You Are Not My Typewriter

How it begins

Clara Marsh recognized the typewriter before she recognized the man carrying it.

From the shop below came the patient ticking of machines waiting for someone to make them useful again.

The machine was red, beautifully repaired, and currently being held at the precise angle a person might use to display a dead fish.

"Chapter seven," the man said.

Clara kept one hand on her flat door. "Good morning?"

"The bitter little repairman with the collection of obsolete machines and the emotional range of a stapler."

She had written that line eleven months earlier, after a neighbor complained about her music. At the time, she'd thought it excellent.

"You read my book."

"My customers read your book. One brought me a stapler."

Downstairs, the shop bell rang. On the street, someone called the man Paul and asked whether the ribbon for an old portable had arrived. He answered kindly, giving an exact delivery time, before turning back to Clara.

That kindness was inconvenient. Her fictional repairman had never once been kind.

"The character is invented," she said.

"So is his address, I imagine. Except you described my blue balcony, my window display, and the dent in my front door."

Clara looked past him at the shared landing. She had moved into the building because the estate agent promised quiet. The estate agent had neglected to mention moral consequences.

"I could buy you coffee."

"You could stop calling me emotionally defective in hardback."

It was a reasonable request. She disliked reasonable requests when they arrived carrying evidence.

Paul set the typewriter on the small table outside her door. A sheet of paper protruded from its roller. On it, in neat black letters, he'd typed a single sentence.

The neighbor was wrong about several things.

Clara read it twice.

"Is this supposed to be an apology?" she asked.

"No," he said. "I thought you might need a first line."