Hey! Why’s there an astronaut in your bathroom?
That evening after locking up Laundry Land, Kingsley carried an old typewriter he’d purchased from a pawnshop, and the stack of paper piled on top of it, to the dining room table. He stood before the table while the disembodied voice of “Mrs. Filmon” talked on cheerfully in the otherwise quiet room:
...all alone, he thought about his dilemma.
It occurred to the fluffy blue jay, Nick, as the wind whistled
and the rain poured down upon his soggy backside in the lonely field,
that the First National Bank at the...
She was like filthy wallpaper you might pull away from in a window-less room. Although it caused him great anxiety, especially when he thought about it, had he been another person listening in he would have concluded that the woman speaking was gentle, loving. That she meant no harm. But, it was the inescapable quality that tormented him. Feeling he was powerless.
He dropped the typewriter and the paper on the table with a thud and heard her pause, as if to regain her composure. And then she started up again. He opened up the lid of the typewriter and saw the writing on the official-looking paper folded within a thin, clear plastic envelope. “Schreibkontrolle,” he read aloud.
Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass’s A Taste Of Honey, floated through the wall separating his apartment from hers. Next-door Miss Martha was dancing, he fancied, or else, perhaps, moving furniture.
He smiled and his eyes seemed to glaze over, then, focusing, he lifted the plastic envelope and looked at the Adler J-4 typewriter. If he could just make Mrs. Filmon go away, he thought, then maybe he’d be allowed to have a beautiful woman like Miss Martha in his life.
On the left at the top of the Adler J-4 typewriter, a small paddle, like a shining stainless steel shoehorn, stuck out. There were switches, levers, buttons and, deep inside its guts, tiny compact pieces of metal were laid side-by-side like the handles of cutlery all packed up. The machine’s complexity was overwhelming. He peered in and could make out the tiny engravings on what looked like the sides of cutlery handles laid side by side in a parabola shape. He’d need a college degree, he thought, to operate this thing! There were symbols he couldn’t recognize. On the outside he noted the rows of keys, possessing the same shape as the heel of a dress shoe. On these were the letters of the alphabet. Not knowing why he did it, he put the palm of his hand on the keys and pushed. Inside the typewriter the metal cutlery handles with the foreign symbols shot up and lodged themselves before a rolling pin-like cylinder embedded in the device. Great. He’d broken it. Mrs. Filmon seemed to grow louder.
At a loss, he opened up the clear plastic package with “Schreibkontrolle” written on the document inside and pulled out the Adler J2 and J4 Instructional Manual. It was in English.
Writing on J2 and J4
In buying your portable typewriter you have chosen well. The fully operational instructions are intended to serve you as guide enabling you to fully enjoy the various advantages offered by this typewriter. The essential points to be observed when typing with “J2” or “J4” are briefly described hereafter.
Feeling reassured, he read on, noting the five additional features that his Adler Nr. J43906762 possessed compared to the Adler Nr. J2 model. He congratulated himself for purchasing such a fine machine, though noting on some level that he’d most likely never use those features. Still, like purchasing just a little extra life insurance for safe measure, he indeed felt safer. He reached for a pencil and made notes along the parts he might forget, underlying crucial points, sometimes twice.
When Kingsley had completed his perusal of the manual he confidently freed the jammed keys, chuckling to himself. Next, he extended the paper support with terminal indicator, and, of course, released the paper bail. He then inserted a crisp sheet of white paper under the rollers and, with his thumb and index finger, turned the platen knob counter clockwise with his right hand before expertly pumping the line space lever. He felt like Harper Lee…
He sat back and waited for Mrs. Filmon to finish the story. He waited relaxed, like a young boxer in his prime, watching his delusional, aged opponent strutting about the ring just before his last match.
Kingsley looked down at the keys and noted, somewhat disconcerted, that they were not, as he assumed, in alphabetical order. He listened to the voice,
…that the First National Bank
at the intersection of First Avenue and Finch
was the last friendly bank in the courteous and smiling
little village
not to have installed a security camera monitoring system.
And then it dawned on him that he didn’t know how to type.
“Please stop,” he said. But she continued.
The xylophone chimed at the end of the story (somewhat louder than usual) and Kingsley positioned himself for her to begin again. He looked around to the four corners of the ceiling waiting. He cleared his throat. “I would like you to say the story as slowly as you can,” he said to no one.
He waited for “Once upon a time.” He sincerely hoped that she would begin slowly, thought she might. However, she began the story at her customary speed, and he scanned the keys for the letter “O” key. By the time he had found it she was on the second sentence and moving briskly on from there.
He slammed his fists into the keys. “I hate this story!” he said. “I hate it and I hate you!!”
For the sake of anonymity, we will henceforth…
Mrs. Filmon continued with the story, unfazed.
Kingsley’s anger turned to anxiety. He could feel himself disassociating. The walls seemed to be undulating slowly around him. He felt like he was at sea. “Please…”
Kingsley rushed to the bathroom and vomited. And Mrs. Filmon’s voice was there above him. His eyes darted back and forth. Out the window was a darkness he couldn’t remember. The darkness seemed to be seeping in. He saw the colours of the wallpaper. He looked at the doorframe and his hands. He sensed a blackness beneath everything. Terror enveloped him. For the first time in his life, he looked through the physical world around him, and saw that it was all illusion. Nothing was real. Not himself, the water flowing out of the faucet, the buzzing of the tungsten light about him. It seemed as if all of humanity had disappeared and he was deep beneath the earth, in a catacomb.
Out of the darkness a large gloved hand stretched towards him. He saw, ever so faintly, the figure of an interplanetary traveler, its head encased in a large egg shaped helmet. Kingsley could make out the strangely familiar eyes blinking behind the copper-tinted visor, seeing him. The vision dissolved before him and for a moment, the bathroom was silent. He remembered the flash he’d seen in the sky the other day. He became aware of his heart pumping. It built up speed, pounding louder and louder still. His heart was going to explode. He reached for his new shower curtain and ripped it from the rings.
He ran out into his bedroom and spun around trying to strike the voice. Mrs. Filmon, unperturbed, pressed on cheerfully over the high-pitched shrieking of what, to Kingsley, sounded like an insane woman. He swung the shower curtain to the left and right and caught his face in the mirror for fraction of a second. His mouth was opened in a scream. Sweat poured down his forehead, tears burst from his eyes. He whipped around and around. With a series of movements not his own, he found himself in the living room rushing over the coffee table and up the couch. Then, without warning, it seemed as though someone had kicked his legs out from under him, when in fact, while attempting to move in two opposing directions he had tripped over his own legs. Immediately he found both these legs in the air before him. He saw his socked feet ever so slowly eclipse the dining room lights hanging from the ceiling. He hovered a moment then descended like Icarus onto the back of the couch and crashed into the wood of the floor.
A sharp pain issued from behind one ear. On his back, Kingsley’s elbows slid over his torso and thumped wetly on the floor. His forearms and the palms of his hands followed, his body behaving like a carcass on a butcher’s table. Gradually he grew aware of a grey rectangle before him. It was his ceiling above, framed by the back of the couch and the wall.
He closed his eyes and turned what was left of his focus to the dull pain behind his ear. It was his right ear, he realized. For some time he thought only of the pain. It was the one thing he knew for certain, the one thing he could count on. Somehow, it was grounding. From the certainty of this pain he expanded his focus. He was behind the couch, he told himself. The wall was to his right. He was lying on his back. He was Kingsley Kuchner. He lived at 177 East-Seventh Street. He was forty-six… A woman was near. He couldn’t see her. She was speaking to him. He felt a pang of anxiety, but swallowed it. He knew the pain was close at hand to retreat to if that darkness enveloped him once more. Slowly all the broken pieces of Kingsley returned to their proper spots.
He listened to Mrs. Filmon. She was talking about a First National Bank. He wondered if she even knew he was there… “Who are you?” he whispered. He waited but there was no reply. He was alone. He sat up, then looked over the side of the couch. The shredded shower curtain lay in different locations across the room. A chair lay on its back, a picture on the opposite wall rested at an angle, the rug had been pushed up – and was curving in on itself – against the wall. The stack of paper, the cover of the Adler J4 and the J4 itself existed undisturbed where they had been, as if waiting.
The light above the table shone like a spotlight.
He picked himself up and approached the table.
Kingsley stuck his hand inside the typewriter and released the jammed mess of metal. He would, rather than wait for Mrs. Filmon to finish her story, begin with what he did know. Painstakingly, he punched the keys with his index fingers,
Once upon a time…
And, to his surprise, discovered he knew all the words.
***
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