where to start. This is silly.”
    â€œThat’s why you can’t get hurt.”
    â€œAll right: Kellog. Channing Kellog the Third. No, that’s pretentious. John Kellog, known except on formal documents as Jack.”
    The little man nodded soberly. “So be it. You may need a whole new past to go with the name. Jack Kellog’s not the name of someone your age who is chief copy-editor at a book-publishing firm, father of a son who has already gone beyond him in professional prestige.”
    Hunsicker grimaced. He had been foolish to dally here. “Well then,” he said, “isn’t it fortunate that I remain good old Walter Hunsicker?” He took the plunge into the rain.
    Six blocks later, he reached his office, which was in a building that only from the exterior seemed a world of green glass. The receptionist was an amply proportioned young woman with auburn hair in an artificial friz, or so it seemed, for only last week it had been softly waved—unless the reverse was true and the tight little coils were natural, the waving manmade.
    He nodded and said, “Judy.” He was the head of a department of some consequence, for no book however exalted could go to the printer without being copy-edited, and yet he knew the name of this young kid, whereas after at least four months on the job she hadn’t the foggiest knowledge of his. He realized that his wife was quite right, he shouldn’t be irked over such inconsequentialities, but he was .
    In silently acknowledging the nod, Judy displayed the progress she had made in recent weeks. For at least three weeks after assuming the post, she had continued to ask, on his return from lunch, whom he wanted to see and on what matter. On the wall behind her were recessed shelves, glass-fronted and conspicuously locked, showing the bright jackets of books recently published by the firm. The manuscript for each had passed through Hunsicker’s department and, he liked to think, had been greatly improved thereby, perhaps even made publishable: it would be astonishing to the lay reader to know how careless many authors, even some of the most renowned, are not only about grammar and of course spelling, but also the accuracy of their facts. Or maybe just stupid, for one truth Hunsicker had learned in his years of wielding a blue pencil was that it takes less intelligence to write a book than to put together a Christmas toy