We'll Always Have Paris by Ray Bradbury Page B

Totals up another two
    million dollars. The hotel is
all
real. Every room with bath.
    Comfort. Good beds. Other buildings are three-quarters false front. All of it so beautifully
    constructed, with slots and tabs, a child could put up the whole toy-works in an hour.’
    ‘But will it work?’
    ‘Look at their faces, beginning to relax already.’
    ‘Why didn’t you tell me?!’
    ‘Because, if it’d got out, spending money this silly, ridiculous way, the
    papers would’ve jumped me–senators, Congress, God would have gotten in the act. It’s silly,
    damn silly, but it
works
. It’s
Earth
.
    That’s all I care about. It’s
Earth
. It’s a piece of Earth the men
    can hold in their hand and say, “This is Illinois, this is a town I
knew.
These are
buildings
I knew. This is a little
    piece of Earth that’s here for me to hold on to until we bring
more
of it up and make the loneliness run away forever.”’
    ‘Ingenious, devilish, clever.’
    The men ordered a second rye all around, smiling.
    ‘The men on our ship, Captain, are from fourteensmall towns. Picked them that way. One of each of these buildings in this little
    street here is from one of those towns. The bartender, ministers, grocery-store owner, all
    thirty of the people on the Second Rocket, are from those towns.’
    ‘Thirty?
Besides
the relief crew?’
    The psychiatrist glanced happily at the steps leading up to the balcony and
    the series of shut doors. One of the doors opened a trifle and a beautiful blue eye gazed out
    for a moment.
    ‘We’ll rush in more lights and more towns every month, more people, more
    Earth. Priority on familiarity. Familiarity breeds sanity. We’ve won the first round. We’ll
    keep winning if we keep moving.’
    Now the men were beginning to laugh and talk and slap one another on the
    shoulders. Some of them walked out and across the street for a haircut, some went to play pool,
    some to buy groceries, some into the quiet church, you could hear organ music for a moment just
    before the piano player here in the crystal-chandeliered saloon began ‘Frankie and Johnny.’ Two
    men walked laughingly up the stairs to the doors along the balcony.
    ‘I’m no drinking man, Captain. How about a pineapple malt at the drugstore
    over the way?’
    ‘What? Oh. I was thinking…Smith.’ The captain turned. ‘Back in the ship. Do
    you think–I mean–could we get Smith, bring him here, with us, would it do any good, would he
like
it, mightn’t it make him
happy
?’
    ‘We could certainly try,’ said the
    doctor.
    The pianist was playing, very loud, ‘That Old Gang of Mine.’ Everybody
    singing, some of them starting to dance, and the city like a jewel blazing in the wilderness,
    darkness all around. Mars lonely, the sky black and full of stars, the wind rushing, the moons
    rising, the seas and old cities dead. But the barber pole whirled brightly, and the church
    windows were the color of Coca-Cola and lemonade and boysenberry phosphate.
    The piano was tinkling ‘Skip to My Lou’ half an hour later when the captain,
    the psychiatrist, and a third man walked into the drugstore and sat.
    ‘Three pineapple malts,’ said the captain.
    And they sat, reading magazines, turning slowly on the stools, until the girl
    behind the fountain set three beautiful pineapple malts at their elbows.
    They all reached for the straws.

Un-pillow Talk
    ‘Good Lord.’
    ‘Good Lord, indeed!’
    They fell back and stared at the ceiling. There was a long pause in which
    they regained their breath.
    ‘That was wonderful,’ she said.
    ‘Wonderful,’ he said.
    There was another pause while they examined the ceiling.
    Finally she said, ‘Wonderful, but—’
    ‘What do you mean “but”?’ he said.
    ‘It was wonderful,’ she said. ‘But now we’ve ruined everything.’
    ‘Ruined?’
    ‘Our friendship,’ she said. ‘It was such a great thing and now we’ve lost
    it.’
    ‘I don’t believe that,’ he said.
    She examined the