Kindred Spirits

Another fruitless search ground to its inevitable end. The rain drizzled half heartedly over his car duco while the smell of warm Chinese food drenched the interior, tantalizingly tweaking his salivary glands. His precious cargo lay snuggled in a protective case in the front passenger seat sulking from its latest encounter. This time, they had actually laughed. Despite the 'all makes and models repaired' claim they had baulked at the vintage. Nobody nowadays would touch one of those, they assured him.

And so Timothy McGee completed his weekly ritual, returning his beloved Abby-smote typewriter home once again to its sanctuary. A place where it was treated with the reverence it was due.

The sign in the small yellow-lit window blared like a beacon: 'Typewriter repairs'. The car decelerated abruptly to a halt. McGee checked his rear-view mirror: no cars, no other signs of life, just one lone vision of hope. He slapped the car into reverse and backed up level to the window. Squinting into the gloomy shop interior through the dark rainy haze, he could just make out a single a solitary figure hunched in the background.

Pulling up against the curb, he cut the engine. Maybe just one more try. He owed his beloved Remington that much. Fortified with a heavy sigh, McGee lifted the bundle from the passenger seat and cradling it in his arms, ran the short distance in the rain from his car to the door. Pausing to shake the residual rain from his hair he examined the shop interior again. The figure was still there but with the benefit of proximity he could examine the details. He was a small Yoda of a man: incalculatably old and impossibly wrinkled. The little weathered cardboard sign adhered to the grimy window with coffee-brown Sellotape said 'open' in a manner so meek he wasn't convinced it really meant it.

The door creaked as he leant against it and the smell of dust flecked with the occasional sharp tang of ink threatened to overwhelm him.

"Ah…hello?"

The hunched figure's head bobbed up in surprise.

"Yes?" He even sounded like Yoda.

"Are you open?"

"In a manner of speaking." The old man's eyes swept sadly around the room.

"Oh, then I'm probably too late."

"Do you have something for me?" His eyes lit up.

McGee hesitated for a moment then slowly peeled back the cover from his battle scared typewriter.

"Ahhhhhh," the Yoda-man swooped through the shop with surprising grace. His fingers hovered impatiently over the bundle. "It has seen great service?"

"Well, ah yes," McGee admitted. "I wrote my first novel on it."

"How does it come to be in this state?"

McGee felt obliged to defend himself against the accusatory tone. "Well, um a friend of mine, she, ah, threw it at someone."

"You?"

"No, an intruder."

The craftsman shot him a puzzled expression and McGee nodded his agreement: What Abby had thought such an action would achieve, apart from irrevocably damaging the projectile, was anyone's guess.

Satisfied, he gently relieved McGee of his burden, carried it lovingly to a workbench and unwrapping its shroud. After casting an expert eye over the carcass for a few minutes he finally proclaiming: "I can fix this."

"Really?"

"I have the tools and the parts. It is unlikely you will find someone like me again. You stay, yes?"

"Um, ah," he fumbled for the words. "Yes. Ok, thanks. Ahh, can I just get my dinner from the car?"

"You bring dinner, you eat, we talk, I fix."

McGee blinked but his companion's attention was already focused on the mangled typewriter in front of him and he was beginning to assemble a vast array of tools; laying them methodically on the bench.

"I'll be right back."

By the time he had returned with his food, the typewriter was illuminated with a halo of light. His nameless ally was peering intently through an enormous magnifying glass armed with a miniature tool unlike any McGee had ever seen before. Replacement stalks lay scattered about the table. He watched in amazement at the precise firm strokes employed by the seemingly frail human being.

"Where are the platen and the mylar?" the old man intoned as he concentrated on his work.

A broad grin spread over McGee's face. "You know you're the first person I've met, other than Ducky, who has called them by their real names. Most people just say 'paper roller' and 'ink ribbon'."

"Everything deserves its proper name. But you did not answer my question."

"Ah, still at home. They were off at the time it was thrown. I was doing some maintenance on her when she was damaged."

An inscrutable smile wormed over ancient lips.

McGee settled himself in a dusty battered chair in front of the workbench and cracked open his take-out box.

"Would you like some?"

"No thank you." He paused to pluck a crooked letter stalk carefully from the typebasket. "Are you fond of the girl?"

"Who?"

"The one who launched our dear friend."

"Ah, yes, I guess so."

"She is the kind of person you feel you've known forever?"

McGee raised an eyebrow and chanced a light jibe. "You're sounding like a fortune cookie."

This invoked a chuckle. "I have much in common with them."

McGee took another mouthful while he considered Abby. "Sometimes, it's hard to remember life before I met her. It's like she's always been there. How did you know?"

"The tone of your voice when you described what she did to this ancient one: You have the reverence for our machine and yet you showed her no anger."

"She was scared. Usually she's very rational; in her own bizarre kind of way."

"Why do you use this?"

"Use what?"

"This beast of burden; you are clearly a man of the modern computer era, and yet you type with this."

McGee smiled gently. Some things were difficult to explain. "I just wanted to experience what it was like for the frontier writers: the typing, the re-typing, screwing up the pages in frustration. I wanted it all."

"You screw up the pages?"

"Well, no," he admitted, "I have a shredder."

"Doesn't that annoy your neighbours?"

McGee grimaced; "occasionally."

"Ever heard of liquid paper?"

"Not exactly authentic."

"As opposed to that traditional of all machines: the shredder."

"I don't get much space in my trash."

"Was the book a success?"

"In terms of readers: yeah I guess so. People seemed to enjoy it: very satisfying as a writer. But it led to some trouble at work. Some of my co-workers took exception."

"Tell me about your co-workers."

McGee scooped out the remains of his food and placed the container on the workbench.

"Um, well, ah my Boss is one of those rough diamond kind of guys. He does the tough but fair thing. Well, sometimes not so fair. I think he might actually have a sadistic sense of humour. Then there's a woman who is very, ah experienced in lots of unmentionable things but can't stand the sight of vomit. There's one who's an ex-jock, ex-cop who has come through the ranks of hard knocks. He'll exploit every opportunity to belittle you but he's got a real serious streak when it matters. Then there's an English gentleman ME who relates stories to the dead. That's Ducky I was telling you about. Now that I come to think about it I'm not sure they all start off dead. I think some of them might have just come in for an update and got trapped in an anecdote. And, of course, the Gothic Lab technician who drives a hearse, loves black roses, sleeps in a coffin and bowls with nuns."

"And it works?"

McGee considered his dysfunctional family. "Yeah, it does," he said fondly.

The old man stopped his work and looked up. McGee felt him searching his soul.

"Yes, you will always remain friends."

"You don't think it would be far less effort to just give your customers fortune cookies?"

The tools were laid abruptly on the work bench and for a moment McGee thought he had gone too far. "It is late. You will come back tomorrow. I will work on this tonight."

"I'm in no hurry," McGee started. "There's no need for you to work on this all night."

The little man looked up at him with enormous brown eyes, "No hurry for you. For me, time is a precious commodity. Tomorrow: after noon."

He opened a drawer, pulled out a fragile piece of sepia-toned paper adorned with a single red dot and handed it to McGee. "Bring this."

McGee stood hesitantly and collected his take-out container. "I'll, ah, see you tomorrow then."

It was just past 3 pm when McGee recognised the street. It looked different in daylight, more shabby and run down than he remembered. The little weathered open sign was still there.

"Ahh Tony, do you mind pulling in over there for a minute, there's something I need to pickup."

Tony's expression portrayed the enrichment he attained from doing McGee a personal favour. "Be quick."

"Thanks."

McGee hopped out of the car and approached the shop. He frowned: It looked downright dilapidated. There was no evidence of life inside. A gentle touch of the door revealed the grimy interior; the sweet bite of typewriter ink had been replaced by a deep musty odour. He ventured inside.

"Hello?"

A small female head popped out from behind a curtain, her eyes moist and swollen.

"We're not open." she said.

"Oh, I'm sorry," he backed up, "I was told to pick up a typewriter today." The offered scrap of paper seemed to have aged a couple of millennia overnight.

The young woman emerged curiously. "So you are the one."

"Excuse me?"

She reached under the counter and drew out his typewriter, as shiny and new as the day it had been purchased by the original owner.

"We wondered whose it was; we found it in the back."

"Ah yeah, that's it. How much do I owe you?"

The woman looked up at him. "Oh nothing, it's a red dot."

"A red dot?"

"My father liked to mark the typewriters of the chosen ones with a red dot. He always said people who truly loved their machines should never be restrained by matters of money. He had a great love of typewriters and their owners."

McGee stared at her, puzzled by her use of the past tense. Then the picture came together all at once. "I'm so sorry for your loss, I only knew your father a short while but we spent a long time talking."

"Yes, you would. You are a red dot." She lifted the typewriter to him. "Use it well."

"Thanks," he graced her with a sympathetic smile as he took it. "When's the funeral."

The young woman sniffed and wiped her eyes slowly. "Two days ago, we're just cleaning up the shop."