Glass (Small Press Distribution (All Titles)) by Sam Savage Read Free Book Online Page B

poster in the window and stepped through the door and saw the typewriters with the old-fashioned manila tags dangling from them and the sign on the wall that said We Repair All Models; I was expecting to meet a typewriter person. I studied the man’s face while he wrote out my receipt, and I failed to detect even a hint of that. The impression I got was of a bitter, crestfallen man, who was, I had to assume, disappointed with his life. That was to be expected, of course, in someone who had devoted his existence to typewriters, a thing that was now vanishing right before his eyes despite all his efforts to stop it, no doubt taking his life savings with it, his sick wife, medical bills, and so forth, and I did my best to feel sympathetic. After all, I have devoted my own life to typewriters, if not in quite the same way. Still, I had not given up on the man. I asked for two ribbons. I said that I imagined those would last me about a year, and added, making an effort, “See you next year then.” I forced a smile. We were typewriter people, after all, how could he fail to see that? I produced, I fear, an ingratiating rictus. “Come here next year, Lady,” the man said, “and you’ll have to get your hair fixed.” He saw my bafflement. I think I reached up and touched my hair, which was straggly due to the wind, straggly and quite gray, with narrow streaks of darker hair still present for some reason. He explained, “It’s gonna be a beauty parlor.” I felt foolish and stuck my hand in my coat pocket. “You’re closing?” I asked. “Closing,” he said emphatically. He sounded angry. “Not much demand, I guess.” I was still trying. “Horse and buggy.” “I beg your pardon?” “Typewriters,” he said, “they’re like the horse and buggy.” I wondered if he had noticed how dirty the windows of his shop had become, though it was only at this point, after I had failed completely in my feeble attempts to like him, that I myself noticed how filthy the whole place was. Even the typewriters on the shelves were coated with dust, as if the people who had left them there were never coming back. I nearly wrote, “Even the typewriters on the shelves were suddenly coated with dust,” as better capturing the feeling of that moment, the way things had changed abruptly between us, but I feared being misunderstood if I said that. One sees a thing while one is feeling a certain way, and then later, when one has a different feeling, it can look quite otherwise. It can change right in front of your eyes, like something in a magic show. On my down days, when I absolutely have to get out of the apartment, and finally do get out of it, I feel that I am stepping out onto a different planet from the planet of my good days; even the leaves on the trees are of another color. On the bad days I don’t say “hello” or “thank you” to the lady in the market, and I cannot look at her either, she seems so hateful. The point I am trying to make is that I really did notice that the typewriters had suddenly become coated with dust. I asked for two more ribbons. I don’t know on what basis I had decided that four were going to be enough. At the time I could not even have said what they would be enough for. I forced all four boxes into my handbag and burst the catch. It had stopped raining, but the wind was cold and blowing straight in my face on the way back to the bus stop. I walked with the handbag clasped in front of my chest. I felt weary, having gone to several stores and ridden two buses already, and I took a taxi home, though I cannot afford to take taxis anymore. In Paris we took taxis everywhere and never thought twice about it. The taxis in those days were mostly old black Citroëns with the passenger door opening forward, making them easy to hop in and out of. If I had to describe my life in Paris in a single phrase it would be “hopping in and out of taxis.” That makes it sound as if I led a glamorous life there, when