by Matt Drabble
The diner was called “Nan’s” and a small bell jingled merrily over his head as he entered. It was standard operation with boots and tables and pictures of impossibly perfect food displayed over the counter.
“Hi there hon,” a pleasant faced young woman greeted him as she appeared from behind the counter like a jack in the box. “What can I get you?”
“What’s good?” Albert asked shyly. He had barely spoken to another woman in the last 10 years or so, and the only one that he had spoken to was often full of derision towards him.
“You mean apart from me?” The waitress joked and Albert flushed a deep dark red. “We have an apple pie to die for and our shakes are the best in the state.”
“Fine,” Albert said, quickly eager to retreat to a booth far away.
“What kind?” The waitress called after him.
“Huh?” He said turning back.
“What flavor milkshake do you want?”
“Anything,” Albert said as he made his retreat complete.
He sat in the booth knowing that the waitress probably thought he was a complete nutcase, but knowing he could do little about it, hell she was probably right. It had been so long since he had engaged with other people outside of his marriage and isolated workplace that he wasn’t sure how to any more. He was rusty as a human being and he needed the practice before he ended up alone save for the army of stray cats that would undoubtedly gravitate towards him.
“Here we go,” the waitress said, surprising him as she set down a slice of pie and a brown milkshake. “I put a little scoop in your shake. You look like you needed it,” she smiled.
“Thanks,” Albert mumbled.
He was thinking of a way to prolong the conversation when the doorbell jingled again and three large beefy men entered.
“Hey Susie,” the beefiest man bellowed.
He was thickset with a farmer’s build and a drinker’s gut. His companions were equally rugged and their very appearance intimidated Albert as he subconsciously sunk into his booth.
“Afternoon boys,” Susie greeted them pleasantly enough but to Albert’s ears it sounded a little forced, or at least he hoped.
For the next 20 minutes or so Albert ate his pie and drank his shake under the echoes of the three other patrons wild guffaws and clinking beer bottles. Susie seemed to bear their clumsy passes and innuendos with a professional’s patience and Albert felt sorry for the woman. She seemed sweet natured and he knew from bitter experience just where that seemed to get you in life.
He was pushing his plate and glass aside when Susie reappeared at his side.
“Everything ok for you?” She asked.
“Very nice,” he managed without looking directly at her.
“Can I get you anything else?”
“Just the check thank you.”
“Are you passing through?” She enquired as she wrote the check on a pad that she produced from her apron pocket.
“Yes. Is there anywhere to stay around here?” Albert said rushing through the question for fear of stammering.
“Sure, there’s a nice B&B just up the road a little way. Tell them I sent you and you’ll get a discount,” Susie winked as she pointed to her name badge on her chest.
“HEY SUSIE!” The big farmer yelled out from across the room. “TODAY!” He shouted shaking the empty beer bottle in his hand.
She rolled her eyes theatrically at Albert and they shared a small moment as he smiled back shyly. “Hope I see you again,” Susie said demurely as she moved away from the booth.
“So me, do I,” Albert garbled nonsensically as she walked away.
He left a more than generous tip on the table and walked towards the door when the big farmer suddenly stood and moved to intercept him.
“The girl’s taken,” the big man said, standing way too close and Albert cowered under the intimidating presence. “What you doing here?”
“Just passing through,” Albert whined.
“Then I suggest that you get going,” the big man smiled cruelly through a mouth of browned teeth devoid of basic maintenance.
“You tell him Al,” one of the farmers buddies egged him on.
“What’s your name boy?” Al demanded.
“Albert,”
“Well now isn’t that a coincidence, my name’s Alberto but everyone around here calls me Al, or Big Al. I think that this town’s got enough Al’s already, don’t you?”
“S-S-Sure,” Albert stammered, eager to get gone as he squeezed his way out of the door.
He was back in his car as fast as his feet would take him. His heart was pounding hard through fear and his stomach was in knots over his cowardice. He wished that he had the strength to march back into the diner and start kicking some ass, but he barely had enough to turn the ignition key.
He was about a half mile out of town when the sign caught his eye. It was just a small hand painted sign that read “Yard Sale”. There was a long table set up by the side of the road and several cars had pulled up to take a look. There were all sorts of colorful offerings on show and several pieces glinted under the late afternoon sun. The item that had caught his eye was an old antique looking typewriter. He, like most people, had often thought that he had a novel in him if not for the commitment of time that writing would require. But now he was jobless and homeless with nothing but time on his hands. The idea of writing on a piece of history itself such as the typewriter seemed far more enticing than sitting in front of a blinking, bleeping soulless plastic computer.
He pulled over up onto a grass verge and got out of the car, all churning thoughts of lost manhood temporarily forgotten.
The table was a smorgasbord of strange and unusual objects. The faces of the browsing were rapt with excitement and pleasure. The odd thing was that everyone seemed to be preoccupied with a different and innocuous item.
“Can I help you?” A wheezy voice asked him from nowhere.
He looked down to see a small old woman. Her face was creased and lined with what looked like a thousand lifetimes of experience and all of them hard.
“I was interested in the typewriter,” he said as he ran his fingers over the dull charcoal keys. The machine was black and looked solid and heavy and the letters were dulled and worn with age. He stood there and wondered about the fingers that must have flown across the keys and what tales they must have spun. His gaze was transfixed by the gleaming black metal and he felt an instant connection. He could hear the thundering clacks of a thousand words on sultry nights beneath moonless skies.
“We’ve been waiting for you,” the old woman rasped.
Albert turned back to face her and was shocked to find her gone. He stared around wide-eyed looking for her but he was alone.
“Sorry, dropped my pen,” she said standing up again from behind the table. “Donald,” she called over Albert’s shoulder. “We’ve been waiting for you, what time do you call this?” She said tapping her wristwatch. “That washing machine is not going to fix itself,” she snapped.
Albert turned to see a boiler suited repairman walk sheepishly by.
The old woman shook her head, “If you want something done right, do it yourself,” she said shaking her head. “Now did you want the typewriter or not? I’ll be butchered if I’m going to lug the damn thing back in the house again.”
“How much did you want for it?” Albert asked feeling foolish at his active imagination.
“You know it’s magical,” she said enigmatically.
“Really?” Albert bit.
“No doofus, it’s a typewriter, give me twenty and it’s yours,” she said flapping her hand irritably.
“Deal,” Albert replied reaching into his pocket feeling dumber than ever.
Once the typewriter was safely secured on his front seat he started to head out of town when he suddenly wondered where he was heading to. The early evening dusk was falling and he felt the sudden tiring of a long day.
He drove up the road for no more than a few m
inutes when he spotted a turnoff sign to the “Happy Camper Summer Lodges”. He was sure that it wasn’t the B&B that Susie the waitress had recommended, but he was too tired to start hunting for alterative accommodation.
He pulled in and along the long dusty drive towards a collection of wooden cabins. The summer season was in her last death throes and he was reasonably confident of finding an empty room.
He stopped outside the main office building; a man popped out from inside before he had even come to a halt.
“Hello there,” the man said waving as he bounded down the steps from the second floor office.
Albert was barely out of the car before his hand was being pumped vigorously. “Hello,” he managed as his hand began to ache from the enthusiastic welcome.
“Is it a room that you’d be after?” The man asked a little hopefully with a slight accent twang.
“Have you got one available?” Albert asked.
The man’s smile faltered on his face as though he was trying to decide if Albert was being sarcastic or not. “We’ve got plenty,” he said a little sadly. “Business ain’t what it used to be, not since they built the new highway.”
“I guess that you can’t stand in the way of progress,” Albert commiserated. “Everything changes when you least expect it.”
“Ain’t that the truth. I’m Ferris by the way,” the man said offering his hand again.
“Albert,” he replied, grabbing a bag out of the car for fear of another rigorous handshake that he could ill afford.
“You a writer Albert?” Ferris asked looked at the typewriter on the front seat.
“Yes,” Albert answered, wanting it to be true.
“What is it that you write?”
“New futures,” Albert replied. “A whole new future.”
A few hours later Albert was sitting in his cabin; the rooms were laid out into an open plan kitchen and lounge with a decent sized bedroom and bathroom off to the side. The wooden log walls smelled a little damp and fusty as though the cabin had been dormant for a long time.
The typewriter that had once gleamed with new possibilities now sat mockingly on the small table. A litter of discarded and crumpled sheets of paper that Ferris had been kind enough to provide for him were strewn about the floor. Apparently writing was a far more difficult undertaking than Albert had envisaged. His hopes of finding a hidden talent and natural aptitude for the craft had failed to materialize. He had no prose on which to dine and no story with which to share.
Ferris had been kind enough to restock the mini bar which Albert was now in the process of emptying. He wasn’t much of a drinker by nature and the tiny bottles had already gone quickly to his head. The recriminations and years of swallowed feelings were churning around in his stomach producing a toxic cocktail. His anger was finally beginning to surface over his treatment from his wife and his boss. It wasn’t fair; he was a nice guy who had never looked to hurt anyone. He was a firm believer that if you put positive energy out into the world then good things happened to good people. And yet here he was pushing 40 with his life’s belongings in the back of a U-Haul trailer. No wife, no family, no job, no nothing.
The more he drank the more he thought and the more he thought the more he drank. At some point during the evening he started to write.
The morning sun was shining through the cabin window with the promise of a new day when the phone’s incessant buzzing woke him from a troubled sleep.
The cell phone was on the bedside table and his hand scrambled around clumsily for it. He cracked his eyes open a touch and instantly regretted it. His head throbbed monstrously and he instantly wondered just why people would put themselves through this kind of wakeup call on a regular basis.
He knocked the phone onto the floor and had to lean over to find it. His stomach contents sloshed around dangerously and he fought to keep them down. He picked the phone up and heaved himself back into bed. He wasn’t surprised to find himself fully clothed and on top of the covers.
The phone’s display was showing that there were several messages, both text and answer machine from colleagues at his old job looking to spread juicy gossip and from the couple of friends that he had managed to make. He began to read through the written ones with increasing shock and disbelief. He switched to the answer phone and his eyes grew wider. He sat bolt upright in the cabin bed ignoring the roll of nausea. At some point last night his ex-wife and ex-boss had been taking a stroll alongside the ocean when they had been attacked. Apparently something had assaulted them on the beach and then dragged them into the ocean, never to be seen again. The police had found bloody and shredded clothing on the sand belonging to the happy couple. The word was that they would have considered a wild animal attack, if not for the fact that their remains had been carried off in the water.
Albert’s mind was racing with more emotions than he could effectively process. Yes he had been bitter and angry for the first time last night, but he had also loved and borderline worshipped her. It was a strange and unsettling mixture of love and hate, relief and fear.
He swung his legs over the side of the bed and for the first time he noticed the typewriter. As well as the crumpled up balls of paper, there were now several neatly stacked pages. He couldn’t remember writing anything late last night, let alone anything that he would have wanted to keep.
He picked up a couple of the pages and began to read. What he saw shocked him. When he had been a small boy he had been terrified by the movie “The Creature from the Black Lagoon”. It was a 1954 film concerning the scientific hunt for the monster. The image of something lurking below the cool calm surface had transfixed him and put him off swimming as a child. His biggest fear was to be swimming across an open lake and see the shore ahead, only to find your ankle grabbed from beneath the waves and for you to be pulled under with the dark water filling your mouth and lungs as you screamed in terror.
Flicking through the pages he found that he had written a strange disjointed tale of such a similar and terrible fate befalling Alice and Dougray. He read through the pages several times. Ignoring the spelling and grammatical errors it was quite clear that his story was eerily related.
He was a practical man by nature and the idea of a coincidence was far more ridiculous than the story itself. So what did that leave him with? He had written about Alice and Dougray being attacked by his childhood monster, and something had attacked them by the water.
He hefted the typewriter onto his lap and inserted a fresh sheet of paper. There really was only one way to test the theory, he began to type.
A few minutes later he sat back and waited, feeling a nervous anticipation. After five minutes he started to feel a little foolish. After 10 he felt positively stupid. After 15 he felt like an asshole.
Finally he shoved the typewriter aside and decided that a shower was just the thing to restore a little sanity. He was toweling himself dry a short time later when there was a knock at the door. He had almost forgotten about his crazy notions as he went to the door wearing one of the lodge’s robes.
He opened the door and saw Ferris standing there. “Hi Ferris what can I do for you?” Albert asked as he continued to dry his hair. It took him a moment to realise that the lodge owner wasn’t speaking. He brushed the hair from his eyes and saw that Ferris was standing motionless and holding a tray. “Ferris?” He tried again.
“Huh?” The man answered distantly.
“You ok?”
“Uh, sure. What can I do for you?” The motel owner asked.
“You knocked on my door Ferris.”
“Oh right. Here, this is for you I guess,” Ferris said confused, as he thrust the tray forward.
Albert took the offering with a pounding heart and a dry mouth. He closed the door on Ferris without another word. There was a plate on the tray covered by a metal serving lid. He carried it into the small kitchenette and sat it on the counter.
He stared at the tray for several minutes. His mind was struggling to comprehe
nd the possible consequences of what lay beneath the metal lid. He had written something simple and yet distinctive. A BLT sandwich with beefsteak tomatoes and a dash of mustard from a deli in New York that made their own unique recipe.
Unable to put off the inevitable any longer her snatched the lid away from the plate and started at the sandwich. A BLT from the owner of the lodge to his only customer wasn’t especially unusual, but a bite would tell all.
----------
It was two weeks later and the lodge was buzzing. The BLT test sandwich had proven that the typewriter was allowing whatever he wrote to somehow happen in real life. It was a strange thing to stare at a black sheet of paper and know that the world lay at his fingertips. He had no idea just where to start or just what the limitations would be. For the first time in his life he was able to think about himself. What he wanted to see and what he wanted to happen.
There was a tour bus in the parking laden with heavyset muscular roadies all with bemused looks on their faces. There was a stage being erected on the rear grounds of the lodge and the band were hanging around as bemused as the roadies. It wasn’t the most logically of venue choices for The Rolling Stones to be launching their new album but here they were nevertheless.
Albert was overjoyed to see Ferris’ face alive with happiness. They had spoken much over the last couple of weeks and Ferris had conceded that the lodge was teetering on the edge of bankruptcy. Ferris had seemed like a decent man and had reminded Albert much of himself. A good man looking to the world to be good in return and finding himself short changed. The lodge’s fortunes had been transformed in mere days as the IRS had rung to apologies for their terrible mistake on the business’ accounts. Apparently Ferris was due a substantial rebate thanks to the typewriter.
Albert had managed to reconcile the deaths of Alice and Dougray. After all how could he have possibly known? Could he really be blamed? And just think of all the good that he could now do in the world, not to mention all the wrongs that he could right, or write so to speak.
