Clickity-clack, the hammers press through the thin black ribbon and deposit an imperfect letter against the interwoven fibers. In a moment, a world begins to form from the displacement of ink throughout the paper. The letters are malformed and off-center at times, but he continues to strike at the keys with a vigor akin to a teenager playing with himself. His hair is disheveled, his fingers sore from the fervor he needs to force the story onto the page, and all of this is the culmination of his head trying to empty itself into a medium that is reproducible. Each stroke lends itself to his legacy. A legacy of coffee stains, three day old underwear, and a putrid smell of body odor.
Dishes are teetering precariously to his side, cups full of dried milk, different juices, and calcium dance in the setting sun, but he continues – clickity-clack. Ribbons on the air conditioner spring to life as the thermostat judges the temperature of the room and deems it not optimal. These things do not bother the man hunched over his keys. None of them, the dishes, cups, nor the rhythmic strikes of the typewriter.
With a ding, the brand new machine warns the writer that he needs to reset. His hand grabs the freshly chromed handle and pulls the entire assembly to the side. With ease, his right hand has already prepared itself to continue where it left off. As a mechanical lock can be heard, the tips of his fingers continue his thoughts. Thoughts that had been put on hold spring back to life and the world continues to unravel itself before him. There are trees, but they are different than the concrete advertisements before him. There are bushes, but they are unkempt and homely. A police siren pushes through his window, but it is transformed into a dog’s bark. His environment is guiding his hands, but he is unaware of the influence.
Yet, the clicks and the clacks come to an end. With a quick twist of his wrist, the paper shoots from the metal guard and gets added to a pile to his side. His face grimaces as he grabs a cold mug of coffee. He knows, he knows that it will beyond bitter, but he desires his muse.
A light whisper fills the room as he builds his courage, “You’ll only taste the first and the last.” With his motivation set in stone, he pulls all of the fluid down. Just as he said, he only tasted the horrid fluid when it first touched his lips, and again, when he pulled the porcelain away.
Recharged, he grabs to his left – like he has done so many times before – but only feels the cold wood. It is unmoving and taunting. His mind tries to crunch the sensations but it fails to realize what has transpired. Eyes dart to the small table to his side, he only sees wood. With the speed of a mad man, he begins opening and slamming doors in search of his medium.
Again his soft tenor voice fills the room, “No! No! I just bought some!” He looks at the stack of completed work, it is massive. Teeth rack themselves against his bottom lip as he bites. With a sigh, he shakes his head and curses his fortune, “I was almost there!”
Like a wine-o, he jumps to his breakfast bar and begins digging through a small bowl with change. His fingers push aside the pennies, nickels, and dimes. A guttural sign of glee springs from his throat, he grabs enough quarters for a stack of paper. With capital, he jumps into his shoes and nearly topples over. His pants grab a corner, and a thread appears from a tear, but he doesn’t notice. Instead, he spins and jumps back to the brand new Lettera 22. With his head kinked to the side, he judges that there is enough ribbon to last through the manuscript.
For the first time, his face is not distorted by a statuesque trance or frown – instead a smile. He returns, on the balls of his feet, to the small bowl and grabs two dimes and a nickel. His wrist flicks, and the coins jump into the air. Being uncoordinated, he misses the majority and they clamor to the floor; being lazy, he leaves them and replenishes his hand with fresh offerings. The luxury of not having to buy a new ribbon makes him feel like a rich man.
For the first time, he lets his wooden heels (scuffed and uneven) fall to the hard wood floor. Wood on wood and a different clack and click fill the room, he pushes into the carpeted hallway. With the taps of his heels drowned out, his mind continues the story. New characters, new arcs, he respects them but quickly snuffs them out. The story is done, there is no modifications on the horizon. His face takes on a frown as he enters into contemplation.
Without realization, he has a bundle of paper under one arm and a barista is repeating himself, “What would you like sir?”
“Huh?”
“What would you like sir?”
Suddenly, he feels a hand on his shoulder and a voice from behind, “Cappuccino.” It is a soft voice, a coo.
The barista clarifies, “Is that right?” The disheveled and crazed man looks up and nods. Clickity-clack, and a dollar amount appears in the mechanical register display window. Before making the drink, the barista confirms the man has the currency, “Twenty-four cents.” The commerce takes place, and two dimes and a nickel fall into the worker’s hand and a penny suddenly appears. A clink can be heard as the penny falls into a glass jar for tips. Without looking over his shoulder, he speaks, “Thank you.”
Now, the writer turns to face the person who placed his order with grace. Before he realizes it, he is facing a great mane of wavy brown hair. Then there are the lips. They are full and painted in a rich crimson. But, he misses this and notices a small pimple hidden beneath freshly applied makeup. He follows her face up and greets her eyes for the first time. Memories flood forth.
The reason he is in that café, that specific café, was the woman before him. Luckily, the mind is faster the world around it. In the time it takes for the barista to apply steam to milk, he already relives his past. Two years ago, he had stumbled into the café after getting a new ribbon for the Lettera 22. It was his first time attempting a manuscript. Unfortunately, like an impudent child, he burned that manuscript after growing upset. Yet, his reason for going to the shop was a lack of coffee at his apartment. In need of his only vice, he paid the quarter for a writer’s ambrosia. He did not do it willingly, and many mumbles fell from his lips. Until, she took his money. From that day, he would come and speak with her. Constantly, describing the newest thing he read. Even convincing her to join him for a cappuccino after work. They grew close, but it ended – like all things do – when she took a job elsewhere. He never believed in second chances, but here she was, and he was staring at his second chance.
“Rebecca!” She didn’t know he had just relived their entire relationship in that single moment.
“It is good to see you Ernie.” Her mouth was stuck in a smile.
“I haven’t seen you in, oh, maybe a year.” He had the charm of a gentleman, the charisma of a politician, and the bank accounts of a drunkard.
“Yea, I got the new job as a secretary and have been enjoying myself—”
“Cappuccino.” The barista is hovering with a full cup of frothy milk and espresso.
Ernie attempts to change the order, “I needed it”—but he stops—“never mind I will have it for here.”
Then Rebecca’s order, “Small coffee”—A smile is on his face as she orders—“to go.” The smile is gone from the writer’s face. The barista doesn’t ask for her money, just begins pouring it in paper cup.
Ernie tries to keep her, “Why don’t you stay and we can catch up?”
“Sorry, I’m on my lunch break. I have to get back! I really do want to catch up.” Her voice seems sincere.
“Well…” Ernie racks his brain for a response as she juggles her coffee and looks for change in her wallet. Eventually, he gets more words for his sentence, “well, why don’t we have a coffee here… soon… for old time’s sakes.”
“You mean a cappuccino?” She hands the coins to the barista.
“Huh?”
The barista interrupts their conversation, “Thank you, can you two step to the side?” They both shuffle around the counter as she begins closing her wallet and putting it back in her purse.
“What did you say?” Her question makes him think she hasn’t been listening. That he isn’t anything.
“I said huh, because you said something about cappuccino.”
“Oh, well, you always get a cappuccino, you never got coffee when you came in”—a wink—“it was just a little joke.”
“Yea, yea, I would have a cappuccino.” His voice was distant.
Her smile grew as she agreed, “Definitely, are you free on Sunday after church?” Her voice was peppy. Yet, Ernie didn’t go to church, his church was the Lettera 22 on his desk, but he still nodded. A half hug, and she spoke over her shoulder, “See you after church!” With a whisk of outside air, she was gone.
The barista finished helping the last customer, leaving only him and Ernie in the shop. Ernie turned to him, a deep frown set in his face and said, “Can I have this to go.” The barista just handed him a paper cup and top. As Ernie poured the cappuccino into the cup, some trailed down the side of the porcelain. Dark stains appeared as black droplets slipped down the side of the paper cup. As the drops formed tiny puddles of espresso by his feet, the barista focused on cleaning the steamer with a wet rag. Ernie took the opportunity to slip away. But before he was gone, he checked the hours of operation for Sunday – nine in the morning till seven at night. As he sucked a drop of espresso from his pointer finger, he nodded his head and committed the store’s hours to memory.
Unlike the walk to the stationary store, Ernie’s walk home was filled with delusions of the Sunday meeting. From her bringing a friend or fiancé to her holding his hand and asking about his books. It didn’t matter how many times he imagined the scenario, it was the same thought process every time. If he thought of something positive, he would then think of something negative and vice versa. This constant teetering action never embraced the gray zone where she was single but wasn’t interested in him romantically.
Then came the clickity-clack of his heels on the wooden floor of his apartment. The noise jarred him from his fantasies and bought him back to a world of work. There it sat, the Lettera 22 – church, and it commanded him to sit and work. Without realizing it, he put the paper on the table to his side and drew his first sheet. Ticks sprung from the machine as he twisted the nob to the side. Once satisfied, he penned in the page number and stared at the blank sheet of paper. And stared. And stared.
Who knows how long it took him to give up for the day. On the outside, he looked utterly constrained by a mental blockage. Many would use their previously written work as a stool softener, but Ernie just stared and stared. For those that found him in shock, they wouldn’t realize that he was doing something improbable. For once, since the outlining of his manuscript, he had allowed an idea to permeate the hard shell of the story. What looked like shock was actually a well of inspiration. On the outside he appeared dead, but on the inside, Ernie’s mind was rewriting the ending to his book.
He didn’t eat that night; he didn’t drink that night; he didn’t shower that night. No, all he did was try to sleep, but he failed at that too. When he heard the dumpster get slammed into the ground by a dump truck, he slipped his feet out of the side of his bed and onto the cold wooden floor. Even the chill that ran up his spin failed to register. It was Thursday, and he had a goal.
Over the next two days, Ernie didn’t sleep and ended up rewriting entire pages of his manuscript. As he got more tired, the more mistakes he would make. But, he would correct these before moving onto the next page of his manuscript. He knew, he knew that he was not in adequate shape to write properly and did everything imaginable to correct for his deficit. All he needed was sleep, but he couldn’t trust it. On Saturday afternoon, after finishing a chapter, he fell asleep on the Lettera 22.
There were no dreams, he had empty everything in his soul and brain onto the paper. It would take time for the well to replenish what he had drained. This wouldn’t disturb him, he liked not having dreams when he was so close to completing, what he thought was, his masterpiece.
No alarm woke him, but his face had shifted in the pre-dawn light and caused one of the hammers to strike the paper. This had happened many times through the night, but this time it was the end of the line and a chime rang out. Its soft note reverberated through the typewriter and began pulling Ernie back into the apartment. His eyes opened and closed as he rubbed crusted bits from them. His neck had a kink and his back was off kilter. In a daze, he forgot what he had planned for the day. As he walked to the kitchen for a glass of water, his body took on the shape of a malformed S because of the way he had slept. Then his foot hit the change from the Wednesday which caused him to look down and see the empty cappuccino cup and metallic coins. The cup still had a dark stain from his spillage. Eyebrows jumped to the sky as he swung towards his clock, it read six in the morning.
He trotted over to his bathroom. A five-o-clock shadow had turned into a thirty-o-clock shadow, and he quickly hacked at the thick mess with a straight razor. Eventually, he penetrated the armor and saw his pale skin. With step one complete, he jumped into the shower and began cleaning away days of filth. Luckily, there was no dirt, but a funk permeated from his genitals and armpits. His noise scrunched as the acrid odor forced him to scrub, and scrub again. An hour later, and his hot water was now cold but the smell seemed non-existent. Shivering, he grabbed a towel and began drying off. As he regained warmth, he reviewed the most recent chapter he had written.
His lips were pulled in and a furrow appeared between his eyes, but that was how he looked when he reviewed his own work. Ten pages later, he whispered to himself, “Only one chapter left… I did it.” He had thirty minutes till nine, so he grabbed a whole dollar bill but cursed because he hadn’t asked for a time. With the money in his pocket, his hair combed, and his odors removed, he left for the door. Clickity-clack, his shoes went against the hardwood floor until they were softened by the carpet in the hallway. Before the door closed, he looked back at the Lettera 22. A smile on his face, and he thought, “Time to see my muse.” He was correct, it was time to see his muse but his muse had changed.