Uncommon Type

by Tom Hanks

  Bleat-bleat. Bleat-bleat. Bleat-bleat.

  “I’m awake!”

  “You sitting down, punkin’?”

  “Gimme a second.” Rory poured himself the last of the hot milk and a final cup of coffee, balancing his cup and saucer as he rolled back on a leather recliner. “I am actually reclining now.”

  “The press tour is canceled.” Irene was old school. Press junkets were what corporations organized to sell product. Press tours were what movie stars did to promote their films.

  Rory spit café au lait all over his bare legs and the leather recliner. “Huh? Wha’?” he said.

  “Go online and you’ll see why.”

  “I never got the wi-fi password.”

  “Willa is divorcing that venture capital vulture of hers.”

  “Why?”

  “He’s going to jail.”

  “He do something crooked and piss off the feds?”

  “Not the feds. Hookers. In his car on Santa Monica Boulevard. Seems he was in possession of something other than his medical marijuana, too.”

  “Wow. Poor Willa.”

  “Willa will be fine. Weep for the studio. Cassandra Rampart 3: Destiny at Hand Job will take a hit at the box office.”

  “Should I call Willa and tell her how sorry I am?”

  “You can try, but she and her team are on a plane somewhere over Greenland. She’ll hide out at her horse ranch in Kansas for a few weeks.”

  “She has a ranch in Kansas?”

  “She grew up in Salina.”

  “What about the big events on the docket for today? Fireworks and the French Air Force and all those orphaned pets?”

  “Canceled.”

  “When do we go on to Singapore and Seoul and Tokyo and Beijing?”

  “We don’t,” Irene said, without an ounce of regret in her voice. “The outlets want only one thing, Willa Sax. No offense, but you’re just the guy in her movie. Rory No One. Remember that poster I had in my office that said ‘What if they gave a press conference and nobody came?’ Oh, wait. You’ve never been to my office.”

  “What happens now?”

  “I leave on the studio plane in an hour. Not looking forward to that twelve-hour bitchathon. The movie opens domestically in four days, and the first paragraph of every review will be about hookers, OxyContin, and the man who paid for sex while wed to Willa Sax. Sounds like the plot of Cassandra Rampart 4: The Parole Hearing.”

  “How do I get home?”

  “That’ll be handled by Annette in the local office.”

  “Who is Annette?” Rory had met so many people throughout the junket the names and faces might as well have been of Martians.

  Irene called him punkin’ a few more times, told him he was just aces all around, a real mensch, and that she thought he was going to have a fantastic career should CR3: DAH make its money back. And, she liked the movie, actually. Thought it was cute.

  I don’t speak Russian. The French language has too many letters and punctuation marks to make sense to me. Good thing this other typewriter is in English.

  I think Willa Sax—a.k.a. Eleanor Flintstone—is a great gal who doesn’t deserve this. She deserves a better guy than one who likes streetwalkers and hillbilly heroin. (A guy like me! Not once in one thousand interviews did I ever confess my deep and constant crush on that lady. Irene told me not to be that honest with the press. “Tell just enough of the truth, but never lie.”)

  I have a pocket full of money. Per diem. In every city Irene handed me an envelope of cash! Not that I had a chance to spend any of it. Not in Rome. Nor Berlin. In London I had no free time. Maybe I should see what pleasures a few euros will buy me here in Paris…

  LATER!

  I went outside of a hotel on my own for the first time since Berlin.

  Hey, Paris ain’t bad! I was expecting the usual hordes outside the hotel, the fans hoping for a glimpse of Willa. Hundreds of them, mostly men, duh, have been waiting outside, photographers, autograph hounds, et cetera. Willa called them the Paper Boys. They are gone now, the word probably having gone out that Willa Sax has left the City of Light.

  Annette LeBoogieDoogie says just because the junket is canceled I don’t have to fly home immediately. I am free to linger in Paris, in all of Europe if I want, but on my own money.

  I just did some wandering around, in fact. I crossed the river via a famous bridge, then walked right by Notre Dame. I dodged the scooters and the bikes and the tourists. I saw the glass pyramid of the Louvre Museum, but did not go in. No one recognized me. Not that they should. Not that they would. Rory No One, that’s me.

  I walked into the gardens—the place where we were going to have a huge event with rock bands and jets flying by and fireworks and thousands of people wearing free 3-D glasses. Instead, crews were breaking down the stage and the screen. The barricades were still up but were made moot. There was no one to keep back.

  Beyond the gardens was a big traffic circle called Place de la Concorde—millions of cars and Vespa scooters, lanes and lanes of them going both ways and around and around a monument needle in the center. A huge Ferris wheel has been there since 1999. Bigger than the one in Budapest—when was that? When did I make the movie there? In junior high? The one in Paris is not nearly the size of that one in London, the one that goes around only once, very slowly. When did we have that huge press conference in front of that thing, the event that had the children’s choir and the Scottish Mounted Light Cavalry and one of the lesser members of the royal family? When was that? Oh, right. Last Tuesday.

  I bought a ticket but did not have to wait long for the Ferris wheel to let me on. Hardly anyone was in the line so I had the car all to myself.

  I went around a bunch of times. Up high I saw the city stretch to the horizon, the river wind its way to the south and to the north, with many fancy, long boats sliding beneath all the famous bridges. I saw what is called the Left Bank. And the Eiffel Tower. And the churches up on the hills. And all the museums along the broad avenues. And all the rest of Paris.

  Before me was the whole of the City of Light and I saw it for free.

  * * *

  * * *

  Our Town Today

  with

  Hank Fiset

  * * *

  * * *

  AN ELEPHANT IN THE PRESSROOM

  SO MANY RUMORS here at da Paper! The Bull Elephant in the room says the Tri-Cities Daily News/Herald is giving up the economic ghost of a printed version of our Great Triple-Metropolitan Newspaper. If/when such a business move is made, the only way you’ll be reading my column and everything else you now hold in your hands is on one of your many digital devices—your phone, maybe, or a watch that needs recharging every night.

  * * *

  SUCH IS PROGRESS, but it makes me think of Al Simmonds, a rewrite man at the old Associated Press. My career at the AP lasted close to four years, but I would have been quickly pink-slipped were it not for Al Simmonds, who took the choppy prose and schoolkid syntax from my reporter’s notebook and turned those scribbles into bona fide news copy. Al is long gone, bless his heart, so he never saw the advent of reading a newspaper on a laptop or pad. He passed away before the idea was any more real than the Starship Enterprise. Not sure the man even had a TV, as he complained that nothing good was on the radio since Fred Allen went off the air (this story is now carbon-dating me!)…

  * * *

  AL’S TYPEWRITER WAS a Continental—a beast nearly the size of an easy chair—bolted to his desk, not because anyone would try to steal the thing. You’d have been foolish to have tried to lift it. Al’s desk was a small, narrow altar of editing. He would bang out his version of my copy—leaner, crisper, better, dang it—then flip up the typewriter on hinges, and on the cleared space go at his own stuff with a blue pencil. The man made quite a racket doing his job a few hundred times a shift—the chonk-chonkka of his typing with the ba-ding of the bell, the krannk of the carriage return, the shripp of the copy ripped from the machine, then t
he ka-bump of his tossing back of the massive tool of his trade to scribble away with an even more primitive mode of writing. Al was at one with that typing machine and was never more than a yard away from it and his desk. He sent me out for coffee and food on many occasions, but when I came back with the delivery he’d be hacking away at some copy and I’d have to set the food on a nearby stool until he flipped up the Continental and made room for his lunch. If Al Simmonds sounds like a stereotype, a cartoon version of a newsroom denizen, he was in every way but one: he didn’t smoke and hated all the dopes at the AP who did.

  * * *

  QUIET! REPORTERS WORKING would be a superfluous sign here at the Daily News/Herald these days. We’ve been on computers since the eighties, though the first generations of them were called word processors—that was what we called ourselves. The point being, Al Simmonds would not be able to fathom how we have been reading our newspapers in ever greater numbers over the past five years—bent over our handheld miracle machines. Too, he’d not recognize how we’ve put out the newspaper for the last three decades. “Where’s the roar and fury of a newspaper going to press?” he’d holler. At me.

  * * *

  IN AL’S HONOR here’s an experiment: if you are reading this on your phone, I’ll write some of it on mine. My edited, proofread, stream of consciousness…

  * * *

  “I’M GOING TO miss reading a physical copy of the paper, on newsprint, delivered to my front lawn seven days a week by a fellow named Brad who scoots by in a car, chucking my copy out the window with but the smallest of deceleration, or from the copy I read at the Pearl Avenue Café (on Pearl Avenue) a few days a week. I’ll miss the sensation of a story placed above the fold on page one, and the shame of a story being relegated to page B6. I admit I get a kick out of seeing my face and my byline—my column—on the back page—so easy to find, and did you know a reading of the column and the timing of a soft-boiled egg are a perfect match? If/when the Tri-Cities Daily News/Herald goes all-digital/no print, this reporter will be sad/resigned at the advent of this thing we call Reality. And Al Simmonds, in Rewrite Heaven, will scratch his head in confusion, his typewriter flipped up forever.”…Now, an auto-corrected version, pinched out on my phone…

  * * *

  I’M GOING TO miss reading a physical copy of the paper, on newsprint, delivered to my front lawn seven days a week be a fellow named bark who scours be uv a cat, chi hubs my cope it the window Eugene the shanked the dr fjsrstik, or FYI. The color I eat at the peak avebure cadge on Zoesrkavfnud a few days a week. I’ll miss the sensation of a dying place Abu d to gold page one and the shame oif a duties relegate to osfs h6. I admit I gat a kick out is seeinmy fx e and my belie—my Viking—on gage back page—so esu to find, and did you know a reading of the volume and the timing of a foot hooked egg is a perfect match? If/when the tri-cities Zfaiky need/heard hies all-digital thus rouoter will be sad/resigned at the advent of hugs gjjng called result And All Simmonds in Rewrire Heaben, will scratch his head in confusion, hostyoeetotoer flipped up forever…

  * * *

  GOTTA RUN NOW and get my copy down to the pressroom…

  * * *

  * * *

  Welcome to Mars

  Kirk Ullen was still asleep, in bed, under a quilt and an old Army blanket. As it had been since 2003, when he was five years old, his bedroom was also the back room of the family home, one he shared with the Maytag washer and dryer, an old, chipped, out-of-tune spinet piano, the idle sewing machine his mother had not used since the second Bush administration, and an Olivetti-Underwood electric typewriter that had been rendered inoperable when Kirk spilled a root-beer float into its innards. The room had no heat and was always chilly, even on this early morning in late June. His eyes were rolled up into the back of his head as he dreamed he was still in high school, unable to dial the correct combination for his gym locker. He was on his seventh attempt, turning right, then twice around to the left, then once back to the right, when a flash of lightning made the locker room blindingly white. Then, equally suddenly, came a darkness that encompassed his whole world.

  There were more flashes, like sheet lightning, then blackness again—everything white again, then an impenetrable black, over and over. But there was no rumbling thunder, no claps of Thor echoing off the distant canyons.

  “Kirk? Kirkwood?” It was his father. Frank Ullen had been snapping the overhead light on and off—his idea of an amusing wake-up signal. “Were you serious last night, kid?” Frank began singing. “Kirkwood, Kirkwood. Give me your answer, do.”

  “Wha’?” Kirk croaked.

  “About going to Mars? Say no and I’m gone. Say yes and we start your birthday like true Ullen men, brave and free.”

  Mars? Kirk’s brain flickered into consciousness and he remembered now. Today was his nineteenth birthday. Last night after dinner he had asked his father if they could surf in the morning like they had the day he turned ten and, again, the morning he turned thirteen. “You bet!” his father said. Conditions at Mars Beach would be good. There was a swell coming from the southwest.

  Frank Ullen had been surprised at the request. His son had not joined him in the water for some time. Mr. College-Kirk was not as willing to brave the elements as he’d been in high school. Frank tried to remember the last time he and his son had surfed together. Two years? Three?

  Kirk had to ponder his schedule for the upcoming day, which was hard to do right out of his dreamland fog. Birthday or not, he had to be at his regular summer job, manager of the Magic-Putt PeeWee Golf Course, at 10:00 a.m. What time was it now? 6:15? Okay, this could work. His dad, he knew, had only one job site going, the new minimall on Bluff Boulevard. Yeah, this was doable. The two of them could pound the waves for a good two hours. Or until their shoulders dislocated.

  It would be good for the two of them to be back in the water, once again the Submersible Ullen Boys, Princes de la Mer. Kirk’s dad was a carefree man in the water, on his paddleboard in the morning. The hassles of the job and those flare-ups at home were left onshore—all those complicated family moments that came and went, as unpredictable as brushfires. Kirk loved his mom and his sisters as dearly as life itself; the fact that they were such squeaky wheels on such bumpy roads was something he had accepted long, long ago. His dad, the father of the pride, had to work two full-time jobs—provider and peacemaker—with never a day off. It was no wonder the man took to surfing as both his physical tonic and his mental astral-plane therapy. For Kirk to head out with his dad would be a bracing vote of confidence, a manly huddle, a backslapping “we are in this together, you and I” birthday embrace. Name a father and son who didn’t need that.

  “Okay,” Kirk said, stretching with a yawn. “I’m comin’.”

  “No law against staying under the covers.”

  “Let’s do it.”

  “You sure?”

  “You trying to avoid getting wet yourself?”

  “No way, knothead.”

  “Then I’ll be your huckleberry.”

  “Excellent. Breakfast fit for a long-haul trucker. Twelve minutes.” Frank disappeared, leaving the light on, making his son squint, protectively.

  Breakfast was savory perfection, as always. Frank was a master in the morning kitchen; his forte was timing. The kielbasa got to the table hot off the stove top, skillet biscuits were soft and butterable, the coffeepot was eight cups deep (an old Mr. Coffee), and the eggs were never dry, so the yolks were fluid gold. Cooking a dinner was beyond his capabilities, something about having to wait around for a shank to roast or potatoes to boil. No way. Frank Ullen preferred the bang-bang immediacy of a breakfast—cook, serve, eat—and he had made the morning meals fun when the kids were young and the family lived on a schedule, the breakfast conversations as heated (sometimes too heated) and thick as the coffee-laced hot cocoa Frank gave them, starting in third grade. But these days Mom slept so late, she was never seen at breakfast; Kris had escaped to San Diego, where she lived with her boyfriend; and
Dora had declared long ago that she would come and go as she pleased, on her own clock. So it was just the men at breakfast, dressed in baggy surf sweats, unshowered, since what was the point if they’d be in the water?

  “I’m going to have to make some calls about eight thirty. Business shit,” Frank said, flipping some biscuits onto a plate. “Won’t take too long. I’ll leave the water to you for an hour or so.”

  “If you gotta do it, you gotta do it,” Kirk said. As always, he’d brought a book to the table and was already absorbed in it. His father reached over and slid it away from him.

  “Architecture in the nineteen twenties?” Frank asked. “Why are you reading this?”

  “For the racy parts,” Kirk said, soaking up Polish sausage grease and egg yolk with a biscuit. “The Jazz Age was a building boom until the Depression. Postwar engineering and materials changed every skyline in the world. I find it fascinating.”

  “Those exterior-supporting structures made for wedding cake buildings. Everything got smaller the higher you went. You ever been to the upper floors of the Chrysler Building?”

  “In New York City?”

  “No, Dime Box, Texas.”

  “Dad, you raised me, remember? When did you ever take me to New York City to see the upper floors of the Chrysler Building?”

  Frank took two travel mugs down from the shelf. “The top of the Chrysler Building is a fekkin rabbit warren.”